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Dirty Laundry
Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture?
Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's " 'real life' feature film," has proudly worn its mongrel status as a "directed" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.
This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film "an exercise in mendacity," Barker goes on, "I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths."
Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary ("I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of "difficult" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of "larger dramatic truths."
Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.
Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are "mutts." Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.
Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's "OK with it," and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? "Or," the viewer thinks, "if you're 225 pounds?"
The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks ("I'm up to two dicks a day"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.
Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, "In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action."
Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was "true to her character." But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.
So what are Barker's "larger dramatic truths"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.
Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.
The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. ("Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.
The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. "Are we middle-class now?" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.
I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.
Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like "Time to die!" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings.
| The author believes that a/an ________ audience will enjoy the film "Unmade Beds." | [
"voyeuristic",
"insensitive",
"crude",
"empathetic"
] | 0 | true |
Dirty Laundry
Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture?
Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's " 'real life' feature film," has proudly worn its mongrel status as a "directed" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.
This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film "an exercise in mendacity," Barker goes on, "I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths."
Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary ("I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of "difficult" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of "larger dramatic truths."
Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.
Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are "mutts." Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.
Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's "OK with it," and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? "Or," the viewer thinks, "if you're 225 pounds?"
The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks ("I'm up to two dicks a day"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.
Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, "In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action."
Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was "true to her character." But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.
So what are Barker's "larger dramatic truths"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.
Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.
The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. ("Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.
The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. "Are we middle-class now?" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.
I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.
Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like "Time to die!" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings.
| According to the author of the review of "Unmade Beds," which of the four main characters is the least programmatic? | [
"Michael",
"Aimee",
"Mikey",
"Brenda"
] | 3 | false |
Dirty Laundry
Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture?
Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's " 'real life' feature film," has proudly worn its mongrel status as a "directed" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.
This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film "an exercise in mendacity," Barker goes on, "I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths."
Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary ("I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of "difficult" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of "larger dramatic truths."
Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.
Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are "mutts." Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.
Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's "OK with it," and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? "Or," the viewer thinks, "if you're 225 pounds?"
The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks ("I'm up to two dicks a day"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.
Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, "In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action."
Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was "true to her character." But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.
So what are Barker's "larger dramatic truths"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.
Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.
The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. ("Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.
The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. "Are we middle-class now?" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.
I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.
Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like "Time to die!" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings.
| What is the author's strongest critique of Barker's directorial style? | [
"The drafted nature of Barker's characters' speech is inconsistent with his claims of the film being categorized as a documentary",
"The film does not include enough monologues from each of the four characters to be considered a documentary, and instead relies predominantly on voice-over narration",
"Barker attempts to capitalize on western society's simultaneous intrigue and revulsion with vile characters who live at the margins",
"Barker's juxtaposition of the sympathetic with the distasteful does not match up with the actual lived realities of the four main characters featured in the film"
] | 0 | false |
Dirty Laundry
Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture?
Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's " 'real life' feature film," has proudly worn its mongrel status as a "directed" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.
This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film "an exercise in mendacity," Barker goes on, "I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths."
Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary ("I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of "difficult" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of "larger dramatic truths."
Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.
Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are "mutts." Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.
Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's "OK with it," and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? "Or," the viewer thinks, "if you're 225 pounds?"
The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks ("I'm up to two dicks a day"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.
Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, "In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action."
Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was "true to her character." But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.
So what are Barker's "larger dramatic truths"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.
Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.
The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. ("Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.
The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. "Are we middle-class now?" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.
I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.
Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like "Time to die!" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings.
| What, according to the author, is the main flaw of The Slums of Beverly Hills? | [
"The female characters are reduced to naive, sex-obsessed girls, when they are much more complex in reality",
"The director too obviously uses the film as an outlet for resolving her own childhood devastations",
"It is difficult for the audience to make sense of the director's absurd juxtapositions",
"The audience never gets to see the children interact within the context that motivates their father to uproot their lives"
] | 3 | false |
Dirty Laundry
Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture?
Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's " 'real life' feature film," has proudly worn its mongrel status as a "directed" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.
This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film "an exercise in mendacity," Barker goes on, "I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths."
Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary ("I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of "difficult" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of "larger dramatic truths."
Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.
Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are "mutts." Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.
Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's "OK with it," and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? "Or," the viewer thinks, "if you're 225 pounds?"
The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks ("I'm up to two dicks a day"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.
Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, "In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action."
Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was "true to her character." But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.
So what are Barker's "larger dramatic truths"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.
Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.
The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. ("Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.
The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. "Are we middle-class now?" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.
I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.
Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like "Time to die!" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings.
| How does the author compare Macnee's performance to Fiennes' performance in The Avengers? | [
"Macnee feels more natural in the role while Fiennes' feels like a buffoon",
"Macnee takes the role more seriously while Fiennes trivializes the script",
"Macnee's performance is authentic while Fiennes' performance is too rehearsed",
"Macnee's performance is timeless while Fiennes' performance tries to be modern for the sake of being modern"
] | 0 | true |
Dirty Laundry
Now and then, a documentary film comes along that makes us re-examine the rules that unofficially govern the genre: Can there be a middle ground between fiction and fact? Can a documentary use scripted scenes and yet remain ontologically authentic? How much can you stylize material before you alter the reality that you're striving, at least in theory, to capture?
Unmade Beds , Nicholas Barker's " 'real life' feature film," has proudly worn its mongrel status as a "directed" documentary of single life in the big city, employing, in the face of criticism, what amounts to a cackling-punk defiance. The movie tracks four aging New Yorkers--two men, two women--through their lonely dating rituals, in the process depicting a universe of lusty, coupled-up haves and downcast, excluded have-nots, all viewed Rear Window -style through rectangular openings in the massive apartment houses in which they reside.
This is not cinema vérité , and nothing has been left to chance. The director selected his four subjects from many hundreds of potential candidates, followed them around for months, and then scripted their monologues and dialogues to reflect what he says he saw. Calling his own film "an exercise in mendacity," Barker goes on, "I'm quite happy to tell lies about my characters and even collude with their self-delusions if it enables me to communicate larger dramatic truths."
Spurned by U.S. distributors, Unmade Beds opened two weeks ago in a small screening room in downtown Manhattan, where it proceeded to set box office records and generate lots of (largely favorable) press. In part due to smart publicity, which has bannered some of the bad reviews and commentary ("I have to tell you that this film upset me so much that I really don't want to have anything to do with it"--a New York publicist), it threatens to become a cause célèbre --and to be coming soon to a theater near you. It's always nice to see distributors proved wrong about the merits of "difficult" films, but in this case I think they did the decent thing. Unmade Beds isn't just bad--it's obnoxiously, noxiously bad, a freak show for the empathetically challenged. The outrage it has prompted isn't the Puritan kind; it's more like legitimate revulsion at watching a blowhard pervert people's lives in the name of "larger dramatic truths."
Those truths are large, all right. Take Michael, the 40-year-old, 5 foot 4 inch lonely guy who has been looking for a wife for almost two decades. If you were to walk past him on the street, you might think that a man of his small stature might have some trouble getting dates and be rather bitter about it. The larger dramatic truth is that Michael has lots of trouble getting dates and is very bitter about it. Just in case you feel too sorry for him, however, Barker is careful to include a homophobic monologue in which Michael complains about young women who waste their lives hanging out with effeminate males.
Michael turns out to be the film's most sympathetic subject--by a wide margin. At least he's not Mikey, a paunchy 54-year-old who writes but can't sell screenplays and who always flees blind dates, because the women he gets fixed up with are "mutts." Sounding like one of the low-level gangsters who posture like kingpins in Donnie Brasco , Mikey talks a lot about mutts. He also reminisces about that 24 hour period in the '70s when he managed to sleep with three different beautiful women, whose pictures he shows off. These days, all he meets are mutts. He comes off as a pathetic little loser--a mutt.
Aimee, on the other hand, is a pathetic big loser, weighing in at 225 pounds. Determined to get married before she turns 30, she generally is filmed beside bags of groceries and assorted junk foods. She cries about her situation to her thin friend, Laurie, who, in one scene, gently mentions Aimee's weight. Clearly the scene is scripted, but Aimee does a good job acting taken aback. She has always been fat--and she's "OK with it," and a man just has to accept it. This is followed by more talk about how you attract men. Will they respect you if you call them back? If you express too much interest? "Or," the viewer thinks, "if you're 225 pounds?"
The only natural performer here is Brenda, a garrulous exhibitionist who blossoms with the camera on her--she could have a career as a Penny Marshall-style character actress. Divorced and aging, Brenda needs money and is willing to charge for her sexual services. It shouldn't be too difficult, because men are always showing her their dicks ("I'm up to two dicks a day"). They meet her and, a few minutes later, they show her their dicks. Weird, huh? What Barker leaves out (it's in a New York Observer article) is that Brenda, a former lap dancer, works in marketing at a strip joint. Presumably, men standing next to her in line at McDonald's don't show her their dicks. Nor, presumably, does she show them her breasts--although she bares them for Barker's camera, jabbering about her body while she doffs her clothes and steps into the shower and soaps up.
Barker might have crafted his subjects' monologues from their own words, but he has robbed them of their spontaneity--and, thus, of their essence. They aren't thinking or trying to come to grips with their situations in front of your eyes, because they already know what they're going to say: They've been fixed like butterflies on the ends of pins and held up for voyeuristic inspection. The scenes with friends and confidantes have a crude, programmatic purpose. You can imagine the director composing a shot (the shots are tightly composed and elaborately lighted) and reminding them, "In this scene she points out that you should lose weight and you get shocked and defensive. Ready ... Action."
Call me square, but I find this antithetical to the documentary spirit. An Englishman who trained as an anthropologist before going to work for BBC Television, Barker clearly made up his mind about his material before his cameras began to roll--so it's no surprise that it feels prechewed and predigested. When reality interfered (Brenda apparently did not go through with a marriage to an immigrant in search of a green card for $10,000, as she does on-screen), Barker brushed the truth aside as immaterial, following her up the steps of City Hall in her wedding dress because it was "true to her character." But what separates documentary from fiction is that real people are often more complicated, and more conflicted, than finished characters--as Brenda proved to be more (or, at least, other) than the sum of her parts. That's the kind of truth that reveals itself to documentary filmmakers after the fact, when they go over footage and discover unexpected patterns, dissonances, glimmers of a universe that's richer and messier than the one they set out to portray.
So what are Barker's "larger dramatic truths"? Single people in big cities can be desperate. Single people fear they're going to die alone--unloved and unloving. People are judged and, in turn, judge others by how they look. Big news. One could argue, charitably, that the movie is meant to be prescriptive, that Barker intends for us to regard the ways in which his subjects delude themselves and thereby learn to see through our own self-delusions. But Barker hasn't concocted a larger dramatic structure that would hold those larger dramatic truths together and help us comprehend where these people went wrong. He dramatizes right up to the point where a dramatist would be expected to provide some insight--and then, hey, he's a documentarian.
Unmade Beds might make a good date movie. There's little to argue about in its subjects' personalities--both males and females will find them repulsive--and the picture the film paints of single life in the big city is so bleak that you'll probably want to jump into bed with whoever is sitting next to you. Anything to keep from turning into one of those people.
The Slums of Beverly Hills also walks a line between two genres, in this case coming-of-age sex comedy and autobiographical monologue. Tamara Jenkins, the writer and first-time director, has an eye for absurd juxtapositions that was obviously sharpened by the pain of her nomadic upbringing. Her protagonist (Natasha Lyonne) spends her teen-age years being shuttled with her two brothers from one cheap dive to another in the 90210 ZIP code, all because her egregiously unsuccessful father (Alan Arkin) wants them to be educated in the best schools. ("Furniture's temporary; education is permanent.") It's a major omission, then, that we never see those schools or the kids' interaction with their stable, well-to-do Beverly Hills counterparts. We can't tell if the father is, on some weird level, justified in his fervor, or whether he's screwing up his children--subjecting them to humiliation and robbing them of a sense of permanence--for no reason. Jenkins hasn't quite figured out how to shape her narrative, which is full of episodes that are there because they actually happened but that don't have a payoff. I almost wish she'd included more voice-over narration, more commentary on the things that, as a filmmaker, she hasn't learned to bring out.
The Slums of Beverly Hills never gels, but it has a likable spirit, and it's exceedingly easy on the eye, with lots of pretty girls and wry evocations of '70s fashions and decor. The father, to obtain financial support from his wealthy brother (Carl Reiner), volunteers to take in his vaguely schizzy, dipsomaniacal niece (Marisa Tomei). She and her cousin compare breasts, play with vibrators, and talk in pig Latinish gibberish, but Jenkins never lets the proceedings get too sentimental: The whimsy is always cut with an acidic awareness of the family's desperation. "Are we middle-class now?" ask the children, hopefully, before another crisis sends them back into their van, cruising past the movie stars' mansions, in the mean streets of Beverly Hills.
Grading on the steep curve established by summer blockbuster seasons past, these have turned out to be a pretty good few months at the movies. Even the commercial swill ( Deep Impact , Armageddon , The Mask of Zorro , Small Soldiers , Snake Eyes , Halloween: H20 ) has been of a high grade, and Saving Private Ryan and Return to Paradise were Vitalis slaps in the kisser for people woozy from all the warm weather escapism. Out of Sight was tender and charming, as was, in its gross-out way, There's Something About Mary . And, on the indie front, The Opposite of Sex , Buffalo 66 , and Pi have proved that there's still commercial life after Sundance. Sure, we had stinkers, but even Godzilla was fun to jeer at. And there's something reassuring about the fact that The Avengers is so rotten: proof yet again that people with piles of money can hire wizard production designers but can't fake class.
I don't know who the credited screenwriter, Don MacPherson, is, but it's unlikely that he has ever seen an episode of the old Avengers , let alone sussed out the source of its appeal. Opening with a slapstick sequence of agent John Steed (Ralph Fiennes) doing kung fu, the film shifts to a scene in which he meets Mrs. Peel (Uma Thurman) while sitting naked in a sauna with only a newspaper to cover his private parts. The series was erotic in a way only prim English humor can be: The Old Boy Steed was capable of throwing a punch and bonking someone with his bowler, but he left the karate kicking to his liberated, leather-suited distaff associate. Here their roles have been witlessly muddled, and MacPherson's idea of banter is to have the pair complete each other's clichés.
Whereas the original Steed, Patrick Macnee, was to the English Men's Club born, Fiennes is an eternal caddie. The willowy Thurman looks great in her outfits, but it's ever more apparent that she isn't much of an actress--at least, not a trained one--and her attempts at insouciance are embarrassingly arch. As the eccentric master villain who controls the weather, even Sean Connery is flat-out terrible, acting high on the hog. To think Connery once found the Bond films so far beneath him! When he sputters lines like "Time to die!" one imagines Dr. No, Goldfinger, and Blofeld snickering in the wings.
| Of the films reviewed, which one received the most positive criticism? | [
"There's Something About Mary",
"Unmade Beds",
"The Slums of Beverly Hills",
"The Avengers (new version)"
] | 2 | false |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| According to the film reviewer, Thin Red Line has succeeded in all of the following EXCEPT: | [
"Overwhelming viewers with bloodshed and prattle",
"Not living up to its pre-release date hype",
"Creating one of film's most notorious villains",
"Maintaining an unnecessarily long-winded tone"
] | 2 | false |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| According to the film reviewer, what tone does Malick use to narrate "Thin Red Line"? | [
"frantic",
"egomaniacal",
"obtuse",
"portentous"
] | 3 | true |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| According to the film reviewer, which of the following actors emerges as the central character? | [
"Sergeant Welsh",
"Private Witt",
"Lieutenant Colonel Tall",
"None of the above"
] | 3 | true |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| The film reviewer gives all of the following reasons for the negative critique of "Thin Red Line" EXCEPT: | [
"Cacophonous sound blending",
"Lengthy, inconsequential battle scenes",
"Similarity to Billy Budd bordering plagiarism",
"Overuse of existential questions"
] | 2 | true |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| According to the film reviewer, what is the central irony of Malick's directorial performance? Convincing at chaos but gummed up when he ruminates on order | [
"His desire to stand out from directors in the war genre ultimately fails, as \"Thin Red Line\" adheres too closely to similar war epics",
"His depiction of disarray is believable, but when it comes to portrayal of the mundane, his narration is occluded",
"He relies (overwhelmingly) on questioning in the dialogue of the script, yet the questions are ultimately never answered",
"His overly visceral battle scenes ultimately fail to evoke strong emotions from his audience"
] | 1 | true |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| According to the film reviewer, what prevents Schlichtmann from winning the case in "A Civil Action"? | [
"Facher is more qualified while Schlichtmann fumbles the testimony",
"Facher keeps Schlichtmann preoccupied with distractions",
"Schlichtmann betrays the confidence of his clients",
"Schlichtmann relies too heavily on a piece of evidence that is never allowed to be presented in court"
] | 1 | true |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| What, according to the film reviewer, is Zaillian's strength in "A Civil Action"? | [
"Staying true to the real story's timeline",
"Dramatic monologues",
"Intercutting cinematography",
"Casting excellent actors and actresses"
] | 2 | false |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| What is the film reviewer's main critique of Zaillian's performance? | [
"He takes too many liberties that cause the film to deviate from the real-life outcome of the court case",
"Viewers can easily anticipate the conclusion of each scene in the film",
"He relies too much on director/mentor figures within the same style",
"He makes the same mistakes as Schlichtmann in getting distracted by unimportant details"
] | 1 | true |
War and Pieces
No movie in the last decade has succeeded in psyching out critics and audiences as fully as the powerful, rambling war epic The Thin Red Line , Terrence Malick's return to cinema after 20 years. I've sat through it twice and am still trying to sort out my responses, which run from awe to mockery and back. Like Saving Private Ryan , the picture wallops you in the gut with brilliant, splattery battle montages and Goyaesque images of hell on earth. But Malick, a certified intellectual and the Pynchonesque figure who directed Badlands and Days of Heaven in the 1970s and then disappeared, is in a different philosophical universe from Steven Spielberg. Post-carnage, his sundry characters philosophize about their experiences in drowsy, runic voice-overs that come at you like slow bean balls: "Why does nature vie with itself? ... Is there an avenging power in nature, not one power but two?" Or "This great evil: Where's it come from? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who's doin' this? Who's killin' us, robbin' us of life and light?" First you get walloped with viscera, then you get beaned by blather.
Those existential speculations don't derive from the screenplay's source, an archetypal but otherwise down-to-earth 1962 novel by James Jones (who also wrote From Here to Eternity ) about the American invasion of the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. They're central to Malick's vision of the story, however, and not specious. In the combat genre, the phrase "war is hell" usually means nothing more than that it's a bummer to lose a limb or two, or to see your buddy get his head blown off. A true work of art owes us more than literal horrors, and Malick obliges by making his theater of war the setting for nothing less than a meditation on the existence of God.
He tells the story solemnly, in three parts, with a big-deal cast (Sean Penn, Nick Nolte, John Cusack) and a few other major stars (John Travolta, Woody Harrelson, George Clooney) dropping by for cameos. After an Edenic prelude, in which a boyishly idealistic absent without leave soldier, Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel), swims with native youths to the accompaniment of a heavenly children's choir, the first part sees the arrival of the Allied forces on the island, introduces the principal characters (none of whom amounts to a genuine protagonist), and lays out the movie's geographical and philosophical terrain. The centerpiece--the fighting--goes on for over an hour and features the most frantic and harrowing sequences, chiefly the company's initially unsuccessful frontal assault on a Japanese hilltop bunker. The coda lasts nearly 40 minutes and is mostly talk and cleanup, the rhythms growing more relaxed until a final, incongruous spasm of violence--whereupon the surviving soldiers pack their gear and motor off to another South Pacific battle. In the final shot, a twisted tree grows on the waterline of the beach, the cycle of life beginning anew.
The Thin Red Line has a curious sound-scape, as the noise of battle frequently recedes to make room for interior monologues and Hans Zimmer's bump-bump, minimalist New Age music. Pvt. Bell (Ben Chaplin) talks to his curvy, redheaded wife, viewed in deliriously sensual flashbacks. ("Love: Where does it come from? Who lit this flame in us?") Lt. Col. Tall (Nolte), a borderline lunatic passed over one too many times for promotion and itching to win a battle no matter what the human cost, worries groggily about how his men perceive him. The dreamer Witt poses folksy questions about whether we're all a part of one big soul. If the movie has a spine, it's his off-and-on dialogue with Sgt. Welsh (Penn), who's increasingly irritated by the private's beatific, almost Billy Budd-like optimism. Says Welsh, "In this world, a man himself is nothin', and there ain't no world but this one." Replies Witt, high cheekbones glinting, "I seen another world." At first it seems as if Witt will indeed be Billy Budd to Welsh's vindictive Claggart. But if Witt is ultimately an ethereal martyr, Welsh turns out to be a Bogart-like romantic who can't stop feeling pain in the face of an absent God. He speaks the movie's epitaph, "Darkness and light, strife and love: Are they the workings of one mind, the feature of the same face? O my soul, let me be in you now. Look out through my eyes. Look out at the things you made, all things shining."
Malick puts a lot of shining things on the screen: soldiers, natives, parrots, bats, rodents, visions of Eden by way of National Geographic and of the Fall by way of Alpo. Malick's conception of consciousness distributes it among the animate and inanimate alike; almost every object is held up for rapturous contemplation. I could cite hundreds of images: A soldier in a rocking boat hovers over a letter he's writing, which is crammed from top to bottom and side to side with script. (You don't know the man, but you can feel in an instant his need to cram everything in.) A small, white-bearded Melanesian man strolls nonchalantly past a platoon of tensely trudging grunts who can't believe they're encountering this instead of a hail of Japanese bullets. Two shots bring down the first pair of soldiers to advance on the hill; a second later, the sun plays mystically over the tall, yellow grass that has swallowed their bodies. John Toll's camera rushes in on a captured Japanese garrison: One Japanese soldier shrieks; another, skeletal, laughs and laughs; a third weeps over a dying comrade. The face of a Japanese soldier encased in earth speaks from the dead, "Are you righteous? Know that I was, too."
Whether or not these pearllike epiphanies are strung is another matter. Malick throws out his overarching theme--is nature two-sided, at war with itself?--in the first few minutes but, for all his startling juxtapositions, he never dramatizes it with anything approaching the clarity of, say, Brian De Palma's Casualties of War (1989). Besides the dialogue between Welsh and Witt, The Thin Red Line 's other organizing story involves a wrenching tug of war between Nolte's ambition-crazed Tall and Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), who refuses an order to send his men on what will surely be a suicidal--and futile--assault on a bunker. But matters of cause and effect don't really interest Malick. Individual acts of conscience can and do save lives, and heroism can win a war or a battle, he acknowledges. But Staros is ultimately sent packing, and Malick never bothers to trace the effect of his action on the Guadalcanal operation. In fact, the entire battle seems to take place in a crazed void. Tall quotes Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and orders a meaningless bombardment to "buck the men up--it'll look like the Japs are catching hell." Soldiers shoot at hazy figures, unsure whether they're Japanese or American. Men collide, blow themselves in half with their own mishandled grenades, stab themselves frantically with morphine needles, shove cigarettes up their noses to keep the stench of the dying and the dead at bay. A tiny bird, mortally wounded, flutters in the grass.
Malick is convincing--at times overwhelming--on the subject of chaos. It's when he tries to ruminate on order that he gets gummed up, retreating to one of his gaseous multiple mouthpieces: "Where is it that we were together? Who is it that I lived with? Walked with? The brother. ... The friend. ... One mind." I think I'd have an easier time with Malick's metaphysical speculations if I had a sense of some concomitant geopolitical ones--central to any larger musings on forces of nature as viewed through the prism of war. Couldn't it be that the German and Japanese fascist orders were profoundly anti-natural, and that the Allies' cause was part of a violent but natural correction? You don't have to buy into Spielberg's Lincolnesque pieties in Saving Private Ryan to believe that there's a difference between World War II and Vietnam (or, for that matter, World War II and the invasion of Grenada or our spats with Iraq). While he was at Harvard, Malick might have peeled himself off the lap of his pointy-headed mentor, Stanley Cavell, the philosopher and film theorist, and checked out a few of Michael Waltzer's lectures on just and unjust wars. Maybe then he'd view Guadalcanal not in an absurdist vacuum (the soldiers come, they kill and are killed, they leave) but in the larger context of a war that was among the most rational (in its aims, if not its methods) fought in the last several centuries. For all his visionary filmmaking, Malick's Zen neutrality sometimes seems like a cultivated--and pretentious--brand of fatuousness.
John Travolta's empty nightclub impersonation of Bill Clinton in Primary Colors (1998) had one positive result: It gave him a jump-start on Jan Schlichtmann, the reckless personal injury lawyer at the center of A Civil Action . Travolta's Schlichtmann is much more redolent of Clinton: slick and selfish and corrupt in lots of ways but basically on the side of the angels, too proud and arrogant to change tactics when all is certainly lost. Schlichtmann pursued--and more or less blew--a civil liability case against the corporate giants Beatrice and W.R. Grace over the allegedly carcinogenic water supply of Woburn, Mass. Boston writer Jonathan Harr, in the book the movie is based on, went beyond the poison in the Woburn wells to evoke (stopping just short of libel) the poison of the civil courts, where platoons of overpaid corporate lawyers can drive opponents with pockets less deep and psyches less stable into bankruptcy and hysteria.
Director Steven Zaillian's version doesn't capture the mounting rage that one experiences while reading Harr's book, or even the juicy legal machinations that Francis Ford Coppola giddily manipulated in his underrated adaptation of John Grisham's The Rainmaker (1997). But A Civil Action is a sturdy piece of work, an old-fashioned conversion narrative with some high-tech zip. Schlichtmann doesn't take this "orphan" case--brought by the parents of several children who died of leukemia--because he wants to do good but because he figures that Grace and Beatrice will fork over huge sums of money to keep the parents from testifying publicly about their children's last days. He might succeed, too, if it weren't for Jerome Facher (Robert Duvall), the Beatrice lawyer who knows how to keep Schlichtmann shadowboxing while his small firm's financial resources dwindle to nothing.
Zaillian is at his most assured when he cuts back and forth between Facher's Harvard Law School lectures on what not to do in court and Schlichtmann's fumbling prosecution. The sequence has the extra dimension of good journalism: It dramatizes and comments simultaneously. Plus, it gives Duvall a splendid platform for impish understatement. (Duvall has become more fun to watch than just about anyone in movies.) Elsewhere, Zaillian takes a more surface approach, sticking to legal minutiae and rarely digging for the deeper evil. As in his Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), the outcome of every scene is predictable, but how Zaillian gets from beat to beat is surprisingly fresh. He also gets sterling bit performances from Sydney Pollack as the spookily sanguine Grace CEO, William H. Macy as Schlichtmann's rabbity accountant, and Kathleen Quinlan as the mother of one of the victims. Quinlan knows that when you're playing a woman who has lost a child you don't need to emote--you reveal the emotion by trying not to emote.
To the families involved in the Woburn tragedy, the real climax of this story isn't the downbeat ending of the book or the sleight of hand, "let's call the Environmental Protection Agency," upbeat ending of the movie. The climax is the publication of a book that takes the plaintiffs' side and that remains on the best-seller list in hardcover and paperback for years. The climax is the movie starring John Travolta. Beatrice and Grace made out OK legally, but some of us will never use their products again without thinking about Travolta losing his shirt in the name of those wasted-away little kids.
| According to the film reviewer, what was the result of the court case in "A Civil Action"? | [
"Facher lost the court case because he did not take Schlichtmann as a serious opponent, and ultimately overlooked a key piece of evidence",
"Facher manipulated his way to winning the court case by bribing the parents of the children who died from consuming the carcinogenic water supply",
"Schlichtmann lost the court case by attempting to extend the crimes of Beatrice & W.R. Grace to the crimes of the court system",
"Schlichtmann won the court case, but bankrupted himself and his law firm in pursuit of justice that couldn't bring his clients what they really wanted -- the lives of their children back"
] | 2 | false |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| What positive critique does the film reviewer offer for "Elizabeth"? juicy melodrama | [
"It relies on juxtaposition-based cinematography that makes for a compelling theatrical performance",
"It takes necessary liberties with history's version of Elizabeth's reign to make her story more interesting to movie-goers",
"It takes the best aspects of both Jacobean and Shakespearean interpretations of Elizabeth I and combines them into one melodramatic depiction",
"It is the best interpretation of Elizabeth I's ascent to the throne and subsequent reign"
] | 0 | true |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| What positive critique does the film reviewer offer Blanchett? pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety | [
"She gives a naturally convincing performance of Elizabeth I's transition from a naive girl to a powerful ruler",
"She most closely resembles Elizabeth I's cold demeanor, as compared to her actress predecessors",
"She brings a fresh element of humor and bluntness to Elizabeth I's dialogue",
"She captures Elizabeth I's bloodthirsty, almost masculine personality with stunning accuracy"
] | 0 | false |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| In comparing queens, whom does the film reviewer view as the most controversial? | [
"Jonathan Rhys-Myers as Brian Slade",
"Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I",
"Miranda Richardson as Elizabeth I",
"David Bowie as himself"
] | 0 | false |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| Which word best describes how the film reviewer conceives of Velvet Goldmine's direction? | [
"luxurious",
"circuitous",
"incoherent",
"graphic"
] | 1 | false |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| Which subjects does Haynes focus on frequently in his films? | [
"Billionaire business tycoons",
"Ruthless, independent queens",
"Larger-than-life male celebrities",
"Dissatisfied, suffering women"
] | 3 | true |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| According to the film reviewer, how does the reporter in "Velvet Goldmine" view the protagonist? | [
"With revulsion",
"With jealousy",
"With admiration",
"With consternation"
] | 2 | false |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| What critique does the film reviewer give to the actor who plays the rock star protagonist of "Velvet Goldmine"? | [
"He is unconvincing in his role as a sexual messiah",
"He confuses the audience with abrupt transitions between his self and alter ego",
"He is upstaged by the best supporting actor",
"His dialogue feels too scripted and unnatural"
] | 3 | true |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| What critique does film reviewer offer of Haynes? wishes he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes | [
"His pacing is too frenetic and hasty",
"His costume and makeup design is too glamorous",
"His adherence to fact is too rigid",
"Its use of competing sound effects is grating"
] | 0 | true |
Warrior Queens
Elizabeth is a lurid paraphrase of the old Groucho Marx line about Doris Day: "I knew the Virgin Queen before she was a virgin." As the movie tells it, she was a sylvan, redheaded princess (Cate Blanchett) given to gamboling with her fella (Joseph Fiennes) between periods of internment in the Tower of London on charges of conspiring to overthrow her half-sister, the heatedly Catholic Queen Mary (Kathy Burke). The daughter of the second wife of Henry VIII, Anne Boleyn, and therefore dubbed a bastard by the papists, the Protestant Elizabeth ascends the throne to find the air still thick with smoke from roasted heretics, a team of skulking Catholics plotting her assassination, and a council of advisers (lords, bishops, sundry old boys) who snigger openly at the prospect of taking orders from a woman. Only a strategic marriage to a Spaniard or a Frenchman will mollify all factions, her advisers insist, but the pickings prove dismal. (Her French suitor enjoys wearing dresses.) After skulls are smashed, throats slit, and bosoms skewered in the name of Christ, Elizabeth decides to: a) "unsex" herself and become a symbol--the Virgin Queen, married only to England; and b) entertain dissenting opinions exclusively from those whose heads are affixed to spikes.
You can't be both a queenly queen and a womanly woman, says the script (by Michael Hirst)--at least not in 1554. (The director, Shekhar Kapur, made the same point in his grim 1994 Indian epic The Bandit Queen , against a backdrop of scrubby plains along the Ganges.) Is this feminist take historically accurate? Probably, although the evidence suggests that Elizabeth had developed a head for stratagems earlier in life (her position had been precarious since the beheading of her mother) and came to the throne with few girlish illusions about How Things Work in a barbarous state.
That said, the movie's approach makes for juicy melodrama. The tone of Elizabeth comes nearer to the nihilistic relish of Jacobeans such as John Ford and John Webster than to the more sorrowful horror of the Elizabethan dramatists Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare. It's even closer to a Jacobean drama of our own age: The Godfather (1972), which it emulates by cutting back-and-forth between queen and courtiers in prayer and the roundup and slaughter of Catholics on their privies, in bed with their mistresses, and so on. Their severed heads look on, wide-eyed, as Elizabeth directs her hair to be shorn--images of her girlhood flashing by as her locks rain down--and then walks weightily to her throne, now a chalk-faced gorgon.
With all due respect to Blanchett, Bette Davis, and Glenda Jackson, my favorite Elizabeth I remains Miranda Richardson's capricious, baby-talking psychopath on the BBC comedy Blackadder II . (Casting about for a new lord high executioner, she mews to Rowan Atkinson, "There are thousands of Catholics simply dying to have their heads sneaked off --and there's no one to organize it.") But Blanchett comes in a close second, pulling off the transition from hapless young woman to coolly ruthless monarch with uncommon subtlety. Gradually expunging all empathy from her moist, pink eyes and permitting her visage to ossify, she gives this carnival of carnage an awe-inspiring center.
A more subversive sort of queen is on display in Velvet Goldmine , Todd Haynes' musical fantasia on the early '70s era of "glam" or "glitter" rock. Here the monarch is a David Bowie-esque singer called Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) and his spidery, space-age alter ego, Maxwell Demon. The movie opens with a spaceship depositing an infant Oscar Wilde on the stoop of a Dublin townhouse. Then it skips ahead to track a jade pin (it signifies hedonistic liberation) from the custody of a young Wilde to a swishy fringe creature called Jack Fairy to the regal Slade, a bisexual superstar who carries the news to all the young dudes. After that, we're in an Orwellian 1984 that's presided over by a vaguely fascist president and by arena rockers who serve as propagandists for a repressively conformist state. Whatever happened to Brian Slade, the glitter kids, the visionary exhibitionists and gleeful poseurs? Borrowing its framework from Citizen Kane , the movie follows a reporter (Christian Bale) assigned to reconstruct Slade's life and solve the mystery of his whereabouts.
Whatever you make of Velvet Goldmine (opinions have ranged from rapturous to casually dismissive), it's like no other musical ever made. It's determinedly swirling, discursive, elliptical. Now the story is told by an omniscient narrator, now a TV reporter, now a participant. Now it's flashing back, now forward. Every other line of dialogue is a cue for one of its dazzling numbers, largely covers of songs by Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, and T. Rex. The narrative is a challenge to keep up with, but then, great artists often invent their own syntax. In the '80s, Haynes employed Barbie dolls to depict the rise and wasting away from anorexia of the singer Karen Carpenter. Lucky audiences who caught Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (it was shelved when Richard Carpenter served the producers with an order to cease and desist exhibition) began by laughing at this elaborately posed, soft-rock femme, only to discover by the climax that the cultural forces that were eating at her (and that kept her from eating) had grown heartbreakingly palpable. Poison (1991), Haynes' Genêt-inspired exploration of transgression, didn't overcome its own artiness. But Safe (1995), the story of a Reagan-era housewife (Julianne Moore) convinced that her environment is poisoning her, is an entrancing meditation on the power of culture to crush the individual. Despite its ironic detachment, the film draws you into its heroine's sickly state: Breathing oxygen from a canister inside a high-tech igloo, she dwindles to nearly nothing, the modern incarnation of the Incredible Shrinking Man.
(It was partly my passion for Haynes' films that led me to accept a job offer from his indefatigable producer Christine Vachon last year to collaborate on a nuts-and-bolts book about producing, Shooting To Kill . So my review of Velvet Goldmine --like my review of Vachon's other recent release, Happiness --should be read as the work of a partisan. But not a blind partisan.)
In Velvet Goldmine , Haynes sets out to demonstrate the power of popular music to change people's lives--to tell them it's OK to fashion themselves into anything they please. The core of the movie turns out not to be the Bowie figure but the journalist, Arthur Stuart, who was a witness to the events he's now reconstructing. Bale is such an expressive performer that Stuart's remembrance of things past attains a Proustian intensity. To him, Slade was a sexual messiah. I've never seen a more vivid distillation of rock's allure than the scene in which he reverently opens the new Brian Slade album--its centerfold image is a lithe, naked, green-tinged Maxwell Demon--slips the vinyl out of its paper jacket and, after gingerly setting the LP on the turntable, props a chair under the doorknob to keep the uncomprehending world at bay.
But if Haynes wants Velvet Goldmine to be an anthem to the principles Bowie once embodied--the embrace of artifice and the smashing of conventional sexual roles--he also wants to portray the rocker as a hollow opportunist who abandoned glam and bisexuality for the life of a corporate superstar, throwing in his lot with the forces of repression. That's a lot to cover. An actor of stature might have bridged these two impulses, but the beautiful, brazenly slim-hipped Rhys-Meyers doesn't make his lines sound as if he's thinking them up on the spot, and Slade's self-destructive passion for Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor), the film's fuzzy, sweet Iggy Pop figure, seems less an emotional imperative than a thematic one.
A case can be made that Velvet Goldmine isn't fully filled in, and that Haynes, who has never shaken off his background as a semiotics major, has made a movie that's all signifiers. I sometimes found myself wishing he would let the picture catch its breath, that the performers would stop coming at me in stroboscopic flashes. But then I'd be swept up in the sinuous motion of his filmmaking, in the elation of watching point of view passed like a baton from hand to hand, in the liberating force of his language and soundtrack. Velvet Goldmine might seem like a collection of baubles, but those baubles are strung.
Is Brad Pitt the worst actor on earth? The case could be made, and Meet Joe Black could serve as Exhibit A. Pitt plays two roles in this seven course schlockfest. He's (briefly) a slick but wholesome yuppie and then (interminably) Death, who takes over the young man's body when he's thumped by a couple of cars in the movie's most promising moment. Bleached so blond that he looks like an irradiated android, Pitt expels all expression from his face and all tone from his voice. He speaks very, very slowly. The stunt half-works, at least until he's supposed to undergo an inner transformation and acquire human emotions--whereupon his face remains just as blank. Pitt's conception of the role is an idée fixe by someone who doesn't appear to have an idée in his head.
Martin Brest, the director, is known for shooting a ton of footage and then "finding" his films in the editing room. What do you suppose he "found" when he scrutinized these miles of celluloid with Pitt doing nothing and taking his sweet time doing it? The first adaptation of this story (originally a play) was the 1934 Death Takes a Holiday , which came in at a perky 78 minutes. A conceit this fragile needs to whiz along to keep our disbelief in suspension, but Meet Joe Black grinds on for three hours (longer than either Beloved or Saving Private Ryan ), and Pitt acts as if he has leased the screen by the year.
Anthony Hopkins plays the zillionaire communications baron whom Death enlists in the hope of understanding the human condition--an odd choice for a tour guide, since most people's condition doesn't involve personal helicopters, sprawling mansions on Long Island Sound, or Manhattan apartments that sport Olympic-size swimming pools. Four screenwriters, among them the great Bo Goldman ( Melvin and Howard , 1980; Shoot the Moon , 1982), labored on this moldy script, which features characters who ask questions that begin "Am I to understand that ...?" and a corporate villain who directs another character to "wake up and smell the thorns." It apparently never occurred to even one of these overpaid scribes to eliminate Hopkins' rueful realization that he'd "never write the great American novel"--no kidding, given his flagrantly Welsh accent.
Actually, Hopkins gives this humanistic magnate considerable weight, so that whether or not Death takes him before he can stop to smell the roses and make amends to his neglected children becomes a matter of some suspense. The rest of the cast works with equal fortitude, especially Jeffrey Tambor (Hank "Hey now!" Kingsley on The Larry Sanders Show ) as Hopkins' milksop son-in-law and Marcia Gay Harden as his party planning, perpetually wilting elder daughter. As the younger daughter, the dark eyed, spaghetti thin Claire Forlani has to carry the picture's bathos on her exquisite shoulders. Her tremulous thoroughbred act wears thin, but it's hardly her fault: She has to emote like mad opposite a black pit of death--or is that the Black Death of Pitt?
| Which actor gets the most negative critique from the film reviewer? | [
"Jonathan Rhys-Myers",
"Anthony Hopkins",
"Brad Pitt",
"Christian Bale"
] | 2 | false |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| Dole makes all of the following charges against the New York Times EXCEPT for: with the NYT? | [
"They don't publish stories about him on the front page",
"They purposefully misquote him",
"Their reporting on his campaign is inaccurate",
"They are colluding with Clinton to get him elected"
] | 3 | true |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| Why does the author believe Clinton is better represented than Dole? | [
"Clinton is more experienced and knowledgeable than Dole",
"Clinton is more progressive while Dole wants to maintain the status quo",
"Clinton is surreptitiously making payments to the Times as a trade for good publicity",
"Clinton uses proper grammar and appears sophisticated in public"
] | 3 | true |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| Dole blames Clinton for increased _____ within the American population | [
"joblessness",
"crime rates",
"antagonism",
"drug use"
] | 3 | false |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| What does Dole hope to accomplish by juxtaposing Clinton's drug use with the War on Drugs? | [
"To render Clinton as untrustworthy and 'above the law'",
"To capture specific population groups within a larger Christian demographic",
"To garner moderate dislike toward Clinton before exposing his infidelity",
"To perpetuate Clinton's reputation as a deviant and addict"
] | 0 | true |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| What perspective does Rosenthal adapt toward Dole's grievances? | [
"Rosenthal asserts that Dole is purposefully lying to the public",
"Rosenthal implies that Dole's mental faculties are deteriorating",
"Rosenthal reveals that he is perplexed by Dole's grievances",
"Rosenthal admits that Dole's grievances are warranted"
] | 2 | false |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| What does Dole insinuate may have happened if the Times covered him 'accurately'? | [
"He believes with certainty that he would have won the election by a landslide",
"He believes he would have had a better chance of accumulating more voters",
"He believes he could have had a more diverse turnout of voters voting for him in the presidential election",
"He believes other media companies would follow the lead of the New York Times"
] | 1 | true |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| The New York Times would most likely use the following terms to describe Dole's campaign? | [
"Underfunded and ill-resourced",
"Condescending and elitist",
"Fervent and prejudiced",
"Sophomoric and aimless"
] | 3 | false |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| Dole's quote would have been perceived as _________________if it had included included the exclamation points from his tone? | [
"less impartial",
"more inflammatory",
"less dignified",
"more misguided"
] | 1 | true |
Dole vs. the
Times
For several weeks now, pundits have debated how Bob Dole would exit the stage. Would he depart on a negative note about his opponent or a positive one about himself? Would he leave with anger or with humor? In the past several days, the issue has been settled. Dole, it appears, will end his political career raging against the New York Times .
Dole's spat with the gray lady went public on Thursday, Oct. 24. In New Orleans, Dole charged the paper with ignoring a story about a Miami drug dealer who got invited to the White House. "This is a disgrace," Dole insisted. "I doubt if you even read it in the New York Times . They probably put it in the want ads. They don't put any anti-Clinton stories in the New York Times . Only anti-Dole stories in the New York Times ." Dole repeated his attack for the next five days. "We are not going to let the media steal this election," he told a crowd in Dallas on Friday. "This country belongs to the people, not the New York Times ." On Saturday, in Visalia, Calif., he added, "I know that with a crowd this size, the New York Times will write not many people showed up, but the other papers will get it right."
On Sunday (the day the Times endorsed Clinton), Dole called the paper "the apologist for President Clinton for the last four years and an arm of the Democratic National Committee." In a CNN interview broadcast Monday, Dole said the Times "might as well be part of the Democratic Party. ... They hammer us on a daily basis. We make a major speech, they bury it back on section D. They put a front-page story that, well, Bob Dole and Jack Kemp didn't get along together 12 years ago." On Tuesday, Dole was still at it, referring to the 28 words of the 10th Amendment, and quipping, "That's about what I got in the New York Times today."
The Times has reacted to this assault by highhandedly quoting everything and explaining none of it, leaving its readers baffled as to why the Republican nominee is so upset at the paper. In fact, Dole's fury at the Times is hardly news to those who work at the paper. According to Katharine Seelye, who has covered Dole since the beginning of his campaign, the complaints date from December 1995, when Dole staff members first protested that she had misunderstood the candidate's position on abortion. The real bitterness, however, began in May, when the paper played what Dole aides billed as a major address about welfare on Page 19 of the business section. Since then, campaign honchos have peppered the paper's reporters and editors with constant phone calls and letters complaining about unfair treatment.
Reporters traveling with Dole caught a glimpse of the enmity Oct. 9, when Nelson Warfield, Dole's press secretary, staged a public confrontation with Seelye. The candidate, Warfield told reporters waiting to board the campaign plane, had just come from an appearance on G. Gordon Liddy's radio show. Why, Seelye asked, weren't reporters told about the appearance in advance? According to reporters present, Warfield snapped that it wouldn't make any difference because the Times would get the story wrong anyway. Then, on the plane, Warfield walked back to the press section and grandly served Seelye with a copy of a letter from Communications Director John Buckley to her boss, Times Washington Editor Andrew Rosenthal.
That letter, which has fallen into the hands of Slate, protests Seelye's coverage of a speech the previous day. Dole, in New Jersey, had talked about Clinton being AWOL in the drug war. "Where has he been for four years? How many hundreds of thousands of young people started drugs?" Dole said. "Three million have started smoking while he was playing around with smoking and all this stuff finally in an election year." Seelye's front-page story reported that "Mr. Dole accused the President of 'playing around' while the drug war raged out of control." Buckley complains that the story "could lead the reader to believe that Dole was talking about a very different kind of 'playing around'--something he did not say, and something he would not say." The letter continues: "Since May, I have been pointing out to you a problem we see with the accuracy and understanding of context revealed in Kit's reporting," going on to assert that "Seelye has misquoted Dole on numerous occasions and done so in a manner that distorted the accuracy of her assertions and your coverage."
No Dole staff would be quoted by name for this story, but speaking on background, a senior campaign official elaborated upon the complaint. "They've just done a miserable job throughout this campaign," the official said. "The coverage of Dole has been excessively bitchy from day one, in addition to having a number of extraordinary factual problems." With Seelye, the official says, the problem is "not being able to transcribe a tape accurately." With Adam Nagourney, the Times ' other reporter covering Dole full time since the summer, "the problem is an incredible focus on the little picture as opposed to the big picture." As an example, the official cites a September story in which Nagourney lumped together Dole's fall from a platform in Chico, Calif., and his mistaken reference to the "Brooklyn" Dodgers as "a rough stretch of politicking." Other than those two episodes, the official says, Dole actually had a great week. The campaign's complaint extends to unequal treatment--a nine-part series on Clinton's record, which the official describes as "the softest portrait since they invented black velvet"--and the Times perpetually underestimating the size of Dole crowds. "Clinton even gets better photographs," the official contends.
Rosenthal, who has direct responsibility for campaign coverage at the Times , professes bewilderment at these complaints. "We don't make editorial judgments based on disposition to be tough on Bob Dole or nice to Bob Dole," he says. On the specifics, Rosenthal says that the Times ran an editor's note acknowledging that it shouldn't have truncated the "playing around" quote. He points out that the Times ran its story on the Miami drug dealer who visited the White House the same day Dole accused the paper of not covering it. As for the nine-part series on Clinton, Rosenthal says it is the long-standing practice of the paper to do a lengthy series on the incumbent's record. "If Dole wins and runs again in 2000, he will get nine-part series too," he says.
"Ithink we have been tough on him," Seelye says. This stems, however, not from any bias, she says, but from the campaign's own internal problems. Dole's campaign has been especially "porous," with aides emulating the proverbial seafaring rats. This is true enough--in recent days ex-strategist Don Sipple has trashed the campaign on the record. But there's another point, too. Contrary to Buckley's charge that she misquotes Dole, Seelye routinely makes Dole look ridiculous by quoting him all too accurately, depicting him in what one colleague calls a "cinema verité " style. Famous for going over and over her tape recordings on the campaign plane, Seelye manages to get every Dole mumble, repetition, and verbal miscue down. For instance, in her Oct. 26 story reporting Dole's attack on the Times , Seelye writes:
"In Phoenix on Friday night, he had a delightful time drawing out his vowels as he described financial contributions to the Clinton campaign. "From Indoneeesia," he said. "Yeah. From INdiaaaaah. Some fellow named Gandhi out there. He owes $10,000 in back taxes, but he found $300,000 to give to the Clinton campaign. And now Gandhi is gaaaawn. Gaaaaandhi, gone gone gone. They can't find him."
Two days later, she quoted Dole in another story: "They've turned the White House into something else, I don't know what it is. It's the animal house! It's the animal house!" Most reporters would write, Bob Dole yesterday compared the White House to an "animal house," sparing the exclamation points, and making him sound at least compos mentis.
But though unflattering, Seelye's Mametizing of Bob Dole can hardly be called unfair. It is not as if the Times cleans up Clinton's quotes; the president simply observes the rules of syntax most of the time. Something similar may be happening with the pictures. After four years, Clinton has learned how to avoid looking unpresidential. He no longer allows himself to be photographed wearing too-short running shorts, and he avoids pulling faces in public. Dole, who is simply less photogenic, is an easier victim for picture editors--who, like their editorial counterparts, have a strong bias against dullness. Take, for instance, the two pictures shown above. The front-page picture the Times ran the day after the second presidential debate does make Dole look like a decomposing monster. But unlike the picture in the Washington Post the same day, it captures the spirit of the event, with Dole grimly taking the offensive and Clinton watching warily but standing aside from the attacks.
Dole sounds absurd when he alleges that the paper that broke Whitewater and the story of the first lady's commodities trades has not been aggressive in pursuing Clinton scandals. All sorts of potential Dole scandals have been soft-pedaled by the media, including the Times , because he is so far behind. It's true that coverage of Clinton on the campaign trail has been somewhat softer than the coverage of Dole, as even other Times reporters acknowledge. But the explanation is institutional, not ideological. The press, as many have complained, overemphasizes the "horse race" aspect of politics. As a side effect of that disease, reporters have excessive respect for a well-run campaign. (In 1988, Republican George Bush benefited from this phenomenon.) A cruder reality is that reporters need to have a relationship with Clinton after Tuesday.
None of these factors, though, is unique to the Times . So why is Dole singling it out? Dole's attacks on the Times have the appearance of being an exercise in populist demagogy. In one of his great cue-card reading remarks, Dole tried to explain his recent attacks on CNN the other night by saying, "I like the media. They don't like them in the South." But this pat explanation doesn't entirely make sense. Red meat for right-wing crowds doesn't help Dole with the centrist voters he would need to turn around in order to make the miraculous happen. And in fact, according to a senior Dole aide, the attacks are heartfelt on the candidate's part. Dole has been going after the Times over the objections of advisers who have been telling him there's no percentage in picking fights with the press.
But if Dole is attacking the Times because he is truly furious and not because he thinks it will help him get elected, what is he so angry about? The answer, I think, is that there has always been a Nixonian streak in Bob Dole, by which I mean a part of him which feels shut out of the closed circle of the Eastern establishment. At the Republican convention, Dole blasted the Clinton administration as a "corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered, and never learned." That phrase recalled an attack he made on the press long ago, in the days of Watergate, when he accused the Washington Post of being in bed with George McGovern. "There is a cultural and social affinity between the McGovernites and the Post executives and editors," Dole said then. "They belong to the same elite: They can be found living cheek-by-jowl in the same exclusive chic neighborhoods, and hob-nobbing at the same Georgetown parties." The deeper story here isn't whether Dole was wrongly shunted onto D19 when he ought to have been on A1. It's his feelings, as he says goodbye to politics, about the people who get to decide.
| What does the author believe is Dole's real grievance with the New York Times? | [
"Dole is angry because he cannot use them to bolster his campaign",
"Dole was once fired from the New York Times when he worked there as a young adult",
"Dole feels isolated from the Washington elite",
"Dole cannot receive constructive criticism"
] | 2 | true |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| Why has Infield attached a lightning rod to his head? | [
"He needs it in order to survive the elements",
"He wants to go back to being an Incomplete",
"He is conducting an experiment involving electricity",
"He believes it has cured him of his fear"
] | 3 | true |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| What separate Infield and Morgan from the Normals? | [
"The Normals are cannibalistic",
"The Normals are uncured",
"The Normals are socially repulsive",
"The Normals are delusional"
] | 1 | false |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| What does it mean to be Cured? | [
"Cured humans are genetically superior to Normal humans",
"Cured humans have received an intervention for their phobia",
"Cured humans are allowed to reproduce while Normals aren't",
"Cured humans are fearless while Normals live their lives in fear"
] | 1 | false |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| What is the major drawback of issuing a cure to each person? | [
"They may develop additional fears and require additional cures",
"The psychiatrist prescribing the cure is the only one who can control it",
"The cures all include an option that would kill its wearer",
"The cures are all costly placebos"
] | 0 | false |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| All of the following terms describe how Infield would characterize Price EXCEPT for: | [
"reckless",
"self-absorbed",
"fanatic",
"hazardous"
] | 0 | true |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| What is the significance of the restaurant's stained table cloth? | [
"Only the cured people are allowed to dine in fine restaurants, but 'fine' is a loose term",
"Table cloths, like cures, can easily be switched out and cleaned (repaired) in order to appear flawless",
"They represent the stain that cure development has made on social progress",
"Like the cure, it obscures up a symptom but fails to address the root problem"
] | 3 | false |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| What is normal about the Incompletes? | [
"They are only partially cured",
"They still live with a specific fear",
"They do not possess any phobias",
"They are easily manipulated"
] | 1 | true |
Name Your Symptom
By JIM HARMON
Illustrated by WEISS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Anybody who shunned a Cure needed his
head examined—assuming he had one left!
Henry Infield placed the insulated circlet on his head gently. The
gleaming rod extended above his head about a foot, the wires from it
leading down into his collar, along his spine and finally out his pants
leg to a short metallic strap that dragged on the floor.
Clyde Morgan regarded his partner. "Suppose—just suppose—you
were
serious about this, why not just the shoes?"
Infield turned his soft blue eyes to the black and tan oxfords with the
very thick rubber soles. "They might get soaked through."
Morgan took his foot off the chair behind the desk and sat down.
"Suppose they were soaked through and you were standing on a metal
plate—steps or a manhole cover—what good would your lightning rod do
you then?"
Infield shrugged slightly. "I suppose a man must take some chances."
Morgan said, "You can't do it, Henry. You're crossing the line. The
people we treat are on one side of the line and we're on the other. If
you cross that line, you won't be able to treat people again."
The small man looked out the large window, blinking myopically at the
brassy sunlight. "That's just it, Clyde. There is a line between us,
a wall. How can we really understand the people who come to us, if we
hide on our side of the wall?"
Morgan shook his thick head, ruffling his thinning red hair. "I dunno,
Henry, but staying on our side is a pretty good way to keep sane and
that's quite an accomplishment these days."
Infield whirled and stalked to the desk. "That's the answer! The whole
world is going mad and we are just sitting back watching it hike
along. Do you know that what we are doing is really the most primitive
medicine in the world? We are treating the symptoms and not the
disease. One cannibal walking another with sleeping sickness doesn't
cure anything. Eventually the savage dies—just as all those sick
savages out in the street will die unless we can cure the disease, not
only the indications."
Morgan shifted his ponderous weight uneasily. "Now, Henry, it's no good
to talk like that. We psychiatrists can't turn back the clock. There
just aren't enough of us or enough time to give that old-fashioned
therapy
to all the sick people."
Infield leaned on the desk and glared. "I called myself a psychiatrist
once. But now I know we're semi-mechanics, semi-engineers,
semi-inventors, semi lots of other things, but certainly not even
semi-psychiatrists. A psychiatrist wouldn't give a foetic gyro to a man
with claustrophobia."
His mind went back to the first gyro ball he had ever issued; the
remembrance of his pride in the thing sickened him. Floating before
him in memory was the vertical hoop and the horizontal hoop, both of
shining steel-impervium alloy. Transfixed in the twin circles was the
face of the patient, slack with smiles and sweat. But his memory was
exaggerating the human element. The gyro actually passed over a man's
shoulder, through his legs, under his arms. Any time he felt the
walls creeping in to crush him, he could withdraw his head and limbs
into the circle and feel safe. Steel-impervium alloy could resist even
a nuclear explosion. The foetic gyro ball was worn day and night, for
life.
The sickness overcame him. He sat down on Morgan's desk. "That's just
one thing, the gyro ball. There are so many others, so many."
Morgan smiled. "You know, Henry, not all of our Cures are so—so—not
all are like that. Those Cures for mother complexes aren't even
obvious. If anybody does see that button in a patient's ear, it looks
like a hearing aid. Yet for a nominal sum, the patient is equipped to
hear the soothing recorded voice of his mother saying, 'It's all right,
everything's all right, Mommy loves you, it's all right....'"
"But
is
everything all right?" Infield asked intensely. "Suppose
the patient is driving over one hundred on an icy road. He thinks
about slowing down, but there's the voice in his ear. Or suppose he's
walking down a railroad track and hears a train whistle—if he can hear
anything over that verbal pablum gushing in his ear."
Morgan's face stiffened. "You know as well as I do that those voices
are nearly subsonic. They don't cut a sense efficiency more than 23
per cent."
"At first, Clyde—only at first. But what about the severe case where
we have to burn a three-dimensional smiling mother-image on the eyes of
the patient with radiation? With that image over everything he sees and
with that insidious voice drumming in his head night and day, do you
mean to say that man's senses will only be impaired 23 per cent? Why,
he'll turn violently schizophrenic sooner or later—and you know it.
The only cure we have for that is still a strait jacket, a padded cell
or one of those inhuman lobotomies."
Morgan shrugged helplessly. "You're an idealist."
"You're damned right!" Infield slammed the door behind him.
The cool air of the street was a relief. Infield stepped into the main
stream of human traffic and tried to adjust to the second change in the
air. People didn't bathe very often these days.
He walked along, buffeted by the crowd, carried along in this
direction, shoved back in that direction. Most people in the crowd
seemed to be Normals, but you couldn't tell. Many "Cures" were not
readily apparent.
A young man with black glasses and a radar headset (a photophobe) was
unable to keep from being pushed against Infield. He sounded out the
lightning rod, his face changing when he realized it must be some kind
of Cure. "Pardon me," he said warmly.
"Quite all right."
It was the first time in years that anyone had apologized to Infield
for anything. He had been one of those condemned Normals, more to be
scorned than pitied. Perhaps he could really get to understand these
people, now that he had taken down the wall.
Suddenly something else was pushing against Infield, forcing the
air from his lungs. He stared down at the magnetic suction dart
clinging leechlike to his chest. Model Acrophobe 101-X, he catalogued
immediately. Description: safety belt. But his emotions didn't behave
so well. He was thoroughly terrified, heart racing, sweat glands
pumping. The impervium cable undulated vulgarly.
Some primitive fear
of snake symbols?
his mind wondered while panic crushed him.
"Uncouple that cable!" the shout rang out. It was not his own.
A clean-cut young man with mouse-colored hair was moving toward the
stubble-chinned, heavy-shouldered man quivering in the center of a web
of impervium cables stuck secure to the walls and windows of buildings
facing the street, the sidewalk, a mailbox, the lamp post and Infield.
Mouse-hair yelled hoarsely, "Uncouple it, Davies! Can't you see the
guy's got a lightning rod? You're grounding him!
"I can't," Davies groaned. "I'm scared!"
Halfway down the twenty feet of cable, Mouse-hair grabbed on. "I'm
holding it. Release it, you hear?"
Davies fumbled for the broad belt around his thickening middle. He
jabbed the button that sent a negative current through the cable. The
magnetic suction dart dropped away from Infield like a thing that had
been alive and now was killed. He felt an overwhelming sense of relief.
After breathing deeply for a few moments, he looked up to see Davies
releasing and drawing all his darts into his belt, making it resemble a
Hydra-sized spiked dog collar. Mouse-hair stood by tensely as the crowd
disassembled.
"This isn't the first time you've pulled something like this, Davies,"
he said. "You weren't too scared to release that cable. You just don't
care about other people's feelings. This is
official
."
Mouse-hair drove a fast, hard right into the soft blue flesh of Davies'
chin. The big man fell silently.
The other turned to Infield. "He was unconscious on his feet," he
explained. "He never knew he fell."
"What did you mean by that punch being official?" Infield asked while
trying to arrange his feelings into the comfortable, familiar patterns.
The young man's eyes almost seemed to narrow, although his face didn't
move; he merely radiated narrowed eyes. "How long have you been Cured?"
"Not—not long," Infield evaded.
The other glanced around the street. He moistened his lips and spoke
slowly. "Do you think you might be interested in joining a fraternal
organization of the Cured?"
Infield's pulse raced, trying to get ahead of his thoughts, and losing
out. A chance to study a pseudo-culture of the "Cured" developed in
isolation! "Yes, I think I might. I owe you a drink for helping me out.
How about it?"
The man's face paled so fast, Infield thought for an instant that he
was going to faint. "All right. I'll risk it." He touched the side of
his face away from the psychiatrist.
Infield shifted around, trying to see that side of his benefactor,
but couldn't manage it in good grace. He wondered if the fellow was
sporting a Mom-voice hearing aid and was afraid of raising her ire. He
cleared his throat, noticing the affectation of it. "My name's Infield."
"Price," the other answered absently. "George Price. I suppose they
have liquor at the Club. We can have a
drink
there, I guess."
Price set the direction and Infield fell in at his side. "Look, if you
don't drink, I'll buy you a cup of coffee. It was just a suggestion."
Under the mousy hair, Price's strong features were beginning to gleam
moistly. "You are lucky in one way, Mr. Infield. People take one look
at your Cure and don't ask you to go walking in the rain. But even
after seeing
this
, some people still ask me to have a drink."
This
was revealed, as he turned his head, to be a small metal cube above his
left ear.
Infield supposed it was a Cure, although he had never issued one like
it. He didn't know if it would be good form to inquire what kind it was.
"It's a cure for alcoholism," Price told him. "It runs a constant blood
check to see that the alcohol level doesn't go over the sobriety limit."
"What happens if you take one too many?"
Price looked off as if at something not particularly interesting, but
more interesting than what he was saying. "It drives a needle into my
temple and kills me."
The psychiatrist felt cold fury rising in him. The Cures were supposed
to save lives, not endanger them.
"What kind of irresponsible idiot could have issued such a device?" he
demanded angrily.
"I did," Price said. "I used to be a psychiatrist. I was always good
in shop. This is a pretty effective mechanism, if I say so myself. It
can't be removed without causing my death and it's indestructible.
Impervium-shielded, you see."
Price probably would never get crazed enough for liquor to kill
himself, Infield knew. The threat of death would keep him constantly
shocked sane. Men hide in the comforts of insanity, but when faced with
death, they are often forced back to reality. A man can't move his
legs; in a fire, though, he may run. His legs were definitely paralyzed
before and may be again, but for one moment he would forget the moral
defeat of his life and his withdrawal from life and live an enforced
sanity. But sometimes the withdrawal was—or could become—too complete.
"We're here."
Infield looked up self-consciously and noticed that they had crossed
two streets from his building and were standing in front of what
appeared to be a small, dingy cafe. He followed Price through the
screeching screen door.
They seated themselves at a small table with a red-checked cloth.
Infield wondered why cheap bars and restaurants always used red-checked
cloths. Then he looked closer and discovered the reason. They did a
remarkably good job of camouflaging the spots of grease and alcohol.
A fat man who smelled of the grease and alcohol of the tablecloths
shuffled up to them with a towel on his arm, staring ahead of him at
some point in time rather than space.
Price lit a cigarette with unsteady hands. "Reggie is studying biblical
text. Cute gadget. His contact lenses are made up of a lot of layers
of polarized glass. Every time he blinks, the amount of polarization
changes and a new page appears. His father once told him that if he
didn't study his Bible and pray for him, his old dad would die."
The psychiatrist knew the threat on the father's part couldn't create
such a fixation by itself. His eyebrows faintly inquired.
Price nodded jerkily. "Twenty years ago, at least."
"What'll you have, Georgie?" Reggie asked.
The young man snubbed out his cigarette viciously. "Bourbon. Straight."
Reggie smiled—a toothy, vacant, comedy-relief smile. "Fine. The Good
Book says a little wine is good for a man, or something like that. I
don't remember exactly."
Of course he didn't, Infield knew. Why should he? It was useless to
learn his Bible lessons to save his father, because it was obvious his
father was dead. He would never succeed because there was no reason to
succeed. But he had to try, didn't he, for his father's sake? He didn't
hate his father for making him study. He didn't want him to die. He had
to prove that.
Infield sighed. At least this device kept the man on his feet, doing
some kind of useful work instead of rotting in a padded cell with a
probably imaginary Bible. A man could cut his wrists with the edge of a
sheet of paper if he tried long enough, so of course the Bible would be
imaginary.
"But, Georgie," the waiter complained, "you know you won't drink it.
You ask me to bring you drinks and then you just look at them. Boy, do
you look funny when you're looking at drinks. Honest, Georgie, I want
to laugh when I think of the way you look at a glass with a drink in
it." He did laugh.
Price fumbled with the cigarette stub in the black iron ashtray,
examining it with the skill of scientific observation. "Mr. Infield is
buying me the drink and that makes it different."
Reggie went away. Price kept dissecting the tobacco and paper. Infield
cleared his throat and again reminded himself against such obvious
affectations. "You were telling me about some organization of the
Cured," he said as a reminder.
Price looked up, no longer interested in the relic of a cigarette. He
was suddenly intensely interested and intensely observant of the rest
of the cafe. "Was I? I was? Well, suppose you tell me something. What
do you really think of the Incompletes?"
The psychiatrist felt his face frown. "Who?"
"I forgot. You haven't been one of us long. The Incompletes is a truer
name for the so-called Normals. Have you ever thought of just how
dangerous these people are, Mr. Infield?"
"Frankly, no," Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to
say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation.
Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did
have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a
defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that
phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time
and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are
Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—
must be dealt with
."
Infield's throat went dry. "And you're the one to deal with them?"
"It's my Destiny." Price quickly added, "And yours, too, of course."
Infield nodded. Price was a demagogue, young, handsome, dynamic,
likable, impassioned with his cause, and convinced that it was his
divine destiny. He was a psychopathic egotist and a dangerous man.
Doubly dangerous to Infield because, even though he was one of the few
people who still read books from the old days of therapy to recognize
Price for what he was, he nevertheless still liked the young man
for the intelligence behind the egotism and the courage behind the
fanaticism.
"How are we going to deal with the Incompletes?" Infield asked.
Price started to glance around the cafe, then half-shrugged, almost
visibly thinking that he shouldn't run that routine into the ground.
"We'll Cure them whether they want to be Cured or not—for their own
good."
Infield felt cold inside. After a time, he found that the roaring was
not just in his head. It was thundering outside. He was getting sick.
Price was the type of man who could spread his ideas throughout the
ranks of the Cured—if indeed the plot was not already universal,
imposed upon many ill minds.
He could picture an entirely Cured world and he didn't like the view.
Every Cure cut down on the mental and physical abilities of the patient
as it was, whether Morgan and the others admitted it or not. But if
everyone had a crutch to lean on for one phobia, he would develop
secondary symptoms.
People would start needing two Cures—perhaps a foetic gyro and a
safety belt—then another and another. There would always be a crutch
to lean on for one thing and then room enough to develop something
else—until everyone would be loaded down with too many Cures to
operate.
A Cure was a last resort, dope for a malignancy case, euthanasia for
the hopeless. Enforced Cures would be a curse for the individual and
the race.
But Infield let himself relax. How could anyone force a mechanical
relief for neurotic or psychopathic symptoms on someone who didn't
want or need it?
"Perhaps you don't see how it could be done," Price said. "I'll
explain."
Reggie's heavy hand sat a straight bourbon down before Price and
another before Infield. Price stared at the drink almost without
comprehension of how it came to be. He started to sweat.
"George, drink it."
The voice belonged to a young woman, a blonde girl with pink skin
and suave, draped clothes. In this den of the Cured, Infield thought
half-humorously, it was surprising to see a Normal—an "Incomplete."
But then he noticed something about the baby she carried. The Cure had
been very simple. It wasn't even a mechanized half-human robot, just a
rag doll. She sat down at the table.
"George," she said, "drink it. One drink won't raise your alcohol index
to the danger point. You've got to get over this fear of even the sight
or smell of liquor."
The girl turned to Infield. "You're one of us, but you're new, so you
don't know about George. Maybe you can help if you do. It's all silly.
He's not an alcoholic. He didn't need to put that Cure on his head.
It's just an excuse for not drinking. All of this is just because a
while back something happened to the baby here—" she adjusted the
doll's blanket—"when he was drinking. Just drinking, not drunk.
"I don't remember what happened to the baby—it wasn't important.
But George has been brooding about it ever since. I guess he thinks
something else bad will happen because of liquor. That's silly. Why
don't you tell him it's silly?"
"Maybe it is," Infield said softly. "You could take the shock if he
downed that drink and the shock might do you good."
Price laughed shortly. "I feel like doing something very melodramatic,
like throwing my drink—and yours—across the room, but I haven't got
the guts to touch those glasses. Do it for me, will you? Cauterizing
the bite might do me good if I'd been bitten by a rabid dog, but I
don't have the nerve to do it."
Before Infield could move, Reggie came and set both drinks on a little
circular tray. He moved away. "I knew it. That's all he did, just look
at the drink. Makes me laugh."
Price wiped the sweat off his palms. Infield sat and thought. Mrs.
Price cooed to the rag doll, unmindful of either of them now.
"You were explaining," the psychiatrist said. "You were going to tell
me how you were going to Cure the Incompletes."
"I said
we
were going to do it. Actually
you
will play a greater
part than I,
Doctor
Infield."
The psychiatrist sat rigidly.
"You didn't think you could give me your right name in front of your
own office building and that I wouldn't recognize you? I know some
psychiatrists are sensitive about wearing Cures themselves, but it is a
mark of honor of the completely sane man. You should be proud of your
Cure and eager to Cure others.
Very
eager."
"Just what do you mean?" He already suspected Price's meaning.
Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a
Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to
your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the
other Cured psychiatrists give
everybody
who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures
unless they were absolutely necessary."
"You'll feel differently after you've been Cured for a while yourself.
Other psychiatrists have."
Before Infield could speak, a stubble-faced, barrel-chested man moved
past their table. He wore a safety belt. It was the man Price had
called Davies, the one who had fastened one of his safety lines to
Infield in the street.
Davies went to the bar in the back. "Gimme a bottle," he demanded of a
vacant-eyed Reggie. He came back toward them, carrying the bottle in
one hand, brushing off rain drops with the other. He stopped beside
Price and glared. Price leaned back. The chair creaked. Mrs. Price kept
cooing to the doll.
"You made me fall," Davies accused.
Price shrugged. "You were unconscious. You never knew it."
Sweat broke out on Davies' forehead. "You broke the Code. Don't you
think I can imagine how it was to fall? You louse!"
Suddenly, Davies triggered his safety belt. At close range, before
the lines could fan out in a radius, all the lines in front attached
themselves to Price, the ones at each side clung to their table and the
floor, and all the others to the table behind Infield. Davies released
all lines except those on Price, and then threw himself backward,
dragging Price out of his chair and onto the floor. Davies didn't mind
making others fall. They were always trying to make
him
fall just so
they could laugh at him or pounce on him; why shouldn't he like to make
them fall first?
Expertly, Davies moved forward and looped the loose lines around
Price's head and shoulders and then around his feet. He crouched beside
Price and shoved the bottle into the gasping mouth and poured.
Price twisted against the binding lines in blind terror, gagging and
spouting whiskey. Davies laughed and tilted the bottle more.
Mrs. Price screamed. "The Cure! If you get that much liquor in his
system, it will kill him!" She rocked the rag doll in her arms, trying
to soothe it, and stared in horror.
Infield hit the big man behind the ear. He dropped the bottle and fell
over sideways on the floor. Fear and hate mingled in his eyes as he
looked up at Infield.
Nonsense, Infield told himself. Eyes can't register emotion.
Davies released his lines and drew them in. He got up precariously.
"I'm going to kill you," he said, glaring at Infield. "You made me fall
worse than Georgie did. I'm really going to kill you."
Infield wasn't a large man, but he had pressed two hundred and fifty
many times in gym. He grabbed Davies' belt with both hands and lifted
him about six inches off the floor.
"I could drop you," the psychiatrist said.
"No!" Davies begged weakly. "Please!"
"I'll do it if you cause more trouble." Infield sat down and rubbed his
aching forearms.
Davies backed off in terror, right into the arms of Reggie. The waiter
closed his huge hands on the acrophobe's shoulders.
"
You
broke the Code all the way," Reggie said. "The Good Book says
'Thou shouldn't kill' or something like that, and so does the Code."
"Let him go, Reggie," Price choked out, getting to his feet. "I'm not
dead." He wiped his hand across his mouth.
"No. No, you aren't." Infield felt an excitement pounding through him,
same as when he had diagnosed his first case. No, better than that.
"That taste of liquor didn't kill you, Price. Nothing terrible
happened. You could find some way to get rid of that Cure."
Price stared at him as if he were a padded-cell case. "That's
different. I'd be a hopeless drunk without the Cure. Besides, no one
ever gets rid of a Cure."
They were all looking at Infield. Somehow he felt this represented a
critical point in history. It was up to him which turn the world took,
the world as represented by these four Cured people. "I'm afraid I'm
for
less
Cures instead of more, Price. Look, if I can show you that
someone can discard a Cure, would you get rid of that—if I may use the
word—
monstrous
thing on your head?"
Price grinned. Infield didn't recognize its smugness at the time.
"I'll show you." He took off the circlet with the lightning rod and
yanked at the wire running down into his collar. The new-old excitement
within was running high. He felt the wire snap and come up easily. He
threw the Cure on the floor.
"Now," he said, "I am going out in that rain storm. There's thunder and
lightning out there. I'm afraid, but I can get along without a Cure and
so can you."
"You can't! Nobody can!" Price screamed after him. He turned to the
others. "If he reveals us, the Cause is lost. We've got to stop him
for good
. We've got to go after him."
"It's slippery," Davies whimpered. "I might fall."
Mrs. Price cuddled her rag doll. "I can't leave the baby and she
mustn't get wet."
"Well, there's no liquor out there and you can study your text in the
lightning flashes, Reggie. Come on."
Running down the streets that were tunnels of shining tar, running into
the knifing ice bristles of the rain, Henry Infield realized that he
was very frightened of the lightning.
There is no action without a reason, he knew from the old neglected
books. He had had a latent fear of lightning when he chose the
lightning rod Cure. He could have picked a safety belt or foetic gyro
just as well.
He sneezed. He was soaked through, but he kept on running. He didn't
know what Price and Reggie planned to do when they caught him. He
slipped and fell. He would soon find out what they wanted. The
excitement was all gone now and it left an empty space into which fear
rushed.
Reggie said, "We shall make a sacrifice."
Infield looked up and saw the lightning reflected on the blade of a
thin knife. Infield reached toward it more in fascination than fear. He
managed to get all his fingers around two of Reggie's. He jerked and
the knife fell into Infield's palm. The psychiatrist pulled himself
erect by holding to Reggie's arm. Staggering to his feet, he remembered
what he must do and slashed at the waiter's head. A gash streaked
across the man's brow and blood poured into his eyes. He screamed. "I
can't see the words!"
It was his problem. Infield usually solved other people's problems, but
now he ran away—he couldn't even solve his own.
Infield realized that he had gone mad as he held the thin blade high
overhead, but he did need some kind of lightning rod. Price (who was
right behind him, gaining) had been right. No one could discard a Cure.
He watched the lightning play its light on the blade of his Cure and he
knew that Price was going to kill him in the next moment.
He was wrong.
The lightning hit him first.
Reggie squinted under the bandage at the lettering on the door that
said INFIELD & MORGAN and opened the door. He ran across the room to
the man sitting at the desk, reading by the swivel light.
"Mr. Morgan, your partner, Mr. Infield, he—"
"Just a moment." Morgan switched on the room lights. "What were you
saying?"
"Mr. Infield went out without his Cure in a storm and was struck by
lightning. We took him to the morgue. He must have been crazy to go
out without his Cure."
Morgan stared into his bright desk light without blinking. "This is
quite a shock to me. Would you mind leaving? I'll come over to your
place and you can tell me about it later."
Reggie went out. "Yes, sir. He was struck by lightning, struck dead. He
must have been crazy to leave his Cure...." The door closed.
Morgan exhaled. Poor Infield. But it wasn't the lightning that killed
him, of course. Morgan adjusted the soundproofing plugs in his ears,
thinking that you did have to have quite a bit of light to read lips.
The thunder, naturally, was what had killed Infield. Loud noise—any
noise—that would do it every time. Too bad Infield had never really
stopped being one of the Incompletes. Dangerous people. He would have
to deal with them.
| What is a major theme of the story? | [
"Placebos can be just as powerful as engineered medications and cures",
"Not every illness should be cured through a western, pathology-focused approach to healing",
"The more people believe there is something 'wrong' with them, the greater lengths they will go to hide or repair their 'flaws'",
"Sometimes a 'cure' can end up causing more distress and pain than living with an affliction"
] | 3 | false |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| How does Taphetta's initial response to Halden's evidence represent a greater dynamic between species? | [
"Like Taphetta, ribboneers are highly aware of their superior intellectual status, and are skeptical when presented with 'lower level' information",
"Like Taphetta, ribboneers possess lower reasoning capacities than humans, and are insecure when presented with 'higher level' information",
"Like Taphetta, ribboneers are the most brilliant species, and are initially defensive when presented with information that contradicts what they believe to be true",
"Like Taphetta, ribboneers are the quickest species to evolve, and are enthusiastic when presented with information that could further their advancement"
] | 0 | true |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| What is ironic about Taphetta's contempt for mating among species? | [
"Taphetta can only survive if they mate with another species",
"Taphetta is actually jealous about other species' ability to intermix",
"Taphetta is likely a result of mating among species",
"Taphetta is biologically unable to mate with other species"
] | 3 | true |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| What is the governing principle that classifies the characters in the story? | [
"ancestral bloodline",
"physical biology",
"galactic prevalence",
"intellectual status"
] | 0 | true |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| In the story, it is stated that "the integrity of the Ribboneers was not to be questioned" -- what potentially negative implications might this have? | [
"The Ribboneers could use evidence from the adjacent mating principle to eradicate 'lower-level' species",
"The Ribboneers could be held responsible for solving problems that even they are not qualified to resolve",
"The Ribboneers could use evidence from the adjacent mating principle to further advance their own species",
"The Ribboneers could wield their reputation in order to lie, manipulate, and accumulate more power"
] | 3 | false |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| What is both a gift and curse of humanity? | [
"They are intellectually superior, but unable to mate with other species (and therefore grow their population) due to galactic mating laws",
"They are biologically superior, but their restrictive mating abilities prevent them from growing their population as fast as other species",
"They have a tendency to unify against a potential threat, but are unaware of how they could overtake other species through strength in unification",
"They have a tendency to fall in love easily, which is difficult to manage when they become attracted to 'higher-level' species, who are off limits"
] | 2 | true |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| What most attracts Meredith to Halden? | [
"His compassion",
"His physical appearance",
"His intellect",
"His savageness"
] | 3 | true |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| Within the setting of the story, what makes one character more attractive than the other? | [
"Having a pure genetic line",
"Reasoning capacities",
"Evolutionary status",
"Lineage to the big ancestor"
] | 2 | true |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| The scene depicting the two pests interacting is symbolic of: | [
"The potential danger that could result if intermixing becomes prevalent and social stratification becomes impossible",
"The reality that 'playing dead' is the best strategy for managing other threatening species who use more overt power to retain superiority",
"The lengths all species will go to in order to surpass one another or protect their own status",
"Taphetta's actualized fear that humans will use germ plasm to become biologically superior to his race"
] | 2 | false |
BIG ANCESTOR
By F. L. WALLACE
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction November 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man's family tree was awesome enough to give every galactic
race an inferiority complex—but then he tried to climb it!
In repose, Taphetta the Ribboneer resembled a fancy giant bow on a
package. His four flat legs looped out and in, the ends tucked under
his wide, thin body, which constituted the knot at the middle. His neck
was flat, too, arching out in another loop. Of all his features, only
his head had appreciable thickness and it was crowned with a dozen long
though narrower ribbons.
Taphetta rattled the head fronds together in a surprisingly good
imitation of speech. "Yes, I've heard the legend."
"It's more than a legend," said Sam Halden, biologist. The reaction was
not unexpected—non-humans tended to dismiss the data as convenient
speculation and nothing more. "There are at least a hundred kinds of
humans, each supposedly originating in strict seclusion on as many
widely scattered planets. Obviously there was no contact throughout the
ages before space travel—
and yet each planetary race can interbreed
with a minimum of ten others
! That's more than a legend—one hell of a
lot more!"
"It is impressive," admitted Taphetta. "But I find it mildly
distasteful to consider mating with someone who does not belong to my
species."
"That's because you're unique," said Halden. "Outside of your own
world, there's nothing like your species, except superficially, and
that's true of all other creatures, intelligent or not, with the sole
exception of mankind. Actually, the four of us here, though it's
accidental, very nearly represent the biological spectrum of human
development.
"Emmer, a Neanderthal type and our archeologist, is around the
beginning of the scale. I'm from Earth, near the middle, though on
Emmer's side. Meredith, linguist, is on the other side of the middle.
And beyond her, toward the far end, is Kelburn, mathematician. There's
a corresponding span of fertility. Emmer just misses being able to
breed with my kind, but there's a fair chance that I'd be fertile with
Meredith and a similar though lesser chance that her fertility may
extend to Kelburn."
Taphetta rustled his speech ribbons quizzically. "But I thought it was
proved that some humans did originate on one planet, that there was an
unbroken line of evolution that could be traced back a billion years."
"You're thinking of Earth," said Halden. "Humans require a certain kind
of planet. It's reasonable to assume that, if men were set down on a
hundred such worlds, they'd seem to fit in with native life-forms on a
few of them. That's what happened on Earth; when Man arrived, there was
actually a manlike creature there. Naturally our early evolutionists
stretched their theories to cover the facts they had.
"But there are other worlds in which humans who were there before the
Stone Age aren't related to anything else there. We have to conclude
that Man didn't originate on any of the planets on which he is now
found. Instead, he evolved elsewhere and later was scattered throughout
this section of the Milky Way."
"And so, to account for the unique race that can interbreed across
thousands of light-years, you've brought in the big ancestor,"
commented Taphetta dryly. "It seems an unnecessary simplification."
"Can you think of a better explanation?" asked Kelburn.
"Something had to distribute one species so widely and it's not the
result of parallel evolution—not when a hundred human races are
involved, and
only
the human race."
"I can't think of a better explanation." Taphetta rearranged his
ribbons. "Frankly, no one else is much interested in Man's theories
about himself."
It was easy to understand the attitude. Man was the most numerous
though not always the most advanced—Ribboneers had a civilization as
high as anything in the known section of the Milky Way, and there were
others—and humans were more than a little feared. If they ever got
together—but they hadn't except in agreement as to their common origin.
Still, Taphetta the Ribboneer was an experienced pilot and could be
very useful. A clear statement of their position was essential in
helping him make up his mind. "You've heard of the adjacency mating
principle?" asked Sam Halden.
"Vaguely. Most people have if they've been around men."
"We've got new data and are able to interpret it better. The theory is
that humans who can mate with each other were once physically close.
We've got a list of all our races arranged in sequence. If planetary
race F can mate with race E back to A and forward to M, and race G is
fertile only back to B, but forward to O, then we assume that whatever
their positions are now, at once time G was actually adjacent to F, but
was a little further along. When we project back into time those star
systems on which humans existed prior to space travel, we get a certain
pattern. Kelburn can explain it to you."
The normally pink body of the Ribboneer flushed slightly. The color
change was almost imperceptible, but it was enough to indicate that he
was interested.
Kelburn went to the projector. "It would be easier if we knew all the
stars in the Milky Way, but though we've explored only a small portion
of it, we can reconstruct a fairly accurate representation of the past."
He pressed the controls and stars twinkled on the screen. "We're
looking down on the plane of the Galaxy. This is one arm of it as it is
today and here are the human systems." He pressed another control and,
for purposes of identification, certain stars became more brilliant.
There was no pattern, merely a scattering of stars. "The whole Milky
Way is rotating. And while stars in a given region tend to remain
together, there's also a random motion. Here's what happens when we
calculate the positions of stars in the past."
Flecks of light shifted and flowed across the screen. Kelburn stopped
the motion.
"Two hundred thousand years ago," he said.
There was a pattern of the identified stars. They were spaced at fairly
equal intervals along a regular curve, a horseshoe loop that didn't
close, though if the ends were extended, the lines would have crossed.
Taphetta rustled. "The math is accurate?"
"As accurate as it can be with a million-plus body problem."
"And that's the hypothetical route of the unknown ancestor?"
"To the best of our knowledge," said Kelburn. "And whereas there are
humans who are relatively near and not fertile, they can always mate
with those they were adjacent to
two hundred thousand years ago
!"
"The adjacency mating principle. I've never seen it demonstrated,"
murmured Taphetta, flexing his ribbons. "Is that the only era that
satisfies the calculations?"
"Plus or minus a hundred thousand years, we can still get something
that might be the path of a spaceship attempting to cover a
representative section of territory," said Kelburn. "However, we have
other ways of dating it. On some worlds on which there are no other
mammals, we're able to place the first human fossils chronologically.
The evidence is sometimes contradictory, but we believe we've got the
time right."
Taphetta waved a ribbon at the chart. "And you think that where the two
ends of the curve cross is your original home?"
"We think so," said Kelburn. "We've narrowed it down to several cubic
light-years—then. Now it's far more. And, of course, if it were a
fast-moving star, it might be completely out of the field of our
exploration. But we're certain we've got a good chance of finding it
this trip."
"It seems I must decide quickly." The Ribboneer glanced out the
visionport, where another ship hung motionless in space beside them.
"Do you mind if I ask other questions?"
"Go ahead," Kelburn invited sardonically. "But if it's not math, you'd
better ask Halden. He's the leader of the expedition."
Halden flushed; the sarcasm wasn't necessary. It was true that Kelburn
was the most advanced human type present, but while there were
differences, biological and in the scale of intelligence, it wasn't
as great as once was thought. Anyway, non-humans weren't trained in
the fine distinctions that men made among themselves. And, higher or
lower, he was as good a biologist as the other was a mathematician. And
there was the matter of training; he'd been on several expeditions and
this was Kelburn's first trip. Damn it, he thought, that rated some
respect.
The Ribboneer shifted his attention. "Aside from the sudden illness of
your pilot, why did you ask for me?"
"We didn't. The man became sick and required treatment we can't give
him. Luckily, a ship was passing and we hailed it because it's four
months to the nearest planet. They consented to take him back and told
us that there was a passenger on board who was an experienced pilot. We
have men who could do the job in a makeshift fashion, but the region
we're heading for, while mapped, is largely unknown. We'd prefer to
have an expert—and Ribboneers are famous for their navigational
ability."
Taphetta crinkled politely at the reference to his skill. "I had other
plans, but I can't evade professional obligations, and an emergency
such as this should cancel out any previous agreements. Still, what are
the incentives?"
Sam Halden coughed. "The usual, plus a little extra. We've copied the
Ribboneer's standard nature, simplifying it a little and adding a per
cent here and there for the crew pilot and scientist's share of the
profits from any discoveries we may make."
"I'm complimented that you like our contract so well," said Taphetta,
"but I really must have our own unsimplified version. If you want me,
you'll take my contract. I came prepared." He extended a tightly bound
roll that he had kept somewhere on his person.
They glanced at one another as Halden took it.
"You can read it if you want," offered Taphetta. "But it will take
you all day—it's micro-printing. However, you needn't be afraid that
I'm defrauding you. It's honored everywhere we go and we go nearly
everywhere in this sector—places men have never been."
There was no choice if they wanted him, and they did. Besides, the
integrity of Ribboneers was not to be questioned. Halden signed.
"Good." Taphetta crinkled. "Send it to the ship; they'll forward it
for me. And you can tell the ship to go on without me." He rubbed his
ribbons together. "Now if you'll get me the charts, I'll examine the
region toward which we're heading."
Firmon of hydroponics slouched in, a tall man with scanty hair and
an equal lack of grace. He seemed to have difficulty in taking his
eyes off Meredith, though, since he was a notch or so above her in the
mating scale, he shouldn't have been so interested. But his planet had
been inexplicably slow in developing and he wasn't completely aware of
his place in the human hierarchy.
Disdainfully, Meredith adjusted a skirt that, a few inches shorter,
wouldn't have been a skirt at all, revealing, while doing so, just how
long and beautiful a woman's legs could be. Her people had never given
much thought to physical modesty and, with legs like that, it was easy
to see why.
Muttering something about primitive women, Firmon turned to the
biologist. "The pilot doesn't like our air."
"Then change it to suit him. He's in charge of the ship and knows more
about these things than I do."
"More than a man?" Firmon leered at Meredith and, when she failed
to smile, added plaintively, "I did try to change it, but he still
complains."
Halden took a deep breath. "Seems all right to me."
"To everybody else, too, but the tapeworm hasn't got lungs. He breathes
through a million tubes scattered over his body."
It would do no good to explain that Taphetta wasn't a worm, that his
evolution had taken a different course, but that he was in no sense
less complex than Man. It was a paradox that some biologically higher
humans hadn't developed as much as lower races and actually weren't
prepared for the multitude of life-forms they'd meet in space. Firmon's
reaction was quite typical.
"If he asks for cleaner air, it's because his system needs it," said
Halden. "Do anything you can to give it to him."
"Can't. This is as good as I can get it. Taphetta thought you could do
something about it."
"Hydroponics is your job. There's nothing
I
can do." Halden paused
thoughtfully. "Is there something wrong with the plants?"
"In a way, I guess, and yet not really."
"What is it, some kind of toxic condition?"
"The plants are healthy enough, but something's chewing them down as
fast as they grow."
"Insects? There shouldn't be any, but if there are, we've got sprays.
Use them."
"It's an animal," said Firmon. "We tried poison and got a few, but now
they won't touch the stuff. I had electronics rig up some traps. The
animals seem to know what they are and we've never caught one that
way."
Halden glowered at the man. "How long has this been going on?"
"About three months. It's not bad; we can keep up with them."
It was probably nothing to become alarmed at, but an animal on the ship
was a nuisance, doubly so because of their pilot.
"Tell me what you know about it," said Halden.
"They're little things." Firmon held out his hands to show how small.
"I don't know how they got on, but once they did, there were plenty of
places to hide." He looked up defensively. "This is an old ship with
new equipment and they hide under the machinery. There's nothing we can
do except rebuild the ship from the hull inward."
Firmon was right. The new equipment had been installed in any place
just to get it in and now there were inaccessible corners and crevices
everywhere that couldn't be closed off without rebuilding.
They couldn't set up a continuous watch and shoot the animals down
because there weren't that many men to spare. Besides, the use of
weapons in hydroponics would cause more damage to the thing they were
trying to protect than to the pest. He'd have to devise other ways.
Sam Halden got up. "I'll take a look and see what I can do."
"I'll come along and help," said Meredith, untwining her legs and
leaning against him. "Your mistress ought to have some sort of
privileges."
Halden started. So she
knew
that the crew was calling her that!
Perhaps it was intended to discourage Firmon, but he wished she hadn't
said it. It didn't help the situation at all.
Taphetta sat in a chair designed for humans. With a less flexible body,
he wouldn't have fitted. Maybe it wasn't sitting, but his flat legs
were folded neatly around the arms and his head rested comfortably on
the seat. The head ribbons, which were his hands and voice, were never
quite still.
He looked from Halden to Emmer and back again. "The hydroponics tech
tells me you're contemplating an experiment. I don't like it."
Halden shrugged. "We've got to have better air. It might work."
"Pests on the ship? It's filthy! My people would never tolerate it!"
"Neither do we."
The Ribboneer's distaste subsided. "What kind of creatures are they?"
"I have a description, though I've never seen one. It's a small
four-legged animal with two antennae at the lower base of its skull. A
typical pest."
Taphetta rustled. "Have you found out how it got on?"
"It was probably brought in with the supplies," said the biologist.
"Considering how far we've come, it may have been any one of a half
a dozen planets. Anyway, it hid, and since most of the places it had
access to were near the outer hull, it got an extra dose of hard
radiation, or it may have nested near the atomic engines; both are
possibilities. Either way, it mutated, became a different animal. It's
developed a tolerance for the poisons we spray on plants. Other things
it detects and avoids, even electronic traps."
"Then you believe it changed mentally as well as physically, that it's
smarter?"
"I'd say that, yes. It must be a fairly intelligent creature to be
so hard to get rid of. But it can be lured into traps, if the bait's
strong enough."
"That's what I don't like," said Taphetta, curling. "Let me think it
over while I ask questions." He turned to Emmer. "I'm curious about
humans. Is there anything else you can tell me about the hypothetical
ancestor?"
Emmer didn't look like the genius he was—a Neanderthal genius, but
nonetheless a real one. In his field, he rated very high. He raised a
stubble-flecked cheek from a large thick-fingered paw and ran shaggy
hands through shaggier hair.
"I can speak with some authority," he rumbled. "I was born on a world
with the most extensive relics. As a child, I played in the ruins of
their camp."
"I don't question your authority," crinkled Taphetta. "To me, all
humans—late or early and male or female—look remarkably alike. If you
are an archeologist, that's enough for me." He paused and flicked his
speech ribbons. "Camp, did you say?"
Emmer smiled, unsheathing great teeth. "You've never seen any pictures?
Impressive, but just a camp, monolithic one-story structures, and
we'd give something to know what they're made of. Presumably my world
was one of the first they stopped at. They weren't used to roughing
it, so they built more elaborately than they did later on. One-story
structures and that's how we can guess at their size. The doorways were
forty feet high."
"Very large," agreed Taphetta. It was difficult to tell whether he was
impressed. "What did you find in the ruins?"
"Nothing," said Emmer. "There were buildings there and that was all,
not a scrap of writing or a tool or a single picture. They covered
a route estimated at thirty thousand light-years in less than five
thousand years—and not one of them died that we have a record of."
"A faster-than-light drive and an extremely long life," mused Taphetta.
"But they didn't leave any information for their descendants. Why?"
"Who knows? Their mental processes were certainly far different from
ours. They may have thought we'd be better off without it. We do know
they were looking for a special kind of planet, like Earth, because
they visited so many of that type, yet different from it because they
never stayed. They were pretty special people themselves, big and
long-lived, and maybe they couldn't survive on any planet they found.
Perhaps they had ways of determining there wasn't the kind of planet
they needed in the entire Milky Way. Their science was tremendously
advanced and when they learned that, they may have altered their germ
plasm and left us, hoping that some of us would survive. Most of us
did."
"This special planet sounds strange," murmured Taphetta.
"Not really," said Emmer. "Fifty human races reached space travel
independently and those who did were scattered equally among early and
late species. It's well known that individuals among my people are
often as bright as any of Halden's or Meredith's, but as a whole we
don't have the total capacity that later Man does, and yet we're as
advanced in civilization. The difference? It must lie somewhere in the
planets we live on and it's hard to say just what it is."
"What happened to those who didn't develop space travel?" asked
Taphetta.
"We helped them," said Emmer.
And they had, no matter who or what they were, biologically late
or early, in the depths of the bronze age or the threshold of
atomic—because they were human. That was sometimes a frightening thing
for non-humans, that the race stuck together. They weren't actually
aggressive, but their total number was great and they held themselves
aloof. The unknown ancestor again. Who else had such an origin and, it
was tacitly assumed, such a destiny?
Taphetta changed his questioning. "What do you expect to gain from this
discovery of the unknown ancestor?"
It was Halden who answered him. "There's the satisfaction of knowing
where we came from."
"Of course," rustled the Ribboneer. "But a lot of money and equipment
was required for this expedition. I can't believe that the educational
institutions that are backing you did so purely out of intellectual
curiosity."
"Cultural discoveries," rumbled Emmer. "How did our ancestors live?
When a creature is greatly reduced in size, as we are, more than
physiology is changed—the pattern of life itself is altered. Things
that were easy for them are impossible for us. Look at their life span."
"No doubt," said Taphetta. "An archeologist would be interested in
cultural discoveries."
"Two hundred thousand years ago, they had an extremely advanced
civilization," added Halden. "A faster-than-light drive, and we've
achieved that only within the last thousand years."
"But I think we have a better one than they did," said the Ribboneer.
"There may be things we can learn from them in mechanics or physics,
but wouldn't you say they were better biologists than anything else?"
Halden nodded. "Agreed. They couldn't find a suitable planet. So,
working directly with their germ plasm, they modified themselves and
produced us. They
were
master biologists."
"I thought so," said Taphetta. "I never paid much attention to your
fantastic theories before I signed to pilot this ship, but you've built
up a convincing case." He raised his head, speech ribbons curling
fractionally and ceaselessly. "I don't like to, but we'll have to risk
using bait for your pest."
He'd have done it anyway, but it was better to have the pilot's
consent. And there was one question Halden wanted to ask; it had been
bothering him vaguely. "What's the difference between the Ribboneer
contract and the one we offered you? Our terms are more liberal."
"To the individual, they are, but it won't matter if you discover as
much as you think you will. The difference is this:
My
terms don't
permit you to withhold any discovery for the benefit of one race."
Taphetta was wrong; there had been no intention of withholding
anything. Halden examined his own attitudes.
He
hadn't intended, but
could he say that was true of the institutions backing the expedition?
He couldn't, and it was too late now—whatever knowledge they acquired
would have to be shared.
That was what Taphetta had been afraid of—there was one kind of
technical advancement that multiplied unceasingly. The race that could
improve itself through scientific control of its germ plasm had a start
that could never be headed. The Ribboneer needn't worry now.
"Why do we have to watch it on the screen?" asked Meredith, glancing
up. "I'd rather be in hydroponics."
Halden shrugged. "They may or may not be smarter than planetbound
animals, but they're warier. They don't come out when anyone's near."
Lights dimmed in the distant hydroponic section and the screen with
it, until he adjusted the infra-red frequencies. He motioned to the
two crew members, each with his own peculiar screen, below which was a
miniature keyboard.
"Ready?"
When they nodded, Halden said: "Do as you've rehearsed. Keep noise at
a minimum, but when you do use it, be vague. Don't try to imitate them
exactly."
At first, nothing happened on the big screen, and then a gray shape
crept out. It slid through leaves, listened intently before coming
forward. It jumped off one hydroponic section and fled across the open
floor to the next. It paused, eyes glittering and antennae twitching.
Looking around once, it leaped up, seizing the ledge and clawing up the
side of the tank. Standing on top and rising to its haunches, it began
nibbling what it could reach.
Suddenly it whirled. Behind it and hitherto unnoticed was another
shape, like it but larger. The newcomer inched forward. The small one
retreated, skittering nervously. Without warning, the big one leaped
and the small one tried to flee. In a few jumps, the big one caught up
and mauled the other unmercifully.
It continued to bite even after the little one lay still. At last it
backed off and waited, watching for signs of motion. There was none.
Then it turned to the plant. When it had chewed off everything within
reach, it climbed into the branches.
The little one twitched, moved a leg, and cautiously began dragging
itself away. It rolled off the raised section and surprisingly made no
noise as it fell. It seemed to revive, shaking itself and scurrying
away, still within range of the screen.
Against the wall was a small platform. The little one climbed on top
and there found something that seemed to interest it. It sniffed
around and reached and felt the discovery. Wounds were forgotten as
it snatched up the object and frisked back to the scene of its recent
defeat.
This time it had no trouble with the raised section. It leaped and
landed on top and made considerable noise in doing so. The big animal
heard and twisted around. It saw and clambered down hastily, jumping
the last few feet. Squealing, it hit the floor and charged.
The small one stood still till the last instant—and then a paw
flickered out and an inch-long knife blade plunged into the throat of
the charging creature. Red spurted out as the bigger beast screamed.
The knife flashed in and out until the big animal collapsed and stopped
moving.
The small creature removed the knife and wiped it on the pelt of its
foe. Then it scampered back to the platform on which the knife had been
found—
and laid it down
.
At Halden's signal, the lights flared up and the screen became too
bright for anything to be visible.
"Go in and get them," said Halden. "We don't want the pests to find out
that the bodies aren't flesh."
"It was realistic enough," said Meredith as the crewmen shut off their
machines and went out. "Do you think it will work?"
"It might. We had an audience."
"Did we? I didn't notice." Meredith leaned back. "Were the puppets
exactly like the pests? And if not, will the pests be fooled?"
"The electronic puppets were a good imitation, but the animals don't
have to identify them as their species. If they're smart enough,
they'll know the value of a knife, no matter who uses it."
"What if they're smarter? Suppose they know a knife can't be used by a
creature without real hands?"
"That's part of our precautions. They'll never know until they try—and
they'll never get away from the trap to try."
"Very good. I never thought of that," said Meredith, coming closer. "I
like the way your primitive mind works. At times I actually think of
marrying you."
"Primitive," he said, alternately frozen and thawed, though he knew
that, in relation to her, he was
not
advanced.
"It's almost a curse, isn't it?" She laughed and took the curse away by
leaning provocatively against him. "But barbaric lovers are often nice."
Here we go again, he thought drearily, sliding his arm around her. To
her, I'm merely a passionate savage.
They went to his cabin.
She sat down, smiling. Was she pretty? Maybe. For her own race, she
wasn't tall, only by Terran standards. Her legs were disproportionately
long and well shaped and her face was somewhat bland and featureless,
except for a thin, straight, short nose. It was her eyes that made
the difference, he decided. A notch or two up the scale of visual
development, her eyes were larger and she could see an extra color on
the violet end of the spectrum.
She settled back and looked at him. "It might be fun living with you on
primeval Earth."
He said nothing; she knew as well as he that Earth was as advanced as
her own world. She had something else in mind.
"I don't think I will, though. We might have children."
"Would it be wrong?" he asked. "I'm as intelligent as you. We wouldn't
have subhuman monsters."
"It would be a step up—for you." Under her calm, there was tension.
It had been there as long as he'd known her, but it was closer to the
surface now. "Do I have the right to condemn the unborn? Should I make
them start lower than I am?"
The conflict was not new nor confined to them. In one form or another,
it governed personal relations between races that were united against
non-humans, but held sharp distinctions themselves.
"I haven't asked you to marry me," he said bluntly.
"Because you're afraid I'd refuse."
It was true; no one asked a member of a higher race to enter a
permanent union.
"Why did you ever have anything to do with me?" demanded Halden.
"Love," she said gloomily. "Physical attraction. But I can't let it
lead me astray."
"Why not make a play for Kelburn? If you're going to be scientific
about it, he'd give you children of the higher type."
"Kelburn." It didn't sound like a name, the way she said it. "I don't
like him and he wouldn't marry me."
"He wouldn't, but he'd give you children if you were humble enough.
There's a fifty per cent chance you might conceive."
She provocatively arched her back. Not even the women of Kelburn's race
had a body like hers and she knew it.
"Racially, there should be a chance," she said. "Actually, Kelburn and
I would be infertile."
"Can you be sure?" he asked, knowing it was a poor attempt to act
unconcerned.
"How can anyone be sure on a theoretical basis?" she asked, an oblique
smile narrowing her eyes. "I know we can't."
His face felt anesthetized. "Did you have to tell me that?"
She got up and came to him. She nuzzled against him and his reaction
was purely reflexive. His hand swung out and he could feel the flesh
give when his knuckles struck it.
She fell back and dazedly covered her face with her hand. When she took
it away, blood spurted. She groped toward the mirror and stood in front
of it. She wiped the blood off, examining her features carefully.
"You've broken my nose," she said factually. "I'll have to stop the
blood and pain."
She pushed her nose back into place and waggled it to make sure. She
closed her eyes and stood silent and motionless. Then she stepped back
and looked at herself critically.
"It's set and partially knitted. I'll concentrate tonight and have it
healed by morning."
She felt in the cabinet and attached an invisible strip firmly across
the bridge. Then she came over to him.
"I wondered what you'd do. You didn't disappoint me."
He scowled miserably at her. Her face was almost plain and the bandage,
invisible or not, didn't improve her appearance any. How could he still
feel that attraction to her?
"Try Emmer," he suggested tiredly. "He'll find you irresistible, and
he's even more savage than I am."
"Is he?" She smiled enigmatically. "Maybe, in a biological sense. Too
much, though. You're just right."
He sat down on the bed. Again there was only one way of knowing what
Emmer would do—and she knew. She had no concept of love outside of
the physical, to make use of her body so as to gain an advantage—what
advantage?—for the children she intended to have. Outside of that,
nothing mattered, and for the sake of alloying the lower with the
higher, she was as cruel to herself as she was to him. And yet he
wanted her.
"I do think I love you," she said. "And if love's enough, I may marry
you in spite of everything. But you'll have to watch out whose children
I have." She wriggled into his arms.
The racial disparity was great and she had provoked him, but it was not
completely her fault. Besides....
Besides what? She had a beautiful body that could bear superior
children—and they might be his.
He twisted away. With those thoughts, he was as bad as she was. Were
they all that way, every one of them, crawling upward out of the slime
toward the highest goal they could conceive of? Climbing over—no,
through
—everybody they could coerce, seduce or marry—onward and
upward. He raised his hand, but it was against himself that his anger
was turned.
"Careful of the nose," she said, pressing against him. "You've already
broken it once."
He kissed her with sudden passion that even he knew was primitive.
| What most attracts Halden to Meredith? | [
"Her bold and outspoken communication among 'higher-level' species",
"Her shared desire to be associated with a 'higher-level' species",
"Her long, slender legs and biologically superior appearance",
"Her blatant disregard for rules that govern intermixing among species"
] | 2 | true |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| How does Purnie stop time? | [
"Purnie stops time using tripons.",
"Purnie stops time by standing on his head.",
"Purnie stops time using radiation.",
"Purnie stops time with his thoughts."
] | 3 | false |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| Why shouldn't Purnie stop time? | [
"Small children who stop time, may not live to regret it.",
"Purnie may be abducted if the animals know he can stop time.",
"Purnie may not be able to get time going again.",
"Stopping time consumes massive amounts of energy."
] | 3 | false |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| What does the ocean consist of on this planet? | [
"The ocean is freshwater.",
"The ocean is saltwater.",
"The ocean is purple liquid.",
"The ocean is acid."
] | 3 | false |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| Why does Purnie start limping? | [
"Purnie is limping because a petrified log fell on his leg.",
"Purnie is limping because he was shot in the leg.",
"Purnie is limping because he tripped on a petrified log.",
"Purnie is limping because of radiation poisoning."
] | 1 | false |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| Why does Forbes want to take Purnie? | [
"Forbes wants Purnie because he emits radiation.",
"Forbes wants Purnie because he is very strong.",
"Forbes wants Purnie because he can stop time.",
"Forbes wants Purnie because he looks like a kangaroo."
] | 0 | true |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| Why does Purnie save the humans? | [
"Purnie is worried other humans will come to his planet if he doesn't save this group.",
"Purnie blames himself for the avalanche that trapped his friends.",
"Purnie thinks the humans are his friends.",
"Purnie thinks the humans can cure his radiation poisoning."
] | 1 | true |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| Who are the animals that Purnie plays with? | [
"They are three-legged ostriches.",
"They are a flock of spora.",
"They are mannikins.",
"They are humans."
] | 3 | false |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| Why does the Captain go looking for Purnie? | [
"The Captain knows that an animal with Purnie's strength is worth a fortune.",
"The Captian knows an animal that can stop time is worth a fortune.",
"The Captain knows a radioactive animal is worth a fortune.",
"The Captain knows Purnie saved the crew."
] | 3 | true |
BEACH SCENE
By MARSHALL KING
Illustrated by WOOD
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Magazine October 1960.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
It was a fine day at the beach
for Purnie's game—but his new
friends played very rough!
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run
no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with
delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the
ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No
sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny
of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going
to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
"On your mark!" he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange
whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that
some object might try to get a head start. "Get set!" he challenged
the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. "Stop!"
He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple
clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder
how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be:
the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools
had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant,
its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the
heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and
nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie
hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren't so short! he thought. There was so much to
see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen
the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his
brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could
remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now,
as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he
were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to
play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical
three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many
kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this
day just for him. And who could say it wasn't? he thought. Wasn't this
his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and
even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and
wouldn't dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
"I'll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!" As he passed one of
the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took
care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When
Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he
met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as
soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far
off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was
clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he
had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying
far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an
hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing.
He chose to ignore the negative maxim that "small children who stop
time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it."
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends
when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to
gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch
during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a
dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his "Hurrah!" came
out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves
awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along
the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already
exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth
orange curls waiting to start that action.
And there were new friends everywhere! Overhead, a flock of spora were
frozen in a steep glide, preparatory to a beach landing. Purnie had
heard of these playful creatures many times. Today, with his brothers
in school, he would have the pets all to himself. Further down the
beach was a pair of two-legged animals poised in mid-step, facing
the spot where Purnie now stood. Some distance behind them were eight
more, each of whom were motionless in a curious pose of interrupted
animation. And down in the water, where the ocean ran itself into thin
nothingness upon the sand, he saw standing here and there the comical
tripons, those three-legged marine buffoons who made handsome careers
of munching seaweed.
"Hi there!" Purnie called. When he got no reaction, he remembered that
he himself was "dead" to the living world: he was still in a zone of
time-stopping, on the inside looking out. For him, the world would
continue to be a tableau of mannikins until he resumed time.
"Hi there!" he called again; but now his mental attitude was that he
expected time to resume. It did! Immediately he was surrounded by
activity. He heard the roar of the crashing orange breakers, he tasted
the dew of acid that floated from the spray, and he saw his new friends
continue the actions which he had stopped while back in the forest.
He knew, too, that at this moment, in the forest, the little brook
picked up its flow where it had left off, the purple clouds resumed
their leeward journey up the valley, and the bees continued their
pollen-gathering without having missed a single stroke of their
delicate wings. The brook, the clouds, and the insects had not been
interrupted in the least; their respective tasks had been performed
with continuing sureness. It was time itself that Purnie had stopped,
not the world around him.
He scampered around the rockpile and down the sandy cliff to meet the
tripons who, to him, had just come to life.
"I can stand on my head!" He set down his lunch and balanced himself
bottoms-up while his legs pawed the air in an effort to hold him in
position. He knew it was probably the worst head-stand he had ever
done, for he felt weak and dizzy. Already time-stopping had left its
mark on his strength. But his spirits ran on unchecked.
The tripon thought Purnie's feat was superb. It stopped munching long
enough to give him a salutory wag of its rump before returning to its
repast.
Purnie ran from pillar to post, trying to see and do everything at
once. He looked around to greet the flock of spora, but they had glided
to a spot further along the shore. Then, bouncing up to the first of
the two-legged animals, he started to burst forth with his habitual "Hi
there!" when he heard them making sounds of their own.
"... will be no limit to my operations now, Benson. This planet makes
seventeen. Seventeen planets I can claim as my own!"
"My, my. Seventeen planets. And tell me, Forbes, just what the hell are
you going to do with them—mount them on the wall of your den back in
San Diego?"
"Hi there, wanna play?" Purnie's invitation got nothing more than
startled glance from the animals who quickly returned to their chatter.
He scampered up the beach, picked up his lunch, and ran back to them,
tagging along at their heels. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
"Benson, you'd better tell your men back there to stop gawking at
the scenery and get to work. Time is money. I didn't pay for this
expedition just to give your flunkies a vacation."
The animals stopped so suddenly that Purnie nearly tangled himself in
their heels.
"All right, Forbes, just hold it a minute. Listen to me. Sure, it's
your money that put us here; it's your expedition all the way. But you
hired me to get you here with the best crew on earth, and that's just
what I've done. My job isn't over yet. I'm responsible for the safety
of the men while we're here, and for the safe trip home."
"Precisely. And since you're responsible, get 'em working. Tell 'em to
bring along the flag. Look at the damn fools back there, playing in the
ocean with a three-legged ostrich!"
"Good God, man, aren't you human? We've only been on this planet twenty
minutes! Naturally they want to look around. They half expected to find
wild animals or worse, and here we are surrounded by quaint little
creatures that run up to us like we're long-lost brothers. Let the men
look around a minute or two before we stake out your claim."
"Bah! Bunch of damn children."
As Purnie followed along, a leg shot out at him and missed. "Benson,
will you get this bug-eyed kangaroo away from me!" Purnie shrieked with
joy at this new frolic and promptly stood on his head. In this position
he got an upside down view of them walking away.
He gave up trying to stay with them. Why did they move so fast, anyway?
What was the hurry? As he sat down and began eating his lunch, three
more of the creatures came along making excited noises, apparently
trying to catch up to the first two. As they passed him, he held out
his lunch. "Want some?" No response.
Playing held more promise than eating. He left his lunch half eaten and
went down to where they had stopped further along the beach.
"Captain Benson, sir! Miles has detected strong radiation in the
vicinity. He's trying to locate it now."
"There you are, Forbes. Your new piece of real estate is going to make
you so rich that you can buy your next planet. That'll make eighteen, I
believe."
"Radiation, bah! We've found low-grade ore on every planet I've
discovered so far, and this one'll be no different. Now how about that
flag? Let's get it up, Benson. And the cornerstone, and the plaque."
"All right, lads. The sooner we get Mr. Forbes's pennant raised and his
claim staked out, the sooner we can take time to look around. Lively
now!"
When the three animals went back to join the rest of their group, the
first two resumed walking. Purnie followed along.
"Well, Benson, you won't have to look far for materials to use for the
base of the flag pole. Look at that rockpile up there.
"Can't use them. They're petrified logs. The ones on top are too high
to carry down, and if we move those on the bottom, the whole works will
slide down on top of us."
"Well—that's your problem. Just remember, I want this flag pole to be
solid. It's got to stand at least—"
"Don't worry, Forbes, we'll get your monument erected. What's this with
the flag? There must be more to staking a claim than just putting up a
flag."
"There is, there is. Much more. I've taken care of all requirements set
down by law to make my claim. But the flag? Well, you might say it
represents an empire, Benson. The Forbes Empire. On each of my flags
is the word FORBES, a symbol of development and progress. Call it
sentiment if you will."
"Don't worry, I won't. I've seen real-estate flags before."
"Damn it all, will you stop referring to this as a real-estate deal?
What I'm doing is big, man. Big! This is pioneering."
"Of course. And if I'm not mistaken, you've set up a neat little escrow
system so that you not only own the planets, but you will virtually own
the people who are foolish enough to buy land on them."
"I could have your hide for talking to me like this. Damn you, man!
It's people like me who pay your way. It's people like me who give your
space ships some place to go. It's people like me who pour good money
into a chancey job like this, so that people like you can get away from
thirteen-story tenement houses. Did you ever think of that?"
"I imagine you'll triple your money in six months."
When they stopped, Purnie stopped. At first he had been interested in
the strange sounds they were making, but as he grew used to them, and
as they in turn ignored his presence, he hopped alongside chattering to
himself, content to be in their company.
He heard more of these sounds coming from behind, and he turned to see
the remainder of the group running toward them.
"Captain Benson! Here's the flag, sir. And here's Miles with the
scintillometer. He says the radiation's getting stronger over this way!"
"How about that, Miles?"
"This thing's going wild, Captain. It's almost off scale."
Purnie saw one of the animals hovering around him with a little box.
Thankful for the attention, he stood on his head. "Can you do this?"
He was overjoyed at the reaction. They all started making wonderful
noises, and he felt most satisfied.
"Stand back, Captain! Here's the source right here! This little
chuck-walla's hotter than a plutonium pile!"
"Let me see that, Miles. Well, I'll be damned! Now what do you
suppose—"
By now they had formed a widening circle around him, and he was hard
put to think of an encore. He gambled on trying a brand new trick: he
stood on one leg.
"Benson, I must have that animal! Put him in a box."
"Now wait a minute, Forbes. Universal Law forbids—"
"This is my planet and I am the law. Put him in a box!"
"With my crew as witness, I officially protest—"
"Good God, what a specimen to take back. Radio-active animals! Why,
they can reproduce themselves, of course! There must be thousands of
these creatures around here someplace. And to think of those damn fools
on Earth with their plutonium piles! Hah! Now I'll have investors
flocking
to me. How about it, Benson—does pioneering pay off or
doesn't it?"
"Not so fast. Since this little fellow is radioactive, there may be
great danger to the crew—"
"Now look here! You had planned to put
mineral
specimens in a lead
box, so what's the difference? Put him in a box."
"He'll die."
"I have you under contract, Benson! You are responsible to me, and
what's more, you are on my property. Put him in a box."
Purnie was tired. First the time-stopping, then this. While this day
had brought more fun and excitement than he could have hoped for,
the strain was beginning to tell. He lay in the center of the circle
happily exhausted, hoping that his friends would show him some of their
own tricks.
He didn't have to wait long. The animals forming the circle stepped
back and made way for two others who came through carrying a box.
Purnie sat up to watch the show.
"Hell, Captain, why don't I just pick him up? Looks like he has no
intention of running away."
"Better not, Cabot. Even though you're shielded, no telling what
powers the little fella has. Play it safe and use the rope."
"I swear he knows what we're saying. Look at those eyes."
"All right, careful now with that line."
"Come on, baby. Here you go. That's a boy!"
Purnie took in these sounds with perplexed concern. He sensed the
imploring quality of the creature with the rope, but he didn't know
what he was supposed to do. He cocked his head to one side as he
wiggled in anticipation.
He saw the noose spinning down toward his head, and, before he knew
it, he had scooted out of the circle and up the sandy beach. He was
surprised at himself for running away. Why had he done it? He wondered.
Never before had he felt this fleeting twinge that made him want to
protect himself.
He watched the animals huddle around the box on the beach, their
attention apparently diverted to something else. He wished now that he
had not run away; he felt he had lost his chance to join in their fun.
"Wait!" He ran over to his half-eaten lunch, picked it up, and ran back
into the little crowd. "I've got my lunch, want some?"
The party came to life once more. His friends ran this way and that,
and at last Purnie knew that the idea was to get him into the box.
He picked up the spirit of the tease, and deliberately ran within a
few feet of the lead box, then, just as the nearest pursuer was about
to push him in, he sidestepped onto safer ground. Then he heard a
deafening roar and felt a warm, wet sting in one of his legs.
"Forbes, you fool! Put away that gun!"
"There you are, boys. It's all in knowing how. Just winged him, that's
all. Now pick him up."
The pang in his leg was nothing: Purnie's misery lay in his confusion.
What had he done wrong? When he saw the noose spinning toward him
again, he involuntarily stopped time. He knew better than to use this
power carelessly, but his action now was reflex. In that split second
following the sharp sting in his leg, his mind had grasped in all
directions to find an acceptable course of action. Finding none, it had
ordered the stoppage of time.
The scene around him became a tableau once more. The noose hung
motionless over his head while the rest of the rope snaked its way in
transverse waves back to one of the two-legged animals. Purnie dragged
himself through the congregation, whimpering from his inability to
understand.
As he worked his way past one creature after another, he tried at first
to not look them in the eye, for he felt sure he had done something
wrong. Then he thought that by sneaking a glance at them as he passed,
he might see a sign pointing to their purpose. He limped by one who had
in his hand a small shiny object that had been emitting smoke from one
end; the smoke now billowed in lifeless curls about the animal's head.
He hobbled by another who held a small box that had previously made a
hissing sound whenever Purnie was near. These things told him nothing.
Before starting his climb up the knoll, he passed a tripon which, true
to its reputation, was comical even in fright. Startled by the loud
explosion, it had jumped four feet into the air before Purnie had
stopped time. Now it hung there, its beak stuffed with seaweed and its
three legs drawn up into a squatting position.
Leaving the assorted statues behind, he limped his way up the knoll,
torn between leaving and staying. What an odd place, this ocean
country! He wondered why he had not heard more detail about the beach
animals.
Reaching the top of the bluff, he looked down upon his silent friends
with a feeling of deep sorrow. How he wished he were down there playing
with them. But he knew at last that theirs was a game he didn't fit
into. Now there was nothing left but to resume time and start the
long walk home. Even though the short day was nearly over, he knew he
didn't dare use time-stopping to get himself home in nothing flat. His
fatigued body and clouded mind were strong signals that he had already
abused this faculty.
When Purnie started time again, the animal with the noose stood in
open-mouthed disbelief as the rope fell harmlessly to the sand—on the
spot where Purnie had been standing.
"My God, he's—he's gone."
Then another of the animals, the one with the smoking thing in his
hand, ran a few steps toward the noose, stopped and gaped at the rope.
"All right, you people, what's going on here? Get him in that box. What
did you do with him?"
The resumption of time meant nothing at all to those on the beach, for
to them time had never stopped. The only thing they could be sure of
was that at one moment there had been a fuzzy creature hopping around
in front of them, and the next moment he was gone.
"Is he invisible, Captain? Where is he?"
"Up there, Captain! On those rocks. Isn't that him?"
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible for this! Now that
you've botched it up, I'll bring him down my own way."
"Just a minute, Forbes, let me think. There's something about that
fuzzy little devil that we should.... Forbes! I warned you about that
gun!"
Purnie moved across the top of the rockpile for a last look at his
friends. His weight on the end of the first log started the slide.
Slowly at first, the giant pencils began cascading down the short
distance to the sand. Purnie fell back onto solid ground, horrified at
the spectacle before him. The agonizing screams of the animals below
filled him with hysteria.
The boulders caught most of them as they stood ankle-deep in the surf.
Others were pinned down on the sand.
"I didn't mean it!" Purnie screamed. "I'm sorry! Can't you hear?" He
hopped back and forth near the edge of the rise, torn with panic and
shame. "Get up! Please get up!" He was horrified by the moans reaching
his ears from the beach. "You're getting all wet! Did you hear me?
Please get up." He was choked with rage and sorrow. How could he have
done this? He wanted his friends to get up and shake themselves off,
tell him it was all right. But it was beyond his power to bring it
about.
The lapping tide threatened to cover those in the orange surf.
Purnie worked his way down the hill, imploring them to save themselves.
The sounds they made carried a new tone, a desperate foreboding of
death.
"Rhodes! Cabot! Can you hear me?"
"I—I can't move, Captain. My leg, it's.... My God, we're going to
drown!"
"Look around you, Cabot. Can you see anyone moving?"
"The men on the beach are nearly buried, Captain. And the rest of us
here in the water—"
"Forbes. Can you see Forbes? Maybe he's—" His sounds were cut off by a
wavelet gently rolling over his head.
Purnie could wait no longer. The tides were all but covering one of the
animals, and soon the others would be in the same plight. Disregarding
the consequences, he ordered time to stop.
Wading down into the surf, he worked a log off one victim, then he
tugged the animal up to the sand. Through blinding tears, Purnie worked
slowly and carefully. He knew there was no hurry—at least, not as far
as his friends' safety was concerned. No matter what their condition
of life or death was at this moment, it would stay the same way until
he started time again. He made his way deeper into the orange liquid,
where a raised hand signalled the location of a submerged body. The
hand was clutching a large white banner that was tangled among the
logs. Purnie worked the animal free and pulled it ashore.
It was the one who had been carrying the shiny object that spit smoke.
Scarcely noticing his own injured leg, he ferried one victim after
another until there were no more in the surf. Up on the beach, he
started unraveling the logs that pinned down the animals caught there.
He removed a log from the lap of one, who then remained in a sitting
position, his face contorted into a frozen mask of agony and shock.
Another, with the weight removed, rolled over like an iron statue into
a new position. Purnie whimpered in black misery as he surveyed the
chaotic scene before him.
At last he could do no more; he felt consciousness slipping away from
him.
He instinctively knew that if he lost his senses during a period of
time-stopping, events would pick up where they had left off ... without
him. For Purnie, this would be death. If he had to lose consciousness,
he knew he must first resume time.
Step by step he plodded up the little hill, pausing every now and then
to consider if this were the moment to start time before it was too
late. With his energy fast draining away, he reached the top of the
knoll, and he turned to look down once more on the group below.
Then he knew how much his mind and body had suffered: when he ordered
time to resume, nothing happened.
His heart sank. He wasn't afraid of death, and he knew that if he died
the oceans would roll again and his friends would move about. But he
wanted to see them safe.
He tried to clear his mind for supreme effort. There was no
urging
time to start. He knew he couldn't persuade it by bits and pieces,
first slowly then full ahead. Time either progressed or it didn't. He
had to take one viewpoint or the other.
Then, without knowing exactly when it happened, his mind took
command....
His friends came to life. The first one he saw stir lay on his stomach
and pounded his fists on the beach. A flood of relief settled over
Purnie as sounds came from the animal.
"What's the matter with me? Somebody tell me! Am I nuts? Miles! Schick!
What's happening?"
"I'm coming, Rhodes! Heaven help us, man—I saw it, too. We're either
crazy or those damn logs are alive!"
"It's not the logs. How about us? How'd we get out of the water? Miles,
we're both cracking."
"I'm telling you, man, it's the logs, or rocks or whatever they are.
I was looking right at them. First they're on top of me, then they're
piled up over there!"
"Damnit, the logs didn't pick us up out of the ocean, did they? Captain
Benson!"
"Are you men all right?"
"Yes sir, but—"
"Who saw exactly what happened?"
"I'm afraid we're not seeing right, Captain. Those logs—"
"I know, I know. Now get hold of yourselves. We've got to round up the
others and get out of here while time is on our side."
"But what happened, Captain?"
"Hell, Rhodes, don't you think I'd like to know? Those logs are so old
they're petrified. The whole bunch of us couldn't lift one. It would
take super-human energy to move one of those things."
"I haven't seen anything super-human. Those ostriches down there are so
busy eating seaweed—"
"All right, let's bear a hand here with the others. Some of them can't
walk. Where's Forbes?"
"He's sitting down there in the water, Captain, crying like a baby. Or
laughing. I can't tell which."
"We'll have to get him. Miles, Schick, come along. Forbes! You all
right?"
"Ho-ho-ho! Seventeen! Seventeen! Seventeen planets, Benson, and they'll
do anything I say! This one's got a mind of its own. Did you see that
little trick with the rocks? Ho-ho!"
"See if you can find his gun, Schick; he'll either kill himself or one
of us. Tie his hands and take him back to the ship. We'll be along
shortly."
"Hah-hah-hah! Seventeen! Benson, I'm holding you personally responsible
for this. Hee-hee!"
Purnie opened his eyes as consciousness returned. Had his friends gone?
He pulled himself along on his stomach to a position between two rocks,
where he could see without being seen. By the light of the twin moons
he saw that they were leaving, marching away in groups of two and
three, the weak helping the weaker. As they disappeared around the
curving shoreline, the voices of the last two, bringing up the rear far
behind the others, fell faintly on his ears over the sound of the surf.
"Is it possible that we're all crazy, Captain?"
"It's possible, but we're not."
"I wish I could be sure."
"See Forbes up ahead there? What do you think of him?"
"I still can't believe it."
"He'll never be the same."
"Tell me something. What was the most unusual thing you noticed back
there?"
"You must be kidding, sir. Why, the way those logs were off of us
suddenly—"
"Yes, of course. But I mean beside that."
"Well, I guess I was kind of busy. You know, scared and mixed up."
"But didn't you notice our little pop-eyed friend?"
"Oh, him. I'm afraid not, Captain. I—I guess I was thinking mostly of
myself."
"Hmmm. If I could only be sure I saw him. If only someone else saw him
too."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, sir."
"Well, damn it all, you know that Forbes took a pot shot at him. Got
him in the leg. That being the case, why would the fuzzy little devil
come back to his tormentors—back to us—when we were trapped under
those logs?"
"Well, I guess as long as we were trapped, he figured we couldn't do
him any more harm.... I'm sorry, that was a stupid answer. I guess I'm
still a little shaky."
"Forget it. Look, you go ahead to the ship and make ready for take-off.
I'll join you in a few minutes. I think I'll go back and look around.
You know. Make sure we haven't left anyone."
"No need to do that. They're all ahead of us. I've checked."
"That's my responsibility, Cabot, not yours. Now go on."
As Purnie lay gathering strength for the long trek home, he saw through
glazed eyes one of the animals coming back along the beach. When it was
nearly directly below him, he could hear it making sounds that by now
had become familiar.
"Where are you?"
Purnie paid little attention to the antics of his friend; he was
beyond understanding. He wondered what they would say at home when he
returned.
"We've made a terrible mistake. We—" The sounds faded in and out on
Purnie's ears as the creature turned slowly and called in different
directions. He watched the animal walk over to the pile of scattered
logs and peer around and under them.
"If you're hurt I'd like to help!" The twin moons were high in the sky
now, and where their light broke through the swirling clouds a double
shadow was cast around the animal. With foggy awareness, Purnie watched
the creature shake its head slowly, then walk away in the direction of
the others.
Purnie's eyes stared, without seeing, at the panorama before him. The
beach was deserted now, and his gaze was transfixed on a shimmering
white square floating on the ocean. Across it, the last thing Purnie
ever saw, was emblazoned the word FORBES.
| Why can't the Captain find Purnie? | [
"Purnie lost consciousness outside of time.",
"Purnie drowned in the ocean.",
"Purnie is covered by the petrified logs and too weak to call out for help.",
"Purnie lost consciousness and is now invisible."
] | 0 | false |
Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to
PICK A CRIME
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in
the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been
smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy
instead of straight.
"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside
Joe's table.
"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a
pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want
you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."
The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed
a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.
"What's the job?"
"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring
it down his throat.
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"
"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the
liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the
glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.
"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"
"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room
and board for a month while they give me a treatment."
It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do.
The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted,
but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix
drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was
on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was
illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.
Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but
had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been
only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.
The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should
take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like
everyone else?"
As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she
saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal
Tendencies.
When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to
pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to
get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and
show it upon request.
"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."
"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score.
When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even
tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a
DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had
several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man,
street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"
On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and
a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.
Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned
across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I
want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get
convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"
The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big
plans, don't you?"
He smiled at her admiration. It
was
something big to plan a crime.
A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting,
blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime
Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials
had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent
crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of
ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime
almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men
in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.
No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill
someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he
wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all
criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock
treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and
a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few
criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could
afford the CPA hospitals.
The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because
it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with
prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.
And, ironically, a man who
did
commit a crime was a sort of hero. He
was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses
to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a
hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the
CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a
man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money.
And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment
was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the
word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.
"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten.
Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."
"Okay. Let's go."
The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door,
down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.
She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped
her blouse and skirt.
He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away,
her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"
"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get
here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."
The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the
few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime
because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the
intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a
crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc.,
were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete
the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the
CPA had once again functioned properly.
The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that
way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"
"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything
wrong."
"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you
know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in
the WSDA!"
Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of
the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even
developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in
those new techniques.
The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my
rank if you were convicted of—"
"Do I have to
make
you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced
toward the girl.
"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey!
Stop it!
"
Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when
she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body,
and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.
The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he
became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it.
There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful
stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police
sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed
in on him.
When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."
He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It
would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture
except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the
controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred
other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.
Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something
wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with
bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something
of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate
hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men
to high political positions were women.
Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly,
likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on
posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only
the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable
man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked
something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police
commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.
"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.
"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted
rape. I confess."
Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached
out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in
that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys.
You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in
alleys!"
Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of
machines on the walls, "
Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when
the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.
" And then the girl's
voice, "
Sorry, buddy. Can't help—
"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was
slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world
had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime.
Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from
committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly
once again. That meant the CPA had once again
prevented
crime, and
the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt
to prevent crimes
by
punishment. If it did, that would be a violation
of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a
button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before.
And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a
DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do
you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know
what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.
"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers.
You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it
works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night
and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe
Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records
of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently
at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not
to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just
hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone,
so they can be the first ones to yell '
Police!
' They'll watch you
because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever
did
prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and
they'd be famous."
"Lay off," Joe said. "I got a headache. That girl—"
Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. "You listen, Joe. This is
interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's
thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from
reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because
it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down
the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no
matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next
to you, standing next to you.
"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that
look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through
your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through
binoculars and—"
"Lay off!"
Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and
it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking
machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.
"And the kids are the worst," Hendricks continued. "They have Junior
CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard
boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through
restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in
public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes
while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look
back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a
block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the
day you die, because you're a freak!"
Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced
the floor.
"And it doesn't end
there
, Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the
object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop
you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll
ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were
a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First
Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop
you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—"
"Okay, goddam it!
Stop it!
"
Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief
and lit a cigarette.
"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too
dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and
criminals ... to
hate
them as nothing has ever been hated before.
Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell
if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where
there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—"
Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. "
Favor
, did you say? The day you
do
me
a favor—"
Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. "Not entirely a favor. I
want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read
books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to," Joe said. "I'm flat broke. Thanks to
your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job."
Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended
them. "I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a
little at a time."
Joe waved the money away. "Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why
don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any
crime."
"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a
violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself."
"Umm."
"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't
have
to
be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your
criminal tendencies and—"
"Go to those
head-shrinkers
?"
Hendricks shrugged again. "Have it your way."
Joe laughed. "If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you
make
me go?"
"Violation of Civil Rights."
"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same
thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime."
"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?" Hendricks
walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.
"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New
York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who
aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As
soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices,
but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.
"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can
I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe,
pick a name and go out and rob him.'" He laughed nervously. "If I did
that, I'd be committing a crime myself!"
He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket
again and wiped sweat from his face. "Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of
thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room."
Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the
big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering
him a crime!
Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and
address and memorized it:
John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.
When Hendricks came back, Joe said, "Thanks."
"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything."
When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a
child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid
of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill
at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his
own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the
feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for
him to make a mistake.
Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went.
Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns,
alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited
for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked
up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.
If the words "Let's see a movie" were received in the Brain, they
were discarded. But if the words "Let's roll this guy" were received,
the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene
in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden
microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages
to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in
someone's pocket at forty yards.
Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery
store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place
of business for years.
Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices
placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of
heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had
made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing
poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount
of it would kill a human.
The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the
supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think
of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was
pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place
of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors
that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.
And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance
of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled
that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were
different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and
their aim was infallible.
It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't
fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across
the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously
low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power
required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of
four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of
the devices had cost even less.
And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at
the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked
subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio
or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he
invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH.
If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters
declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he
always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit
anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.
It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and
heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his
subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime
was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.
Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands
of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment
204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.
The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204,
he could see that the wall on either side of it was
new
. That is,
instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls
were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and
the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating
another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by
law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but
evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.
When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to
close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the
bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at
night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.
Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the
crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.
He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old
magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a
crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of
being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.
He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear.
The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run,
but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription,
To
John with Love
. His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy
for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.
Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, "
Thief! Police!
Help!
"
He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a
police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him;
cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.
When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the
metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who
reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.
He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, "Hey. Wake up. Hey!"
He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute
he was still having the nightmare.
"I just saw your doctor," Hendricks said. "He says your treatment is
over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift."
As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.
During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to
think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in
himself.
He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an
after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when
he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months
and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.
Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back.
Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change:
Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now,
even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred.
They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it
altogether.
"Come here and take a look at your public," said Hendricks.
Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered
on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks,
cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day.
But now—another change in him—
He put the emotion into words: "I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I
don't."
"Hero!" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded
like a bull snorting. "You think a successful criminal is a hero? You
stupid—"
He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. "You think
those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're
down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're
glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're
an
ex
-criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be
able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind
of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get
your autograph."
Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did
understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see
the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer
and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero,
what was
he
?
It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all
around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at
once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered
some more.
Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired
old lady with tears in her eyes said, "Thank heaven it was only a
watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son." And
then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total
confusion.
What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather
than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd
would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA
hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an
ex-murderer came out.
In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled
himself with the thought,
People are funny. Who can understand 'em?
Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward
Hendricks and said, "Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll
be able to get a good job now."
"That's why I met you at the hospital," Hendricks said. "I want to
explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're
spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and
I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did
you a favor."
Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely
thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd
done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!
"You robbed Gralewski's apartment," Hendricks said. "Gralewski is a CPA
employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays
the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places
like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you
before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First
Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—"
"Well, it's still a favor."
Hendricks' face hardened. "Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you
stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your
type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best
psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the
treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit
a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an
Ex
."
The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages
were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA
psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe
shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly
watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees
and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly
watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies,
it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply
until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it
wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks
continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it.
You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked
before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in
your head is going to say,
Work! Work!
Exes always get good jobs
because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex
is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the
criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best
thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might
want
to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an
illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of
names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in
his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so
intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in
agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head,
Unlawful to
strike someone except in self-defense
.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him,
the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain
returned, and the mental voice whispered,
Unlawful to curse
.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a
crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell
the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as
that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and
the voice,
Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure
.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been
locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until
the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a
useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a
big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time
you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you
learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner
or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.
"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like
you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal."
"I think it's a lousy, filthy system." Joe's head was still tingling
with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it
was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do
that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he
wanted to do and
now
....
Hendricks laughed. "You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean,
wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for
freaks like yourself, criminals are—"
"Let me out!" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming
the door behind him before the car stopped completely.
He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into
the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a
prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated
him back.
He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and
voice prevented him.
It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.
| What is the relationship between Hendricks and Joe? | [
"Hendricks is Joe's uncle. He has bailed Joe out many times over the years.",
"Hendricks is the psychological officer for the police department. He's offered Joe free treatment many times over the years.",
"Hendricks is Joe's parole officer and has been for many years.",
"Hendricks is the Police Commissioner. He has arrested Joe many times over the years."
] | 3 | false |
Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to
PICK A CRIME
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in
the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been
smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy
instead of straight.
"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside
Joe's table.
"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a
pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want
you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."
The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed
a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.
"What's the job?"
"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring
it down his throat.
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"
"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the
liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the
glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.
"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"
"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room
and board for a month while they give me a treatment."
It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do.
The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted,
but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix
drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was
on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was
illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.
Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but
had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been
only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.
The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should
take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like
everyone else?"
As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she
saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal
Tendencies.
When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to
pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to
get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and
show it upon request.
"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."
"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score.
When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even
tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a
DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had
several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man,
street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"
On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and
a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.
Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned
across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I
want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get
convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"
The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big
plans, don't you?"
He smiled at her admiration. It
was
something big to plan a crime.
A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting,
blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime
Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials
had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent
crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of
ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime
almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men
in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.
No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill
someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he
wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all
criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock
treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and
a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few
criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could
afford the CPA hospitals.
The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because
it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with
prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.
And, ironically, a man who
did
commit a crime was a sort of hero. He
was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses
to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a
hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the
CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a
man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money.
And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment
was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the
word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.
"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten.
Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."
"Okay. Let's go."
The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door,
down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.
She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped
her blouse and skirt.
He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away,
her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"
"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get
here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."
The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the
few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime
because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the
intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a
crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc.,
were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete
the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the
CPA had once again functioned properly.
The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that
way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"
"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything
wrong."
"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you
know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in
the WSDA!"
Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of
the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even
developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in
those new techniques.
The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my
rank if you were convicted of—"
"Do I have to
make
you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced
toward the girl.
"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey!
Stop it!
"
Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when
she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body,
and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.
The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he
became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it.
There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful
stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police
sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed
in on him.
When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."
He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It
would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture
except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the
controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred
other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.
Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something
wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with
bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something
of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate
hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men
to high political positions were women.
Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly,
likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on
posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only
the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable
man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked
something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police
commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.
"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.
"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted
rape. I confess."
Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached
out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in
that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys.
You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in
alleys!"
Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of
machines on the walls, "
Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when
the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.
" And then the girl's
voice, "
Sorry, buddy. Can't help—
"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was
slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world
had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime.
Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from
committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly
once again. That meant the CPA had once again
prevented
crime, and
the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt
to prevent crimes
by
punishment. If it did, that would be a violation
of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a
button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before.
And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a
DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do
you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know
what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.
"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers.
You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it
works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night
and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe
Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records
of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently
at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not
to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just
hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone,
so they can be the first ones to yell '
Police!
' They'll watch you
because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever
did
prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and
they'd be famous."
"Lay off," Joe said. "I got a headache. That girl—"
Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. "You listen, Joe. This is
interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's
thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from
reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because
it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down
the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no
matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next
to you, standing next to you.
"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that
look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through
your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through
binoculars and—"
"Lay off!"
Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and
it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking
machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.
"And the kids are the worst," Hendricks continued. "They have Junior
CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard
boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through
restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in
public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes
while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look
back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a
block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the
day you die, because you're a freak!"
Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced
the floor.
"And it doesn't end
there
, Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the
object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop
you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll
ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were
a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First
Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop
you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—"
"Okay, goddam it!
Stop it!
"
Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief
and lit a cigarette.
"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too
dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and
criminals ... to
hate
them as nothing has ever been hated before.
Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell
if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where
there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—"
Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. "
Favor
, did you say? The day you
do
me
a favor—"
Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. "Not entirely a favor. I
want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read
books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to," Joe said. "I'm flat broke. Thanks to
your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job."
Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended
them. "I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a
little at a time."
Joe waved the money away. "Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why
don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any
crime."
"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a
violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself."
"Umm."
"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't
have
to
be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your
criminal tendencies and—"
"Go to those
head-shrinkers
?"
Hendricks shrugged again. "Have it your way."
Joe laughed. "If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you
make
me go?"
"Violation of Civil Rights."
"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same
thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime."
"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?" Hendricks
walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.
"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New
York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who
aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As
soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices,
but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.
"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can
I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe,
pick a name and go out and rob him.'" He laughed nervously. "If I did
that, I'd be committing a crime myself!"
He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket
again and wiped sweat from his face. "Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of
thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room."
Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the
big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering
him a crime!
Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and
address and memorized it:
John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.
When Hendricks came back, Joe said, "Thanks."
"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything."
When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a
child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid
of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill
at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his
own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the
feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for
him to make a mistake.
Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went.
Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns,
alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited
for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked
up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.
If the words "Let's see a movie" were received in the Brain, they
were discarded. But if the words "Let's roll this guy" were received,
the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene
in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden
microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages
to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in
someone's pocket at forty yards.
Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery
store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place
of business for years.
Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices
placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of
heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had
made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing
poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount
of it would kill a human.
The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the
supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think
of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was
pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place
of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors
that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.
And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance
of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled
that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were
different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and
their aim was infallible.
It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't
fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across
the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously
low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power
required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of
four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of
the devices had cost even less.
And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at
the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked
subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio
or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he
invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH.
If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters
declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he
always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit
anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.
It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and
heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his
subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime
was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.
Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands
of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment
204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.
The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204,
he could see that the wall on either side of it was
new
. That is,
instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls
were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and
the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating
another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by
law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but
evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.
When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to
close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the
bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at
night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.
Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the
crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.
He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old
magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a
crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of
being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.
He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear.
The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run,
but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription,
To
John with Love
. His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy
for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.
Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, "
Thief! Police!
Help!
"
He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a
police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him;
cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.
When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the
metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who
reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.
He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, "Hey. Wake up. Hey!"
He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute
he was still having the nightmare.
"I just saw your doctor," Hendricks said. "He says your treatment is
over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift."
As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.
During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to
think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in
himself.
He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an
after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when
he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months
and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.
Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back.
Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change:
Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now,
even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred.
They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it
altogether.
"Come here and take a look at your public," said Hendricks.
Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered
on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks,
cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day.
But now—another change in him—
He put the emotion into words: "I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I
don't."
"Hero!" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded
like a bull snorting. "You think a successful criminal is a hero? You
stupid—"
He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. "You think
those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're
down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're
glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're
an
ex
-criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be
able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind
of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get
your autograph."
Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did
understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see
the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer
and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero,
what was
he
?
It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all
around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at
once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered
some more.
Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired
old lady with tears in her eyes said, "Thank heaven it was only a
watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son." And
then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total
confusion.
What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather
than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd
would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA
hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an
ex-murderer came out.
In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled
himself with the thought,
People are funny. Who can understand 'em?
Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward
Hendricks and said, "Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll
be able to get a good job now."
"That's why I met you at the hospital," Hendricks said. "I want to
explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're
spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and
I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did
you a favor."
Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely
thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd
done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!
"You robbed Gralewski's apartment," Hendricks said. "Gralewski is a CPA
employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays
the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places
like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you
before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First
Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—"
"Well, it's still a favor."
Hendricks' face hardened. "Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you
stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your
type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best
psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the
treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit
a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an
Ex
."
The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages
were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA
psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe
shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly
watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees
and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly
watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies,
it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply
until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it
wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks
continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it.
You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked
before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in
your head is going to say,
Work! Work!
Exes always get good jobs
because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex
is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the
criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best
thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might
want
to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an
illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of
names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in
his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so
intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in
agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head,
Unlawful to
strike someone except in self-defense
.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him,
the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain
returned, and the mental voice whispered,
Unlawful to curse
.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a
crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell
the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as
that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and
the voice,
Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure
.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been
locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until
the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a
useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a
big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time
you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you
learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner
or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.
"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like
you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal."
"I think it's a lousy, filthy system." Joe's head was still tingling
with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it
was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do
that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he
wanted to do and
now
....
Hendricks laughed. "You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean,
wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for
freaks like yourself, criminals are—"
"Let me out!" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming
the door behind him before the car stopped completely.
He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into
the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a
prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated
him back.
He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and
voice prevented him.
It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.
| Why is Joe trying to get drunk? | [
"Joe is trying to get drunk, so he can get a month's worth of free food and lodging.",
"Joe is trying to get drunk, so he can work up the nerve to ask the girl out.",
"Joe is trying to get drunk because he is depressed about his job situation.",
"Joe is trying to get drunk, so he can work up the nerve to commit a crime."
] | 0 | false |
Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to
PICK A CRIME
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in
the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been
smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy
instead of straight.
"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside
Joe's table.
"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a
pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want
you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."
The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed
a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.
"What's the job?"
"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring
it down his throat.
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"
"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the
liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the
glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.
"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"
"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room
and board for a month while they give me a treatment."
It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do.
The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted,
but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix
drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was
on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was
illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.
Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but
had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been
only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.
The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should
take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like
everyone else?"
As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she
saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal
Tendencies.
When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to
pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to
get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and
show it upon request.
"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."
"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score.
When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even
tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a
DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had
several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man,
street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"
On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and
a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.
Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned
across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I
want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get
convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"
The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big
plans, don't you?"
He smiled at her admiration. It
was
something big to plan a crime.
A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting,
blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime
Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials
had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent
crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of
ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime
almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men
in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.
No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill
someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he
wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all
criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock
treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and
a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few
criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could
afford the CPA hospitals.
The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because
it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with
prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.
And, ironically, a man who
did
commit a crime was a sort of hero. He
was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses
to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a
hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the
CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a
man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money.
And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment
was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the
word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.
"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten.
Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."
"Okay. Let's go."
The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door,
down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.
She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped
her blouse and skirt.
He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away,
her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"
"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get
here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."
The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the
few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime
because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the
intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a
crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc.,
were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete
the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the
CPA had once again functioned properly.
The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that
way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"
"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything
wrong."
"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you
know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in
the WSDA!"
Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of
the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even
developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in
those new techniques.
The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my
rank if you were convicted of—"
"Do I have to
make
you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced
toward the girl.
"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey!
Stop it!
"
Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when
she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body,
and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.
The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he
became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it.
There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful
stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police
sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed
in on him.
When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."
He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It
would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture
except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the
controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred
other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.
Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something
wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with
bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something
of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate
hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men
to high political positions were women.
Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly,
likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on
posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only
the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable
man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked
something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police
commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.
"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.
"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted
rape. I confess."
Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached
out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in
that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys.
You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in
alleys!"
Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of
machines on the walls, "
Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when
the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.
" And then the girl's
voice, "
Sorry, buddy. Can't help—
"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was
slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world
had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime.
Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from
committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly
once again. That meant the CPA had once again
prevented
crime, and
the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt
to prevent crimes
by
punishment. If it did, that would be a violation
of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a
button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before.
And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a
DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do
you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know
what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.
"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers.
You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it
works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night
and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe
Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records
of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently
at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not
to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just
hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone,
so they can be the first ones to yell '
Police!
' They'll watch you
because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever
did
prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and
they'd be famous."
"Lay off," Joe said. "I got a headache. That girl—"
Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. "You listen, Joe. This is
interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's
thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from
reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because
it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down
the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no
matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next
to you, standing next to you.
"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that
look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through
your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through
binoculars and—"
"Lay off!"
Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and
it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking
machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.
"And the kids are the worst," Hendricks continued. "They have Junior
CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard
boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through
restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in
public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes
while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look
back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a
block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the
day you die, because you're a freak!"
Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced
the floor.
"And it doesn't end
there
, Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the
object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop
you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll
ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were
a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First
Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop
you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—"
"Okay, goddam it!
Stop it!
"
Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief
and lit a cigarette.
"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too
dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and
criminals ... to
hate
them as nothing has ever been hated before.
Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell
if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where
there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—"
Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. "
Favor
, did you say? The day you
do
me
a favor—"
Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. "Not entirely a favor. I
want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read
books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to," Joe said. "I'm flat broke. Thanks to
your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job."
Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended
them. "I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a
little at a time."
Joe waved the money away. "Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why
don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any
crime."
"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a
violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself."
"Umm."
"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't
have
to
be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your
criminal tendencies and—"
"Go to those
head-shrinkers
?"
Hendricks shrugged again. "Have it your way."
Joe laughed. "If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you
make
me go?"
"Violation of Civil Rights."
"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same
thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime."
"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?" Hendricks
walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.
"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New
York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who
aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As
soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices,
but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.
"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can
I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe,
pick a name and go out and rob him.'" He laughed nervously. "If I did
that, I'd be committing a crime myself!"
He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket
again and wiped sweat from his face. "Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of
thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room."
Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the
big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering
him a crime!
Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and
address and memorized it:
John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.
When Hendricks came back, Joe said, "Thanks."
"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything."
When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a
child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid
of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill
at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his
own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the
feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for
him to make a mistake.
Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went.
Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns,
alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited
for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked
up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.
If the words "Let's see a movie" were received in the Brain, they
were discarded. But if the words "Let's roll this guy" were received,
the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene
in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden
microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages
to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in
someone's pocket at forty yards.
Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery
store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place
of business for years.
Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices
placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of
heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had
made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing
poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount
of it would kill a human.
The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the
supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think
of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was
pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place
of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors
that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.
And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance
of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled
that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were
different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and
their aim was infallible.
It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't
fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across
the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously
low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power
required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of
four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of
the devices had cost even less.
And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at
the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked
subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio
or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he
invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH.
If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters
declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he
always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit
anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.
It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and
heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his
subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime
was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.
Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands
of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment
204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.
The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204,
he could see that the wall on either side of it was
new
. That is,
instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls
were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and
the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating
another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by
law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but
evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.
When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to
close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the
bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at
night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.
Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the
crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.
He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old
magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a
crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of
being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.
He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear.
The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run,
but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription,
To
John with Love
. His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy
for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.
Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, "
Thief! Police!
Help!
"
He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a
police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him;
cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.
When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the
metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who
reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.
He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, "Hey. Wake up. Hey!"
He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute
he was still having the nightmare.
"I just saw your doctor," Hendricks said. "He says your treatment is
over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift."
As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.
During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to
think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in
himself.
He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an
after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when
he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months
and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.
Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back.
Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change:
Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now,
even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred.
They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it
altogether.
"Come here and take a look at your public," said Hendricks.
Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered
on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks,
cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day.
But now—another change in him—
He put the emotion into words: "I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I
don't."
"Hero!" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded
like a bull snorting. "You think a successful criminal is a hero? You
stupid—"
He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. "You think
those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're
down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're
glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're
an
ex
-criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be
able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind
of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get
your autograph."
Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did
understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see
the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer
and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero,
what was
he
?
It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all
around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at
once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered
some more.
Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired
old lady with tears in her eyes said, "Thank heaven it was only a
watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son." And
then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total
confusion.
What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather
than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd
would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA
hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an
ex-murderer came out.
In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled
himself with the thought,
People are funny. Who can understand 'em?
Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward
Hendricks and said, "Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll
be able to get a good job now."
"That's why I met you at the hospital," Hendricks said. "I want to
explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're
spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and
I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did
you a favor."
Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely
thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd
done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!
"You robbed Gralewski's apartment," Hendricks said. "Gralewski is a CPA
employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays
the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places
like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you
before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First
Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—"
"Well, it's still a favor."
Hendricks' face hardened. "Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you
stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your
type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best
psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the
treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit
a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an
Ex
."
The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages
were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA
psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe
shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly
watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees
and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly
watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies,
it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply
until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it
wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks
continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it.
You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked
before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in
your head is going to say,
Work! Work!
Exes always get good jobs
because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex
is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the
criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best
thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might
want
to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an
illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of
names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in
his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so
intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in
agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head,
Unlawful to
strike someone except in self-defense
.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him,
the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain
returned, and the mental voice whispered,
Unlawful to curse
.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a
crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell
the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as
that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and
the voice,
Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure
.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been
locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until
the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a
useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a
big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time
you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you
learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner
or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.
"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like
you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal."
"I think it's a lousy, filthy system." Joe's head was still tingling
with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it
was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do
that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he
wanted to do and
now
....
Hendricks laughed. "You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean,
wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for
freaks like yourself, criminals are—"
"Let me out!" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming
the door behind him before the car stopped completely.
He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into
the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a
prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated
him back.
He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and
voice prevented him.
It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.
| Why does Joe want to be an EX? | [
"An EX was always offered the best jobs.",
"An EX has no more criminal tendencies.",
"An EX could be trusted with any responsibility.",
"An EX was a hero to millions."
] | 0 | false |
Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to
PICK A CRIME
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in
the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been
smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy
instead of straight.
"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside
Joe's table.
"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a
pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want
you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."
The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed
a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.
"What's the job?"
"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring
it down his throat.
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"
"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the
liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the
glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.
"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"
"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room
and board for a month while they give me a treatment."
It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do.
The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted,
but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix
drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was
on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was
illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.
Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but
had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been
only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.
The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should
take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like
everyone else?"
As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she
saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal
Tendencies.
When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to
pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to
get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and
show it upon request.
"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."
"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score.
When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even
tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a
DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had
several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man,
street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"
On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and
a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.
Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned
across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I
want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get
convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"
The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big
plans, don't you?"
He smiled at her admiration. It
was
something big to plan a crime.
A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting,
blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime
Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials
had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent
crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of
ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime
almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men
in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.
No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill
someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he
wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all
criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock
treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and
a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few
criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could
afford the CPA hospitals.
The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because
it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with
prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.
And, ironically, a man who
did
commit a crime was a sort of hero. He
was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses
to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a
hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the
CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a
man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money.
And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment
was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the
word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.
"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten.
Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."
"Okay. Let's go."
The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door,
down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.
She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped
her blouse and skirt.
He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away,
her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"
"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get
here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."
The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the
few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime
because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the
intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a
crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc.,
were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete
the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the
CPA had once again functioned properly.
The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that
way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"
"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything
wrong."
"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you
know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in
the WSDA!"
Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of
the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even
developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in
those new techniques.
The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my
rank if you were convicted of—"
"Do I have to
make
you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced
toward the girl.
"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey!
Stop it!
"
Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when
she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body,
and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.
The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he
became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it.
There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful
stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police
sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed
in on him.
When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."
He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It
would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture
except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the
controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred
other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.
Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something
wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with
bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something
of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate
hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men
to high political positions were women.
Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly,
likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on
posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only
the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable
man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked
something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police
commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.
"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.
"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted
rape. I confess."
Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached
out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in
that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys.
You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in
alleys!"
Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of
machines on the walls, "
Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when
the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.
" And then the girl's
voice, "
Sorry, buddy. Can't help—
"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was
slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world
had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime.
Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from
committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly
once again. That meant the CPA had once again
prevented
crime, and
the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt
to prevent crimes
by
punishment. If it did, that would be a violation
of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a
button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before.
And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a
DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do
you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know
what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.
"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers.
You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it
works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night
and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe
Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records
of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently
at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not
to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just
hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone,
so they can be the first ones to yell '
Police!
' They'll watch you
because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever
did
prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and
they'd be famous."
"Lay off," Joe said. "I got a headache. That girl—"
Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. "You listen, Joe. This is
interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's
thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from
reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because
it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down
the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no
matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next
to you, standing next to you.
"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that
look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through
your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through
binoculars and—"
"Lay off!"
Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and
it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking
machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.
"And the kids are the worst," Hendricks continued. "They have Junior
CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard
boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through
restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in
public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes
while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look
back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a
block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the
day you die, because you're a freak!"
Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced
the floor.
"And it doesn't end
there
, Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the
object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop
you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll
ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were
a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First
Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop
you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—"
"Okay, goddam it!
Stop it!
"
Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief
and lit a cigarette.
"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too
dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and
criminals ... to
hate
them as nothing has ever been hated before.
Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell
if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where
there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—"
Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. "
Favor
, did you say? The day you
do
me
a favor—"
Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. "Not entirely a favor. I
want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read
books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to," Joe said. "I'm flat broke. Thanks to
your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job."
Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended
them. "I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a
little at a time."
Joe waved the money away. "Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why
don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any
crime."
"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a
violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself."
"Umm."
"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't
have
to
be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your
criminal tendencies and—"
"Go to those
head-shrinkers
?"
Hendricks shrugged again. "Have it your way."
Joe laughed. "If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you
make
me go?"
"Violation of Civil Rights."
"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same
thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime."
"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?" Hendricks
walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.
"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New
York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who
aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As
soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices,
but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.
"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can
I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe,
pick a name and go out and rob him.'" He laughed nervously. "If I did
that, I'd be committing a crime myself!"
He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket
again and wiped sweat from his face. "Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of
thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room."
Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the
big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering
him a crime!
Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and
address and memorized it:
John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.
When Hendricks came back, Joe said, "Thanks."
"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything."
When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a
child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid
of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill
at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his
own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the
feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for
him to make a mistake.
Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went.
Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns,
alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited
for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked
up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.
If the words "Let's see a movie" were received in the Brain, they
were discarded. But if the words "Let's roll this guy" were received,
the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene
in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden
microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages
to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in
someone's pocket at forty yards.
Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery
store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place
of business for years.
Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices
placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of
heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had
made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing
poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount
of it would kill a human.
The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the
supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think
of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was
pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place
of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors
that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.
And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance
of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled
that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were
different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and
their aim was infallible.
It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't
fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across
the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously
low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power
required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of
four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of
the devices had cost even less.
And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at
the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked
subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio
or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he
invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH.
If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters
declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he
always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit
anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.
It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and
heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his
subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime
was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.
Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands
of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment
204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.
The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204,
he could see that the wall on either side of it was
new
. That is,
instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls
were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and
the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating
another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by
law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but
evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.
When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to
close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the
bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at
night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.
Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the
crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.
He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old
magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a
crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of
being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.
He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear.
The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run,
but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription,
To
John with Love
. His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy
for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.
Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, "
Thief! Police!
Help!
"
He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a
police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him;
cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.
When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the
metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who
reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.
He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, "Hey. Wake up. Hey!"
He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute
he was still having the nightmare.
"I just saw your doctor," Hendricks said. "He says your treatment is
over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift."
As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.
During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to
think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in
himself.
He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an
after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when
he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months
and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.
Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back.
Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change:
Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now,
even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred.
They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it
altogether.
"Come here and take a look at your public," said Hendricks.
Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered
on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks,
cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day.
But now—another change in him—
He put the emotion into words: "I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I
don't."
"Hero!" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded
like a bull snorting. "You think a successful criminal is a hero? You
stupid—"
He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. "You think
those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're
down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're
glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're
an
ex
-criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be
able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind
of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get
your autograph."
Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did
understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see
the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer
and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero,
what was
he
?
It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all
around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at
once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered
some more.
Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired
old lady with tears in her eyes said, "Thank heaven it was only a
watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son." And
then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total
confusion.
What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather
than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd
would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA
hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an
ex-murderer came out.
In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled
himself with the thought,
People are funny. Who can understand 'em?
Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward
Hendricks and said, "Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll
be able to get a good job now."
"That's why I met you at the hospital," Hendricks said. "I want to
explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're
spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and
I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did
you a favor."
Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely
thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd
done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!
"You robbed Gralewski's apartment," Hendricks said. "Gralewski is a CPA
employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays
the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places
like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you
before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First
Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—"
"Well, it's still a favor."
Hendricks' face hardened. "Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you
stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your
type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best
psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the
treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit
a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an
Ex
."
The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages
were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA
psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe
shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly
watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees
and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly
watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies,
it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply
until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it
wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks
continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it.
You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked
before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in
your head is going to say,
Work! Work!
Exes always get good jobs
because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex
is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the
criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best
thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might
want
to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an
illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of
names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in
his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so
intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in
agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head,
Unlawful to
strike someone except in self-defense
.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him,
the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain
returned, and the mental voice whispered,
Unlawful to curse
.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a
crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell
the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as
that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and
the voice,
Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure
.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been
locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until
the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a
useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a
big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time
you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you
learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner
or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.
"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like
you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal."
"I think it's a lousy, filthy system." Joe's head was still tingling
with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it
was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do
that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he
wanted to do and
now
....
Hendricks laughed. "You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean,
wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for
freaks like yourself, criminals are—"
"Let me out!" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming
the door behind him before the car stopped completely.
He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into
the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a
prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated
him back.
He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and
voice prevented him.
It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.
| Why are there hidden microphones? | [
"The hidden microphones are there because the girl is an FBI agent, looking to take down a mafia boss.",
"The hidden microphones are there to make sure the bartender keeps the drinks watered down.",
"The hidden microphones are there to detect criminal activity, so the CPA can stop it before it starts.",
"The hidden microphones are there as part of a drug sting."
] | 2 | false |
Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to
PICK A CRIME
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in
the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been
smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy
instead of straight.
"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside
Joe's table.
"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a
pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want
you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."
The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed
a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.
"What's the job?"
"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring
it down his throat.
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"
"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the
liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the
glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.
"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"
"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room
and board for a month while they give me a treatment."
It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do.
The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted,
but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix
drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was
on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was
illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.
Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but
had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been
only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.
The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should
take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like
everyone else?"
As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she
saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal
Tendencies.
When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to
pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to
get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and
show it upon request.
"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."
"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score.
When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even
tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a
DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had
several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man,
street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"
On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and
a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.
Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned
across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I
want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get
convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"
The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big
plans, don't you?"
He smiled at her admiration. It
was
something big to plan a crime.
A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting,
blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime
Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials
had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent
crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of
ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime
almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men
in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.
No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill
someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he
wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all
criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock
treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and
a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few
criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could
afford the CPA hospitals.
The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because
it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with
prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.
And, ironically, a man who
did
commit a crime was a sort of hero. He
was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses
to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a
hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the
CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a
man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money.
And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment
was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the
word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.
"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten.
Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."
"Okay. Let's go."
The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door,
down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.
She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped
her blouse and skirt.
He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away,
her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"
"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get
here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."
The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the
few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime
because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the
intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a
crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc.,
were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete
the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the
CPA had once again functioned properly.
The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that
way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"
"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything
wrong."
"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you
know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in
the WSDA!"
Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of
the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even
developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in
those new techniques.
The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my
rank if you were convicted of—"
"Do I have to
make
you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced
toward the girl.
"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey!
Stop it!
"
Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when
she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body,
and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.
The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he
became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it.
There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful
stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police
sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed
in on him.
When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."
He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It
would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture
except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the
controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred
other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.
Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something
wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with
bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something
of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate
hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men
to high political positions were women.
Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly,
likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on
posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only
the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable
man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked
something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police
commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.
"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.
"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted
rape. I confess."
Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached
out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in
that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys.
You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in
alleys!"
Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of
machines on the walls, "
Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when
the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.
" And then the girl's
voice, "
Sorry, buddy. Can't help—
"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was
slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world
had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime.
Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from
committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly
once again. That meant the CPA had once again
prevented
crime, and
the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt
to prevent crimes
by
punishment. If it did, that would be a violation
of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a
button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before.
And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a
DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do
you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know
what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.
"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers.
You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it
works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night
and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe
Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records
of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently
at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not
to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just
hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone,
so they can be the first ones to yell '
Police!
' They'll watch you
because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever
did
prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and
they'd be famous."
"Lay off," Joe said. "I got a headache. That girl—"
Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. "You listen, Joe. This is
interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's
thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from
reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because
it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down
the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no
matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next
to you, standing next to you.
"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that
look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through
your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through
binoculars and—"
"Lay off!"
Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and
it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking
machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.
"And the kids are the worst," Hendricks continued. "They have Junior
CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard
boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through
restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in
public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes
while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look
back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a
block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the
day you die, because you're a freak!"
Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced
the floor.
"And it doesn't end
there
, Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the
object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop
you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll
ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were
a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First
Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop
you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—"
"Okay, goddam it!
Stop it!
"
Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief
and lit a cigarette.
"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too
dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and
criminals ... to
hate
them as nothing has ever been hated before.
Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell
if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where
there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—"
Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. "
Favor
, did you say? The day you
do
me
a favor—"
Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. "Not entirely a favor. I
want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read
books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to," Joe said. "I'm flat broke. Thanks to
your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job."
Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended
them. "I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a
little at a time."
Joe waved the money away. "Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why
don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any
crime."
"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a
violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself."
"Umm."
"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't
have
to
be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your
criminal tendencies and—"
"Go to those
head-shrinkers
?"
Hendricks shrugged again. "Have it your way."
Joe laughed. "If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you
make
me go?"
"Violation of Civil Rights."
"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same
thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime."
"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?" Hendricks
walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.
"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New
York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who
aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As
soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices,
but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.
"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can
I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe,
pick a name and go out and rob him.'" He laughed nervously. "If I did
that, I'd be committing a crime myself!"
He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket
again and wiped sweat from his face. "Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of
thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room."
Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the
big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering
him a crime!
Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and
address and memorized it:
John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.
When Hendricks came back, Joe said, "Thanks."
"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything."
When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a
child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid
of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill
at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his
own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the
feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for
him to make a mistake.
Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went.
Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns,
alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited
for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked
up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.
If the words "Let's see a movie" were received in the Brain, they
were discarded. But if the words "Let's roll this guy" were received,
the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene
in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden
microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages
to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in
someone's pocket at forty yards.
Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery
store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place
of business for years.
Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices
placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of
heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had
made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing
poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount
of it would kill a human.
The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the
supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think
of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was
pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place
of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors
that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.
And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance
of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled
that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were
different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and
their aim was infallible.
It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't
fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across
the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously
low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power
required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of
four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of
the devices had cost even less.
And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at
the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked
subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio
or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he
invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH.
If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters
declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he
always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit
anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.
It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and
heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his
subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime
was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.
Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands
of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment
204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.
The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204,
he could see that the wall on either side of it was
new
. That is,
instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls
were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and
the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating
another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by
law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but
evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.
When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to
close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the
bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at
night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.
Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the
crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.
He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old
magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a
crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of
being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.
He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear.
The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run,
but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription,
To
John with Love
. His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy
for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.
Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, "
Thief! Police!
Help!
"
He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a
police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him;
cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.
When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the
metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who
reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.
He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, "Hey. Wake up. Hey!"
He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute
he was still having the nightmare.
"I just saw your doctor," Hendricks said. "He says your treatment is
over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift."
As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.
During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to
think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in
himself.
He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an
after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when
he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months
and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.
Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back.
Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change:
Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now,
even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred.
They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it
altogether.
"Come here and take a look at your public," said Hendricks.
Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered
on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks,
cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day.
But now—another change in him—
He put the emotion into words: "I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I
don't."
"Hero!" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded
like a bull snorting. "You think a successful criminal is a hero? You
stupid—"
He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. "You think
those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're
down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're
glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're
an
ex
-criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be
able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind
of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get
your autograph."
Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did
understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see
the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer
and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero,
what was
he
?
It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all
around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at
once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered
some more.
Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired
old lady with tears in her eyes said, "Thank heaven it was only a
watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son." And
then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total
confusion.
What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather
than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd
would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA
hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an
ex-murderer came out.
In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled
himself with the thought,
People are funny. Who can understand 'em?
Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward
Hendricks and said, "Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll
be able to get a good job now."
"That's why I met you at the hospital," Hendricks said. "I want to
explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're
spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and
I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did
you a favor."
Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely
thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd
done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!
"You robbed Gralewski's apartment," Hendricks said. "Gralewski is a CPA
employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays
the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places
like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you
before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First
Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—"
"Well, it's still a favor."
Hendricks' face hardened. "Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you
stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your
type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best
psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the
treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit
a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an
Ex
."
The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages
were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA
psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe
shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly
watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees
and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly
watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies,
it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply
until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it
wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks
continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it.
You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked
before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in
your head is going to say,
Work! Work!
Exes always get good jobs
because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex
is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the
criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best
thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might
want
to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an
illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of
names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in
his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so
intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in
agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head,
Unlawful to
strike someone except in self-defense
.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him,
the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain
returned, and the mental voice whispered,
Unlawful to curse
.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a
crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell
the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as
that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and
the voice,
Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure
.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been
locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until
the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a
useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a
big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time
you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you
learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner
or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.
"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like
you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal."
"I think it's a lousy, filthy system." Joe's head was still tingling
with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it
was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do
that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he
wanted to do and
now
....
Hendricks laughed. "You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean,
wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for
freaks like yourself, criminals are—"
"Let me out!" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming
the door behind him before the car stopped completely.
He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into
the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a
prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated
him back.
He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and
voice prevented him.
It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.
| Why is an EX an ideal employee? | [
"An EX is an ideal employee because their criminal backgrounds help them prevent others from committing crimes.",
"An EX is an ideal employee because they have been psychologically trained not to steal.",
"An EX is an ideal employee because their brain implants not only will not let them commit crimes, but they also compel the EX to keep working.",
"An EX is an ideal employee because they can be trusted with any amount of their employer’s money."
] | 2 | true |
Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to
PICK A CRIME
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in
the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been
smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy
instead of straight.
"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside
Joe's table.
"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a
pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want
you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."
The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed
a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.
"What's the job?"
"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring
it down his throat.
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"
"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the
liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the
glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.
"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"
"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room
and board for a month while they give me a treatment."
It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do.
The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted,
but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix
drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was
on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was
illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.
Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but
had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been
only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.
The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should
take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like
everyone else?"
As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she
saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal
Tendencies.
When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to
pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to
get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and
show it upon request.
"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."
"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score.
When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even
tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a
DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had
several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man,
street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"
On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and
a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.
Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned
across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I
want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get
convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"
The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big
plans, don't you?"
He smiled at her admiration. It
was
something big to plan a crime.
A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting,
blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime
Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials
had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent
crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of
ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime
almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men
in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.
No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill
someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he
wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all
criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock
treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and
a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few
criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could
afford the CPA hospitals.
The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because
it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with
prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.
And, ironically, a man who
did
commit a crime was a sort of hero. He
was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses
to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a
hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the
CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a
man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money.
And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment
was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the
word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.
"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten.
Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."
"Okay. Let's go."
The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door,
down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.
She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped
her blouse and skirt.
He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away,
her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"
"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get
here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."
The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the
few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime
because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the
intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a
crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc.,
were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete
the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the
CPA had once again functioned properly.
The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that
way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"
"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything
wrong."
"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you
know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in
the WSDA!"
Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of
the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even
developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in
those new techniques.
The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my
rank if you were convicted of—"
"Do I have to
make
you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced
toward the girl.
"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey!
Stop it!
"
Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when
she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body,
and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.
The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he
became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it.
There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful
stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police
sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed
in on him.
When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."
He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It
would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture
except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the
controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred
other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.
Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something
wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with
bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something
of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate
hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men
to high political positions were women.
Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly,
likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on
posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only
the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable
man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked
something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police
commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.
"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.
"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted
rape. I confess."
Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached
out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in
that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys.
You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in
alleys!"
Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of
machines on the walls, "
Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when
the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.
" And then the girl's
voice, "
Sorry, buddy. Can't help—
"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was
slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world
had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime.
Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from
committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly
once again. That meant the CPA had once again
prevented
crime, and
the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt
to prevent crimes
by
punishment. If it did, that would be a violation
of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a
button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before.
And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a
DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do
you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know
what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.
"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers.
You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it
works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night
and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe
Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records
of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently
at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not
to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just
hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone,
so they can be the first ones to yell '
Police!
' They'll watch you
because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever
did
prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and
they'd be famous."
"Lay off," Joe said. "I got a headache. That girl—"
Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. "You listen, Joe. This is
interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's
thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from
reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because
it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down
the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no
matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next
to you, standing next to you.
"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that
look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through
your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through
binoculars and—"
"Lay off!"
Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and
it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking
machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.
"And the kids are the worst," Hendricks continued. "They have Junior
CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard
boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through
restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in
public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes
while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look
back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a
block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the
day you die, because you're a freak!"
Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced
the floor.
"And it doesn't end
there
, Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the
object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop
you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll
ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were
a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First
Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop
you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—"
"Okay, goddam it!
Stop it!
"
Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief
and lit a cigarette.
"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too
dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and
criminals ... to
hate
them as nothing has ever been hated before.
Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell
if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where
there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—"
Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. "
Favor
, did you say? The day you
do
me
a favor—"
Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. "Not entirely a favor. I
want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read
books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to," Joe said. "I'm flat broke. Thanks to
your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job."
Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended
them. "I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a
little at a time."
Joe waved the money away. "Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why
don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any
crime."
"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a
violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself."
"Umm."
"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't
have
to
be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your
criminal tendencies and—"
"Go to those
head-shrinkers
?"
Hendricks shrugged again. "Have it your way."
Joe laughed. "If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you
make
me go?"
"Violation of Civil Rights."
"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same
thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime."
"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?" Hendricks
walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.
"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New
York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who
aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As
soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices,
but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.
"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can
I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe,
pick a name and go out and rob him.'" He laughed nervously. "If I did
that, I'd be committing a crime myself!"
He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket
again and wiped sweat from his face. "Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of
thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room."
Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the
big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering
him a crime!
Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and
address and memorized it:
John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.
When Hendricks came back, Joe said, "Thanks."
"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything."
When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a
child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid
of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill
at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his
own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the
feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for
him to make a mistake.
Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went.
Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns,
alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited
for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked
up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.
If the words "Let's see a movie" were received in the Brain, they
were discarded. But if the words "Let's roll this guy" were received,
the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene
in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden
microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages
to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in
someone's pocket at forty yards.
Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery
store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place
of business for years.
Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices
placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of
heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had
made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing
poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount
of it would kill a human.
The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the
supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think
of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was
pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place
of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors
that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.
And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance
of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled
that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were
different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and
their aim was infallible.
It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't
fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across
the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously
low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power
required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of
four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of
the devices had cost even less.
And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at
the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked
subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio
or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he
invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH.
If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters
declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he
always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit
anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.
It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and
heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his
subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime
was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.
Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands
of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment
204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.
The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204,
he could see that the wall on either side of it was
new
. That is,
instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls
were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and
the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating
another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by
law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but
evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.
When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to
close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the
bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at
night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.
Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the
crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.
He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old
magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a
crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of
being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.
He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear.
The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run,
but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription,
To
John with Love
. His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy
for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.
Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, "
Thief! Police!
Help!
"
He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a
police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him;
cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.
When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the
metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who
reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.
He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, "Hey. Wake up. Hey!"
He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute
he was still having the nightmare.
"I just saw your doctor," Hendricks said. "He says your treatment is
over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift."
As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.
During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to
think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in
himself.
He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an
after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when
he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months
and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.
Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back.
Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change:
Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now,
even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred.
They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it
altogether.
"Come here and take a look at your public," said Hendricks.
Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered
on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks,
cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day.
But now—another change in him—
He put the emotion into words: "I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I
don't."
"Hero!" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded
like a bull snorting. "You think a successful criminal is a hero? You
stupid—"
He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. "You think
those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're
down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're
glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're
an
ex
-criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be
able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind
of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get
your autograph."
Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did
understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see
the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer
and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero,
what was
he
?
It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all
around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at
once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered
some more.
Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired
old lady with tears in her eyes said, "Thank heaven it was only a
watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son." And
then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total
confusion.
What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather
than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd
would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA
hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an
ex-murderer came out.
In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled
himself with the thought,
People are funny. Who can understand 'em?
Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward
Hendricks and said, "Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll
be able to get a good job now."
"That's why I met you at the hospital," Hendricks said. "I want to
explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're
spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and
I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did
you a favor."
Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely
thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd
done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!
"You robbed Gralewski's apartment," Hendricks said. "Gralewski is a CPA
employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays
the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places
like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you
before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First
Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—"
"Well, it's still a favor."
Hendricks' face hardened. "Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you
stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your
type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best
psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the
treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit
a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an
Ex
."
The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages
were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA
psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe
shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly
watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees
and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly
watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies,
it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply
until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it
wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks
continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it.
You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked
before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in
your head is going to say,
Work! Work!
Exes always get good jobs
because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex
is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the
criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best
thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might
want
to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an
illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of
names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in
his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so
intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in
agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head,
Unlawful to
strike someone except in self-defense
.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him,
the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain
returned, and the mental voice whispered,
Unlawful to curse
.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a
crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell
the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as
that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and
the voice,
Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure
.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been
locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until
the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a
useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a
big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time
you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you
learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner
or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.
"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like
you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal."
"I think it's a lousy, filthy system." Joe's head was still tingling
with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it
was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do
that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he
wanted to do and
now
....
Hendricks laughed. "You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean,
wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for
freaks like yourself, criminals are—"
"Let me out!" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming
the door behind him before the car stopped completely.
He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into
the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a
prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated
him back.
He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and
voice prevented him.
It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.
| How does the CPA prevent crime? | [
"The CPA prevents crime with brain implants that suppress the criminal nature.",
"The CPA prevents crime with large police forces, squad cars, and weapons.",
"The CPA prevents crime through the use of psychological warfare.",
"The CPA prevents crime using constant surveillance, subliminal messaging, public shaming, and various psychological treatments, including lobotomy."
] | 3 | true |
Going straight meant crooked planning. He'd
never make it unless he somehow managed to
PICK A CRIME
By RICHARD R. SMITH
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The girl was tall, wide-eyed and brunette. She had the right curves in
the right places and would have been beautiful if her nose had been
smaller, if her mouth had been larger and if her hair had been wavy
instead of straight.
"Hank said you wanted to see me," she said when she stopped beside
Joe's table.
"Yeah." Joe nodded at the other chair. "Have a seat." He reached into a
pocket, withdrew five ten-dollar bills and handed them to her. "I want
you to do a job for me. It'll only take a few minutes."
The girl counted the money, then placed it in her purse. Joe noticed
a small counterfeit-detector inside the purse before she closed it.
"What's the job?"
"Tell you later." He gulped the remainder of his drink, almost pouring
it down his throat.
"Hey. You trying to make yourself sick?"
"Not sick. Drunk. Been trying to get drunk all afternoon." As the
liquor settled in his stomach, he waited for the warm glow. But the
glow didn't come ... the bartender had watered his drink again.
"Trying to get drunk?" the girl inquired. "Are you crazy?"
"No. It's simple. If I get drunk, I can join the AAA and get free room
and board for a month while they give me a treatment."
It was easy enough to understand, he reflected, but a lot harder to do.
The CPA robot bartenders saw to it that anyone got high if they wanted,
but comparatively few got drunk. Each bartender could not only mix
drinks but could also judge by a man's actions and speech when he was
on the verge of drunkenness. At the proper time—since drunkenness was
illegal—a bartender always watered the drinks.
Joe had tried dozens of times in dozens of bars to outsmart them, but
had always failed. And in all of New York's millions, there had been
only a hundred cases of intoxication during the previous year.
The girl laughed. "If you're that hard up, I don't know if I should
take this fifty or not. Why don't you go out and get a job like
everyone else?"
As an answer, Joe handed her his CPA ID card. She grunted when she
saw the large letters that indicated the owner had Dangerous Criminal
Tendencies.
When she handed the card back, Joe fought an impulse to tear it to
pieces. He'd done that once and gone through a mountain of red tape to
get another—everyone was required by law to carry a CPA ID card and
show it upon request.
"I'm sorry," the girl said. "I didn't know you were a DCT."
"And who'll hire a guy with criminal tendencies? You know the score.
When you try to get a job, they ask to see your ID before they even
tell you if there's an opening or not. If your CPA ID says you're a
DCT, you're SOL and they tell you there's no openings. Oh, I've had
several jobs ... jobs like all DCTs get. I've been a garbage man,
street-cleaner, ditch-digger—"
On the other side of the room, the jukebox came to life with a roar and
a group of teen-agers scrambled to the dance floor.
Feeling safe from hidden microphones because of the uproar, he leaned
across the table and whispered in the girl's ear, "That's what I
want to hire you for. I want you to help me commit a crime. If I get
convicted of a crime, I'll be able to get a good job!"
The girl's lips formed a bright red circle. "Say! You really got big
plans, don't you?"
He smiled at her admiration. It
was
something big to plan a crime.
A civilization weary of murder, robbery, kidnapping, counterfeiting,
blackmail, rape, arson, and drunkenness had originated the CPA—Crime
Prevention Association. There were no longer any prisons—CPA officials
had declared loudly and emphatically that their job was to prevent
crime, not punish it. And prevent it they did, with thousands of
ingenious crime-prevention devices and methods. They had made crime
almost impossible, and during the previous year, only a few hundred men
in the whole country had been convicted of criminal acts.
No crime was ever punished. If a man was smart enough to kill
someone, for instance, he wasn't sent to prison to be punished; he
wasn't punished at all. Instead, he was sent to a hospital where all
criminal tendencies were removed from his mind by psychologists, shock
treatments, encephalographic devices, a form of prefrontal lobotomy and
a dozen other methods. An expensive operation, but since there were few
criminals—only ten in New York during the past year—any city could
afford the CPA hospitals.
The CPA system was, actually, cheaper than previous methods because
it did away with the damage caused by countless crimes; did away with
prisons and their guards, large police forces, squad cars and weapons.
And, ironically, a man who
did
commit a crime was a sort of hero. He
was a hero to the millions of men and women who had suppressed impulses
to kill someone, beat their mates, get drunk, or kick a dog. Not only a
hero, but because of the CPA Treatment, he was—when he left one of the
CPA hospitals—a thoroughly honest and hard-working individual ... a
man who could be trusted with any responsibility, any amount of money.
And therefore, an EX (a convicted criminal who received the treatment
was commonly called an Ex because he was in the strictest sense of the
word an Ex-criminal) ... an Ex was always offered the best jobs.
"Well," the girl said. "I'm honored. Really. But I got a date at ten.
Let's get it over with. You said it'd only take a few minutes."
"Okay. Let's go."
The girl followed him across the room, around tables, through a door,
down a hall, through a back door and into the alley.
She followed him up the dark alley until he turned suddenly and ripped
her blouse and skirt.
He surprised her completely, but when she recovered, she backed away,
her body poised like a wrestler's. "What's the big idea?"
"Scream," Joe said. "Scream as loud as you can, and when the cops get
here, tell 'em I tried to rape you."
The plan was perfect, he told himself. Attempted rape was one of the
few things that was a crime merely because a man attempted it. A crime
because it theoretically inflicted psychological injury upon the
intended victim—and because millions of women voters had voted it a
crime. On the other hand, attempted murder, robbery, kidnapping, etc.,
were not crimes. They weren't crimes because the DCT didn't complete
the act, and if he didn't complete the act, that meant simply that the
CPA had once again functioned properly.
The girl shook her head vigorously. "Sorry, buddy. Can't help you that
way. Why didn't you tell me what you wanted?"
"What's the matter?" Joe complained. "I'm not asking you to do anything
wrong."
"You stupid jerk. What do you think this is—the Middle Ages? Don't you
know almost every woman knows how to defend herself? I'm a sergeant in
the WSDA!"
Joe groaned. The WSDA—Women's Self-Defense Association—a branch of
the CPA. The WSDA gave free instruction in judo and jujitsu, even
developed new techniques of wrestling and instructed only women in
those new techniques.
The girl was still shaking her head. "Can't do it, buddy. I'd lose my
rank if you were convicted of—"
"Do I have to
make
you scream?" Joe inquired tiredly and advanced
toward the girl.
"—and that rank carries a lot of weight. Hey!
Stop it!
"
Joe discovered to his dismay that the girl was telling the truth when
she said she was a sergeant in the WSDA. He felt her hands on his body,
and in the time it takes to blink twice, he was flying through the air.
The alley's concrete floor was hard—it had always been hard, but he
became acutely aware of its lack of resiliency when his head struck it.
There was a wonderful moment while the world was filled with beautiful
stars and streaks of lightning through which he heard distant police
sirens. But the wonderful moment didn't last long and darkness closed
in on him.
When he awoke, a rough voice was saying, "Okay. Snap out of it."
He opened his eyes and recognized the police commissioner's office. It
would be hard not to recognize: the room was large, devoid of furniture
except for a desk and chairs, but the walls were lined with the
controls of television screens, electronic calculators and a hundred
other machines that formed New York's mechanical police force.
Commissioner Hendricks was a remarkable character. There was something
wrong with his glands, and he was a huge, greasy bulk of a man with
bushy eyebrows and a double chin. His steel-gray eyes showed something
of his intelligence and he would have gone far in politics if fate
hadn't made him so ugly, for more than half the voters who elected men
to high political positions were women.
Anyone who knew Hendricks well liked him, for he was a friendly,
likable person. But the millions of women voters who saw his face on
posters and on their TV screens saw only the ugly face and heard only
the harsh voice. The President of the United States was a capable
man, but also a very handsome one, and the fact that a man who looked
something like a bulldog had been elected as New York's police
commissioner was a credit to Hendricks and millions of women voters.
"Where's the girl?" Joe asked.
"I processed her while you were out cold. She left. Joe, you—"
"Okay," Joe said. "I'll save you the trouble. I admit it. Attempted
rape. I confess."
Hendricks smiled. "Sorry, Joe. You missed the boat again." He reached
out and turned a dial on his desk top. "We had a microphone hidden in
that alley. We have a lot of microphones hidden in a lot of alleys.
You'd be surprised at the number of conspiracies that take place in
alleys!"
Joe listened numbly to his voice as it came from one of the hundreds of
machines on the walls, "
Scream. Scream as loud as you can, and when
the cops get here, tell 'em I tried to rape you.
" And then the girl's
voice, "
Sorry, buddy. Can't help—
"
He waved his hand. "Okay. Shut it off. I confess to conspiracy."
Hendricks rose from behind the desk, walked leisurely to where Joe was
slouched in a chair. "Give me your CPA ID."
Joe handed him the card with trembling fingers. He felt as if the world
had collapsed beneath him. Conspiracy to commit a crime wasn't a crime.
Anyone could conspire. And if the conspirators were prevented from
committing a crime, then that meant the CPA had functioned properly
once again. That meant the CPA had once again
prevented
crime, and
the CPA didn't punish crimes or attempted crimes, and it didn't attempt
to prevent crimes
by
punishment. If it did, that would be a violation
of the New Civil Rights.
Hendricks crossed the room, deposited the card in a slot and punched a
button. The machine hummed and a new card appeared.
When Hendricks handed him the new card, Joe saw that the words
DANGEROUS CRIMINAL TENDENCIES were now in red and larger than before.
And, in slightly smaller print, the ID card stated that the owner was a
DCT First Class.
"You've graduated," Hendricks said coldly. "You guys never learn, do
you? Now you're a DCT First Class instead of a Second Class. You know
what that means?"
Hendricks leaned closer until Joe could feel his breath on his face.
"That means your case history will be turned over to the newspapers.
You'll be the hobby of thousands of amateur cops. You know how it
works? It's like this. The Joneses are sitting around tomorrow night
and they're bored. Then Mr. Jones says, 'Let's go watch this Joe
Harper.' So they look up your record—amateur cops always keep records
of First Classes in scrapbooks—and they see that you stop frequently
at Walt's Tavern.
"So they go there and they sit and drink and watch you, trying not
to let you know they're watching you. They watch you all night, just
hoping you'll do something exciting, like trying to kill someone,
so they can be the first ones to yell '
Police!
' They'll watch you
because it's exciting to be an amateur cop, and if they ever
did
prevent you from committing a crime, they'd get a nice reward and
they'd be famous."
"Lay off," Joe said. "I got a headache. That girl—"
Hendricks leaned even closer and glared. "You listen, Joe. This is
interesting. You see, it doesn't stop with Mr. and Mrs. Jones. There's
thousands of people like them. Years ago, they got their kicks from
reading about guys like you, but these days things are dull because
it's rare when anyone commits a crime. So every time you walk down
the street, there'll be at least a dozen of 'em following you, and no
matter where you go, you can bet there'll be some of 'em sitting next
to you, standing next to you.
"During the day, they'll take your picture with their spy cameras that
look like buttons on their coats. At night, they'll peep at you through
your keyhole. Your neighbors across the street will watch you through
binoculars and—"
"Lay off!"
Joe squirmed in the chair. He'd been lectured by Hendricks before and
it was always an unpleasant experience. The huge man was like a talking
machine once he got started, a machine that couldn't be stopped.
"And the kids are the worst," Hendricks continued. "They have Junior
CPA clubs. They keep records of hoodlums like you in little cardboard
boxes. They'll stare at you on the street and stare at you through
restaurant windows while you're eating meals. They'll follow you in
public rest rooms and watch you out of the corners of their eyes
while they wash their little hands, and almost every day when you look
back, you'll see a dozen freckle-faced little boys following you half a
block behind, giggling and gaping at you. They'll follow you until the
day you die, because you're a freak!"
Joe couldn't stand the breath in his face any longer. He rose and paced
the floor.
"And it doesn't end
there
, Joe. It goes on and on. You'll be the
object of every do-gooder and parlor psychologist. Strangers will stop
you on the street and say, 'I'd like to help you, friend.' Then they'll
ask you queer questions like, 'Did your father reject you when you were
a child?' 'Do you like girls?' 'How does it feel to be a DCT First
Class?' And then there'll be the strangers who hate DCTs. They'll stop
you on the street and insult you, call you names, spit on you and—"
"Okay, goddam it!
Stop it!
"
Hendricks stopped, wiped the sweat from his face with a handkerchief
and lit a cigarette.
"I'm doing you a favor, Joe. I'm trying to explain something you're too
dumb to realize by yourself. We've taught everyone to hate crime and
criminals ... to
hate
them as nothing has ever been hated before.
Today a criminal is a freak, an alien. Your life will be a living hell
if you don't leave New York. You should go to some small town where
there aren't many people, or be a hermit, or go to Iceland or—"
Joe eyed the huge man suspiciously. "
Favor
, did you say? The day you
do
me
a favor—"
Hendricks shrugged his shoulders negligently. "Not entirely a favor. I
want to get rid of you. Usually I come up here and sit around and read
books. But guys like you are a nuisance and take up my time."
"I couldn't leave if I wanted to," Joe said. "I'm flat broke. Thanks to
your CPA system, a DCT can't get a decent job."
Hendricks reached into a pocket, withdrew several bills and extended
them. "I'll loan you some money. You can sign an IOU and pay me back a
little at a time."
Joe waved the money away. "Listen, why don't you do me a favor? Why
don't you frame me? If I'm such a nuisance, pin a crime on me—any
crime."
"Can't do it. Convicting a man of a crime he didn't commit is a
violation of Civil Rights and a crime in itself."
"Umm."
"Why don't you take the free psycho treatment? A man doesn't
have
to
be a DCT. With the free treatment, psychologists can remove all your
criminal tendencies and—"
"Go to those
head-shrinkers
?"
Hendricks shrugged again. "Have it your way."
Joe laughed. "If your damned CPA is so all-powerful, why can't you
make
me go?"
"Violation of Civil Rights."
"Damn it, there must be some way you can help me! We both want the same
thing. We both want to see me convicted of a crime."
"How can I help you without committing a crime myself?" Hendricks
walked to his desk, opened a drawer and removed a small black book.
"See this? It contains names and addresses of all the people in New
York who aren't properly protected. Every week we find people who
aren't protected properly—blind spots in our protection devices. As
soon as we find them, we take steps to install anti-robbery devices,
but this is a big city and sometimes it takes days to get the work done.
"In the meantime, any one of these people could be robbed. But what can
I do? I can't hold this book in front of your nose and say, 'Here, Joe,
pick a name and go out and rob him.'" He laughed nervously. "If I did
that, I'd be committing a crime myself!"
He placed the book on the desk top, took a handkerchief from a pocket
again and wiped sweat from his face. "Excuse me a minute. I'm dying of
thirst. There's a water cooler in the next room."
Joe stared at the door to the adjoining office as it closed behind the
big man. Hendricks was—unbelievably—offering him a victim, offering
him a crime!
Almost running to the desk, Joe opened the book, selected a name and
address and memorized it:
John Gralewski, Apt. 204, 2141 Orange St.
When Hendricks came back, Joe said, "Thanks."
"Huh? Thanks for what? I didn't do anything."
When Joe reached the street, he hurried toward the nearest subway. As a
child, he had been frightened of the dark. As a man, he wasn't afraid
of the dark itself, but the darkened city always made him feel ill
at ease. The uneasiness was, more than anything else, caused by his
own imagination. He hated the CPA and at night he couldn't shrug the
feeling that the CPA lurked in every shadow, watching him, waiting for
him to make a mistake.
Imagination or not, the CPA was almost everywhere a person went.
Twenty-four hours a day, millions of microphones hidden in taverns,
alleys, restaurants, subways and every other place imaginable waited
for someone to say the wrong thing. Everything the microphones picked
up was routed to the CPA Brain, a monster electronic calculator.
If the words "Let's see a movie" were received in the Brain, they
were discarded. But if the words "Let's roll this guy" were received,
the message was traced and a police helicopter would be at the scene
in two minutes. And scattered all over the city were not only hidden
microphones, but hidden television cameras that relayed visual messages
to the Brain, and hidden machines that could detect a knife or a gun in
someone's pocket at forty yards.
Every place of business from the largest bank to the smallest grocery
store was absolutely impenetrable. No one had even tried to rob a place
of business for years.
Arson was next to impossible because of the heat-detectors—devices
placed in every building that could detect, radarlike, any intensity of
heat above that caused by a cigarette lighter. Chemical research had
made poisoning someone an impossibility. There were no drugs containing
poison, and while an ant-poison might kill ants, no concentrated amount
of it would kill a human.
The FBI had always been a powerful organization, but under the
supervision of the CPA, it was a scientific colossus and to think
of kidnapping someone or to contemplate the use of narcotics was
pointless. A counterfeiter's career was always short-lived: every place
of business and millions of individuals had small counterfeit-detectors
that could spot a fake and report it directly to the Brain.
And the percentage of crimes had dwindled even more with the appearance
of the robot police officers. Many a criminal in the past had gambled
that he could outshoot a pursuing policeman. But the robots were
different: they weren't flesh and blood. Bullets bounced off them and
their aim was infallible.
It was like a fantastic dream come true. Only the dream wasn't
fantastic any more. With the huge atomic power plants scattered across
the country and supplying endless electrical power at ridiculously
low prices, no endeavor that required power was fantastic. The power
required to operate the CPA devices cost each taxpayer an average of
four dollars a year, and the invention, development and manufacture of
the devices had cost even less.
And the CPA had attacked crime through society itself, striking at
the individual. In every city there were neon signs that blinked
subliminally with the statement, CRIME IS FILTH. Listening to a radio
or watching television, if a person heard station identification, he
invariably heard or saw just below perception the words CRIME IS FILTH.
If he went for a walk or a ride, he saw the endless subliminal posters
declaring CRIME IS FILTH, and if he read a magazine or newspaper he
always found, in those little dead spaces where an editor couldn't fit
anything else, the below-perception words CRIME IS FILTH.
It was monotonous and, after a while, a person looked at the words and
heard them without thinking about them. And they were imprinted on his
subconscious over and over, year after year, until he knew that crime
was the same as filth and that criminals were filthy things.
Except men like Joe Harper. No system is perfect. Along with thousands
of other DCTs, Joe refused to believe it, and when he reached apartment
204 at 2141 Orange Street, he felt as if he'd inherited a gold mine.
The hall was dimly lit, but when he stood before the door numbered 204,
he could see that the wall on either side of it was
new
. That is,
instead of being covered with dust, dirt and stains as the other walls
were, it was clean. The building was an old one, the hall was wide, and
the owner had obviously constructed a wall across the hall, creating
another room. If the owner had reported the new room as required by
law, it would have been wired with CPA burglarproof devices, but
evidently he didn't want to pay for installation.
When Joe entered the cubbyhole, he had to stand to one side in order to
close the door behind him. The place was barely large enough for the
bed, chair and bureau; it was a place where a man could fall down at
night and sleep, but where no normal man could live day after day.
Fearing that someone might detect him before he actually committed the
crime, Joe hurried to the bureau and searched it.
He broke out in a sweat when he found nothing but underwear and old
magazines. If he stole underwear and magazines, it would still be a
crime, but the newspapers would splash satirical headlines. Instead of
being respected as a successful criminal, he would be ridiculed.
He stopped sweating when he found a watch under a pile of underwear.
The crystal was broken, one hand was missing and it wouldn't run,
but—perfection itself—engraved on the back was the inscription,
To
John with Love
. His trial would be a clean-cut one: it would be easy
for the CPA to prove ownership and that a crime had been committed.
Chuckling with joy, he opened the window and shouted, "
Thief! Police!
Help!
"
He waited a few seconds and then ran. When he reached the street, a
police helicopter landed next to him. Strong metal arms seized him;
cameras clicked and recorded the damning evidence.
When Joe was securely handcuffed to a seat inside the helicopter, the
metal police officers rang doorbells. There was a reward for anyone who
reported a crime, but no one admitted shouting the warning.
He was having a nightmare when he heard the voice, "Hey. Wake up. Hey!"
He opened his eyes, saw Hendricks' ugly face and thought for a minute
he was still having the nightmare.
"I just saw your doctor," Hendricks said. "He says your treatment is
over. You can go home now. I thought I'd give you a lift."
As Joe dressed, he searched his mind and tried to find some difference.
During the treatment, he had been unconscious or drugged, unable to
think. Now he could think clearly, but he could find no difference in
himself.
He felt more relaxed than he'd ever felt before, but that could be an
after-effect of all the sedatives he'd been given. And, he noticed when
he looked in the mirror, he was paler. The treatment had taken months
and he had, between operations, been locked in his room.
Hendricks was standing by the window. Joe stared at the massive back.
Deliberately goading his mind, he discovered the biggest change:
Before, the mere sight of the man had aroused an intense hatred. Now,
even when he tried, he succeeded in arousing only a mild hatred.
They had toned down his capacity to hate, but not done away with it
altogether.
"Come here and take a look at your public," said Hendricks.
Joe went to the window. Three stories below, a large crowd had gathered
on the hospital steps: a band, photographers, television trucks,
cameramen and autograph hunters. He'd waited a long time for this day.
But now—another change in him—
He put the emotion into words: "I don't feel like a hero. Funny, but I
don't."
"Hero!" Hendricks laughed and, with his powerful lungs, it sounded
like a bull snorting. "You think a successful criminal is a hero? You
stupid—"
He laughed again and waved a hand at the crowd below them. "You think
those people are down there because they admire what you did? They're
down there waiting for you because they're curious, because they're
glad the CPA caught you, and because they're glad you're an Ex. You're
an
ex
-criminal now, and because of your treatment, you'll never be
able to commit another crime as long as you live. And that's the kind
of guy they admire, so they want to see you, shake your hand and get
your autograph."
Joe didn't understand Hendricks completely, but the part he did
understand he didn't believe. A crowd was waiting for him. He could see
the people with his own eyes. When he left the hospital, they'd cheer
and shout and ask for his autograph. If he wasn't a hero,
what was
he
?
It took half an hour to get through the crowd. Cameras clicked all
around him, a hundred kids asked for his autograph, everyone talked at
once and cheered, smiled, laughed, patted him on the back and cheered
some more.
Only one thing confused him during all the excitement: a white-haired
old lady with tears in her eyes said, "Thank heaven it was only a
watch. Thank heaven you didn't kill someone! God bless you, son." And
then the old lady had handed him a box of fudge and left him in total
confusion.
What she said didn't make sense. If he had killed someone rather
than stealing a watch, he would be even more of a hero and the crowd
would have cheered even louder. He knew: he had stood outside the CPA
hospitals many times and the crowds always cheered louder when an
ex-murderer came out.
In Hendricks' robot-chauffeured car, he ate the fudge and consoled
himself with the thought,
People are funny. Who can understand 'em?
Feeling happy for one of the few times in his life, he turned toward
Hendricks and said, "Thanks for what you did. It turned out great. I'll
be able to get a good job now."
"That's why I met you at the hospital," Hendricks said. "I want to
explain some things. I've known you for a long time and I know you're
spectacularly dumb. You can't figure out some things for yourself and
I don't want you walking around the rest of your life thinking I did
you a favor."
Joe frowned. Few men had ever done him a favor and he had rarely
thanked anyone for anything. And now ... after thanking the man who'd
done him the biggest favor of all, the man was denying it!
"You robbed Gralewski's apartment," Hendricks said. "Gralewski is a CPA
employee and he doesn't live in the apartment you robbed. The CPA pays
the rent for that one and he lives in another. We have a lot of places
like that. You see, it gives us a way to get rid of saps like you
before they do real damage. We use it as a last resort when a DCT First
Class won't take the free psycho treatment or—"
"Well, it's still a favor."
Hendricks' face hardened. "Favor? You wouldn't know a favor if you
stumbled over one. I did it because it's standard procedure for your
type of case. Anyone can—free of charge—have treatment by the best
psychologists. Any DCT can stop being a DCT by simply asking for the
treatment and taking it. But you wouldn't do that. You wanted to commit
a crime, get caught and be a hero ... an
Ex
."
The car passed one of the CPA playgrounds. Boys and girls of all ages
were laughing, squealing with joy as they played games designed by CPA
psychologists to relieve tension. And—despite the treatment, Joe
shuddered when he saw the psychologists standing to one side, quietly
watching the children. The whole world was filled with CPA employees
and volunteer workers. Everywhere you went, it was there, quietly
watching you and analyzing you, and if you showed criminal tendencies,
it watched you even more closely and analyzed you even more deeply
until it took you apart and put you back together again the way it
wanted you to be.
"Being an Ex, you'll get the kind of job you always wanted," Hendricks
continued. "You'll get a good-paying job, but you'll work for it.
You'll work eight hours a day, work harder than you've ever worked
before in your life, because every time you start to loaf, a voice in
your head is going to say,
Work! Work!
Exes always get good jobs
because employers know they're good workers.
"But during these next few days, you'll discover what being an Ex
is like. You see, Joe, the treatment can't possibly take all the
criminal tendencies out of a man. So the treatment does the next best
thing—you'll find a set of laws written in your mind. You might
want
to break one now and then, but you won't be able. I'll give you an
illustration...."
Joe's face reddened as Hendricks proceeded to call him a series of
names. He wanted to smash the fat, grinning face, but the muscles in
his arm froze before it moved it an inch.
And worse than that, a brief pain ripped through his skull. A pain so
intense that, had it lasted a second longer, he would have screamed in
agony. And above the pain, a voice whispered in his head,
Unlawful to
strike someone except in self-defense
.
He opened his mouth to tell Hendricks exactly what he thought of him,
the CPA, the whole world. But the words stayed in his throat, the pain
returned, and the mental voice whispered,
Unlawful to curse
.
He had never heard how the treatment prevented an Ex from committing a
crime. And now that he knew, it didn't seem fair. He decided to tell
the whole story to the newspapers as soon as he could. And as soon as
that decision formed in his mind, his body froze, the pain returned and
the voice,
Unlawful to divulge CPA procedure
.
"See what I mean?" Hendricks asked. "A century ago, you would have been
locked in a prison and taxpayers' money would have supported you until
the day you died. With the CPA system, you're returned to society, a
useful citizen, unable to commit the smallest crime. And you've got a
big hand in your dirty little mind that's going to slap it every time
you get the wrong kind of thought. It'll keep slapping you until you
learn. It might take weeks, months or years, but you'll learn sooner
or later to not even think about doing anything wrong."
He lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring at the car's plush ceiling.
"It's a great system, isn't it, Joe? A true democracy. Even a jerk like
you is free to do what he wants, as long as it's legal."
"I think it's a lousy, filthy system." Joe's head was still tingling
with pain and he felt suffocated. The CPA was everywhere, only now it
was also inside his head, telling him he couldn't do this, couldn't do
that. All his life it had been telling him he couldn't do things he
wanted to do and
now
....
Hendricks laughed. "You'll change your opinion. We live in a clean,
wonderful world, Joe. A world of happy, healthy people. Except for
freaks like yourself, criminals are—"
"Let me out!" Joe grabbed at the door and was on the sidewalk, slamming
the door behind him before the car stopped completely.
He stared at the car as it pulled away from the curb and glided into
the stream of traffic again. He realized he was a prisoner ... a
prisoner inside his own body ... made a prisoner by a world that hated
him back.
He wanted to spit his contempt, but the increasingly familiar pain and
voice prevented him.
It was unlawful to spit on a sidewalk.
| Why does Hendricks help Joe? | [
"Hendricks knows becoming an EX is the way for Joe to get an excellent job.",
"Hendricks helps Joe because they are friends.",
"Hendricks knows Joe will not go for the free treatment.",
"Hendricks thinks he can also become an EX and get an excellent job if he helps Joe."
] | 2 | true |
The Snowball Effect
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Tack power drives on a sewing circle and
you can needle the world into the darndest mess!
"All right," I said, "what
is
sociology good for?"
Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right
then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him
were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be
signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered
the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president
to see to it that the university made money. I had a job to do, and I
meant to do it.
He bit off each word with great restraint: "Sociology is the study of
social institutions, Mr. Halloway."
I tried to make him understand my position. "Look, it's the big-money
men who are supposed to be contributing to the support of this college.
To them, sociology sounds like socialism—nothing can sound worse than
that—and an institution is where they put Aunt Maggy when she began
collecting Wheaties in a stamp album. We can't appeal to them that way.
Come on now." I smiled condescendingly, knowing it would irritate him.
"What are you doing that's worth anything?"
He glared at me, his white hair bristling and his nostrils dilated
like a war horse about to whinny. I can say one thing for them—these
scientists and professors always keep themselves well under control.
He had a book in his hand and I was expecting him to throw it, but he
spoke instead:
"This department's analysis of institutional accretion, by the use of
open system mathematics, has been recognized as an outstanding and
valuable contribution to—"
The words were impressive, whatever they meant, but this still didn't
sound like anything that would pull in money. I interrupted, "Valuable
in what way?"
He sat down on the edge of his desk thoughtfully, apparently recovering
from the shock of being asked to produce something solid for his
position, and ran his eyes over the titles of the books that lined his
office walls.
"Well, sociology has been valuable to business in initiating worker
efficiency and group motivation studies, which they now use in
management decisions. And, of course, since the depression, Washington
has been using sociological studies of employment, labor and standards
of living as a basis for its general policies of—"
I stopped him with both raised hands. "Please, Professor Caswell! That
would hardly be a recommendation. Washington, the New Deal and the
present Administration are somewhat touchy subjects to the men I have
to deal with. They consider its value debatable, if you know what I
mean. If they got the idea that sociology professors are giving advice
and guidance—No, we have to stick to brass tacks and leave Washington
out of this. What, specifically, has the work of this specific
department done that would make it as worthy to receive money as—say,
a heart disease research fund?"
He began to tap the corner of his book absently on the desk, watching
me. "Fundamental research doesn't show immediate effects, Mr. Halloway,
but its value is recognized."
I smiled and took out my pipe. "All right, tell me about it. Maybe I'll
recognize its value."
Prof. Caswell smiled back tightly. He knew his department was at stake.
The other departments were popular with donors and pulled in gift
money by scholarships and fellowships, and supported their professors
and graduate students by research contracts with the government
and industry. Caswell had to show a way to make his own department
popular—or else. I couldn't fire him directly, of course, but there
are ways of doing it indirectly.
He laid down his book and ran a hand over his ruffled hair.
"Institutions—organizations, that is—" his voice became more
resonant; like most professors, when he had to explain something he
instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began
to deliver an essay—"have certain tendencies built into the way they
happen to have been organized, which cause them to expand or contract
without reference to the needs they were founded to serve."
He was becoming flushed with the pleasure of explaining his subject.
"All through the ages, it has been a matter of wonder and dismay
to men that a simple organization—such as a church to worship in,
or a delegation of weapons to a warrior class merely for defense
against an outside enemy—will either grow insensately and extend its
control until it is a tyranny over their whole lives, or, like other
organizations set up to serve a vital need, will tend to repeatedly
dwindle and vanish, and have to be painfully rebuilt.
"The reason can be traced to little quirks in the way they were
organized, a matter of positive and negative power feedbacks. Such
simple questions as, 'Is there a way a holder of authority in this
organization can use the power available to him to increase his power?'
provide the key. But it still could not be handled until the complex
questions of interacting motives and long-range accumulations of minor
effects could somehow be simplified and formulated. In working on the
problem, I found that the mathematics of open system, as introduced
to biology by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and George Kreezer, could be
used as a base that would enable me to develop a specifically social
mathematics, expressing the human factors of intermeshing authority and
motives in simple formulas.
"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the
amount of growth and period of life of any organization. The UN, to
choose an unfortunate example, is a shrinker type organization. Its
monetary support is not in the hands of those who personally benefit
by its governmental activities, but, instead, in the hands of those
who would personally lose by any extension and encroachment of its
authority on their own. Yet by the use of formula analysis—"
"That's theory," I said. "How about proof?"
"My equations are already being used in the study of limited-size
Federal corporations. Washington—"
I held up my palm again. "Please, not that nasty word again. I mean,
where else has it been put into operation? Just a simple demonstration,
something to show that it works, that's all."
He looked away from me thoughtfully, picked up the book and began to
tap it on the desk again. It had some unreadable title and his name on
it in gold letters. I got the distinct impression again that he was
repressing an urge to hit me with it.
He spoke quietly. "All right, I'll give you a demonstration. Are you
willing to wait six months?"
"Certainly, if you can show me something at the end of that time."
Reminded of time, I glanced at my watch and stood up.
"Could we discuss this over lunch?" he asked.
"I wouldn't mind hearing more, but I'm having lunch with some
executors of a millionaire's will. They have to be convinced that by,
'furtherance of research into human ills,' he meant that the money
should go to research fellowships for postgraduate biologists at the
university, rather than to a medical foundation."
"I see you have your problems, too," Caswell said, conceding me
nothing. He extended his hand with a chilly smile. "Well, good
afternoon, Mr. Halloway. I'm glad we had this talk."
I shook hands and left him standing there, sure of his place in the
progress of science and the respect of his colleagues, yet seething
inside because I, the president and dean, had boorishly demanded that
he produce something tangible.
I frankly didn't give a hoot if he blew his lid. My job isn't easy.
For a crumb of favorable publicity and respect in the newspapers and
an annual ceremony in a silly costume, I spend the rest of the year
going hat in hand, asking politely for money at everyone's door,
like a well-dressed panhandler, and trying to manage the university
on the dribble I get. As far as I was concerned, a department had to
support itself or be cut down to what student tuition pays for, which
is a handful of over-crowded courses taught by an assistant lecturer.
Caswell had to make it work or get out.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to hear what he was
going to do for a demonstration.
At lunch, three days later, while we were waiting for our order, he
opened a small notebook. "Ever hear of feedback effects?"
"Not enough to have it clear."
"You know the snowball effect, though."
"Sure, start a snowball rolling downhill and it grows."
"Well, now—" He wrote a short line of symbols on a blank page and
turned the notebook around for me to inspect it. "Here's the formula
for the snowball process. It's the basic general growth formula—covers
everything."
It was a row of little symbols arranged like an algebra equation. One
was a concentric spiral going up, like a cross-section of a snowball
rolling in snow. That was a growth sign.
I hadn't expected to understand the equation, but it was almost as
clear as a sentence. I was impressed and slightly intimidated by it.
He had already explained enough so that I knew that, if he was right,
here was the growth of the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, the
conquests of Alexander and the spread of the smoking habit and the
change and rigidity of the unwritten law of styles.
"Is it really as simple as that?" I asked.
"You notice," he said, "that when it becomes too heavy for the cohesion
strength of snow, it breaks apart. Now in human terms—"
The chops and mashed potatoes and peas arrived.
"Go on," I urged.
He was deep in the symbology of human motives and the equations of
human behavior in groups. After running through a few different
types of grower and shrinker type organizations, we came back to the
snowball, and decided to run the test by making something grow.
"You add the motives," he said, "and the equation will translate them
into organization."
"How about a good selfish reason for the ins to drag others into the
group—some sort of bounty on new members, a cut of their membership
fee?" I suggested uncertainly, feeling slightly foolish. "And maybe a
reason why the members would lose if any of them resigned, and some
indirect way they could use to force each other to stay in."
"The first is the chain letter principle," he nodded. "I've got
that. The other...." He put the symbols through some mathematical
manipulation so that a special grouping appeared in the middle of the
equation. "That's it."
Since I seemed to have the right idea, I suggested some more, and he
added some, and juggled them around in different patterns. We threw
out a few that would have made the organization too complicated, and
finally worked out an idyllically simple and deadly little organization
setup where joining had all the temptation of buying a sweepstakes
ticket, going in deeper was as easy as hanging around a race track, and
getting out was like trying to pull free from a Malayan thumb trap. We
put our heads closer together and talked lower, picking the best place
for the demonstration.
"Abington?"
"How about Watashaw? I have some student sociological surveys of it
already. We can pick a suitable group from that."
"This demonstration has got to be convincing. We'd better pick a little
group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow."
"There should be a suitable club—"
Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and
with him the President of the University, leaning across the table
toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones
over something they were writing in a notebook.
That was us.
"Ladies," said the skinny female chairman of the Watashaw Sewing
Circle. "Today we have guests." She signaled for us to rise, and we
stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. "Professor Caswell, and
Professor Smith." (My alias.) "They are making a survey of the methods
and duties of the clubs of Watashaw."
We sat down to another ripple of applause and slightly wider smiles,
and then the meeting of the Watashaw Sewing Circle began. In five
minutes I began to feel sleepy.
There were only about thirty people there, and it was a small room, not
the halls of Congress, but they discussed their business of collecting
and repairing second hand clothing for charity with the same endless
boring parliamentary formality.
I pointed out to Caswell the member I thought would be the natural
leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious
gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a
half doze while Caswell stayed awake beside me and wrote in his
notebook. After a while the resonant voice roused me to attention for
a moment. It was the tall woman holding the floor over some collective
dereliction of the club. She was being scathing.
I nudged Caswell and murmured, "Did you fix it so that a shover has a
better chance of getting into office than a non-shover?"
"I think there's a way they could find for it," Caswell whispered back,
and went to work on his equation again. "Yes, several ways to bias the
elections."
"Good. Point them out tactfully to the one you select. Not as if
she'd use such methods, but just as an example of the reason why only
she
can be trusted with initiating the change. Just mention all the
personal advantages an unscrupulous person could have."
He nodded, keeping a straight and sober face as if we were exchanging
admiring remarks about the techniques of clothes repairing, instead of
conspiring.
After the meeting, Caswell drew the tall woman in the green suit
aside and spoke to her confidentially, showing her the diagram of
organization we had drawn up. I saw the responsive glitter in the
woman's eyes and knew she was hooked.
We left the diagram of organization and our typed copy of the new
bylaws with her and went off soberly, as befitted two social science
experimenters. We didn't start laughing until our car passed the town
limits and began the climb for University Heights.
If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing
circle more growth drives than the Roman Empire.
Four months later I had time out from a very busy schedule to wonder
how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head
in. He looked up from a student research paper he was correcting.
"Caswell, about that sewing club business—I'm beginning to feel the
suspense. Could I get an advance report on how it's coming?"
"I'm not following it. We're supposed to let it run the full six
months."
"But I'm curious. Could I get in touch with that woman—what's her
name?"
"Searles. Mrs. George Searles."
"Would that change the results?"
"Not in the slightest. If you want to graph the membership rise, it
should be going up in a log curve, probably doubling every so often."
I grinned. "If it's not rising, you're fired."
He grinned back. "If it's not rising, you won't have to fire me—I'll
burn my books and shoot myself."
I returned to my office and put in a call to Watashaw.
While I was waiting for the phone to be answered, I took a piece of
graph paper and ruled it off into six sections, one for each month.
After the phone had rung in the distance for a long time, a servant
answered with a bored drawl:
"Mrs. Searles' residence."
I picked up a red gummed star and licked it.
"Mrs. Searles, please."
"She's not in just now. Could I take a message?"
I placed the star at the thirty line in the beginning of the first
section. Thirty members they'd started with.
"No, thanks. Could you tell me when she'll be back?"
"Not until dinner. She's at the meetin'."
"The sewing club?" I asked.
"No, sir, not that thing. There isn't any Sewing club any more, not
for a long time. She's at the Civic Welfare meeting."
Somehow I hadn't expected anything like that.
"Thank you," I said and hung up, and after a moment noticed I was
holding a box of red gummed stars in my hand. I closed it and put it
down on top of the graph of membership in the sewing circle. No more
members....
Poor Caswell. The bet between us was ironclad. He wouldn't let me
back down on it even if I wanted to. He'd probably quit before I put
through the first slow move to fire him. His professional pride would
be shattered, sunk without a trace. I remembered what he said about
shooting himself. It had seemed funny to both of us at the time,
but.... What a mess
that
would make for the university.
I had to talk to Mrs. Searles. Perhaps there was some outside reason
why the club had disbanded. Perhaps it had not just died.
I called back. "This is Professor Smith," I said, giving the alias I
had used before. "I called a few minutes ago. When did you say Mrs.
Searles will return?"
"About six-thirty or seven o'clock."
Five hours to wait.
And what if Caswell asked me what I had found out in the meantime? I
didn't want to tell him anything until I had talked it over with that
woman Searles first.
"Where is this Civic Welfare meeting?"
She told me.
Five minutes later, I was in my car, heading for Watashaw, driving
considerably faster than my usual speed and keeping a careful watch for
highway patrol cars as the speedometer climbed.
The town meeting hall and theater was a big place, probably with lots
of small rooms for different clubs. I went in through the center door
and found myself in the huge central hall where some sort of rally was
being held. A political-type rally—you know, cheers and chants, with
bunting already down on the floor, people holding banners, and plenty
of enthusiasm and excitement in the air. Someone was making a speech up
on the platform. Most of the people there were women.
I wondered how the Civic Welfare League could dare hold its meeting at
the same time as a political rally that could pull its members away.
The group with Mrs. Searles was probably holding a shrunken and almost
memberless meeting somewhere in an upper room.
There probably was a side door that would lead upstairs.
While I glanced around, a pretty girl usher put a printed bulletin in
my hand, whispering, "Here's one of the new copies." As I attempted to
hand it back, she retreated. "Oh, you can keep it. It's the new one.
Everyone's supposed to have it. We've just printed up six thousand
copies to make sure there'll be enough to last."
The tall woman on the platform had been making a driving, forceful
speech about some plans for rebuilding Watashaw's slum section. It
began to penetrate my mind dimly as I glanced down at the bulletin in
my hands.
"Civic Welfare League of Watashaw. The United Organization of Church
and Secular Charities." That's what it said. Below began the rules of
membership.
I looked up. The speaker, with a clear, determined voice and conscious,
forceful gestures, had entered the homestretch of her speech, an appeal
to the civic pride of all citizens of Watashaw.
"With a bright and glorious future—potentially without poor and
without uncared-for ill—potentially with no ugliness, no vistas which
are not beautiful—the best people in the best planned town in the
country—the jewel of the United States."
She paused and then leaned forward intensely, striking her clenched
hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis.
"
All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit!
"
I finally recognized Mrs. Searles, as an answering sudden blast of
sound half deafened me. The crowd was chanting at the top of its lungs:
"Recruit! Recruit!"
Mrs. Searles stood still at the speaker's table and behind her,
seated in a row of chairs, was a group that was probably the board of
directors. It was mostly women, and the women began to look vaguely
familiar, as if they could be members of the sewing circle.
I put my lips close to the ear of the pretty usher while I turned over
the stiff printed bulletin on a hunch. "How long has the League been
organized?" On the back of the bulletin was a constitution.
She was cheering with the crowd, her eyes sparkling. "I don't know,"
she answered between cheers. "I only joined two days ago. Isn't it
wonderful?"
I went into the quiet outer air and got into my car with my skin
prickling. Even as I drove away, I could hear them. They were singing
some kind of organization song with the tune of "Marching through
Georgia."
Even at the single glance I had given it, the constitution looked
exactly like the one we had given the Watashaw Sewing Circle.
All I told Caswell when I got back was that the sewing circle had
changed its name and the membership seemed to be rising.
Next day, after calling Mrs. Searles, I placed some red stars on my
graph for the first three months. They made a nice curve, rising more
steeply as it reached the fourth month. They had picked up their first
increase in membership simply by amalgamating with all the other types
of charity organizations in Watashaw, changing the club name with each
fusion, but keeping the same constitution—the constitution with the
bright promise of advantages as long as there were always new members
being brought in.
By the fifth month, the League had added a mutual baby-sitting service
and had induced the local school board to add a nursery school to the
town service, so as to free more women for League activity. But charity
must have been completely organized by then, and expansion had to be in
other directions.
Some real estate agents evidently had been drawn into the whirlpool
early, along with their ideas. The slum improvement plans began to
blossom and take on a tinge of real estate planning later in the month.
The first day of the sixth month, a big two page spread appeared in
the local paper of a mass meeting which had approved a full-fledged
scheme for slum clearance of Watashaw's shack-town section, plus plans
for rehousing, civic building, and rezoning.
And
good prospects
for attracting some new industries to the town, industries which had
already been contacted and seemed interested by the privileges offered.
And with all this, an arrangement for securing and distributing to the
club members
alone
most of the profit that would come to the town in
the form of a rise in the price of building sites and a boom in the
building industry. The profit distributing arrangement was the same one
that had been built into the organization plan for the distribution
of the small profits of membership fees and honorary promotions. It
was becoming an openly profitable business. Membership was rising more
rapidly now.
By the second week of the sixth month, news appeared in the local paper
that the club had filed an application to incorporate itself as the
Watashaw Mutual Trade and Civic Development Corporation, and all the
local real estate promoters had finished joining en masse. The Mutual
Trade part sounded to me as if the Chamber of Commerce was on the point
of being pulled in with them, ideas, ambitions and all.
I chuckled while reading the next page of the paper, on which a local
politician was reported as having addressed the club with a long
flowery oration on their enterprise, charity, and civic spirit. He
had been made an honorary member. If he allowed himself to be made a
full
member with its contractual obligations and its lures, if the
politicians went into this, too....
I laughed, filing the newspaper with the other documents on the
Watashaw test. These proofs would fascinate any businessman with the
sense to see where his bread was buttered. A businessman is constantly
dealing with organizations, including his own, and finding them either
inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to
grasp them with. Gratitude alone would bring money into the university
in carload lots.
The end of the sixth month came. The test was over and the end reports
were spectacular. Caswell's formulas were proven to the hilt.
After reading the last newspaper reports, I called him up.
"Perfect, Wilt,
perfect
! I can use this Watashaw thing to get you so
many fellowships and scholarships and grants for your department that
you'll think it's snowing money!"
He answered somewhat disinterestedly, "I've been busy working with
students on their research papers and marking tests—not following the
Watashaw business at all, I'm afraid. You say the demonstration went
well and you're satisfied?"
He was definitely putting on a chill. We were friends now, but
obviously he was still peeved whenever he was reminded that I had
doubted that his theory could work. And he was using its success to
rub my nose in the realization that I had been wrong. A man with a
string of degrees after his name is just as human as anyone else. I had
needled him pretty hard that first time.
"I'm satisfied," I acknowledged. "I was wrong. The formulas work
beautifully. Come over and see my file of documents on it if you want a
boost for your ego. Now let's see the formula for stopping it."
He sounded cheerful again. "I didn't complicate that organization
with negatives. I wanted it to
grow
. It falls apart naturally when
it stops growing for more than two months. It's like the great stock
boom before an economic crash. Everyone in it is prosperous as long as
the prices just keep going up and new buyers come into the market, but
they all knew what would happen if it stopped growing. You remember, we
built in as one of the incentives that the members know they are going
to lose if membership stops growing. Why, if I tried to stop it now,
they'd cut my throat."
I remembered the drive and frenzy of the crowd in the one early meeting
I had seen. They probably would.
"No," he continued. "We'll just let it play out to the end of its
tether and die of old age."
"When will that be?"
"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only
so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing."
The graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell
must have made some provision for—
"You underestimate their ingenuity," I said into the phone. "Since they
wanted to expand, they didn't stick to sewing. They went from general
charity to social welfare schemes to something that's pretty close to
an incorporated government. The name is now the Watashaw Mutual Trade
and Civic Development Corporation, and they're filing an application
to change it to Civic Property Pool and Social Dividend, membership
contractual, open to all. That social dividend sounds like a Technocrat
climbed on the band wagon, eh?"
While I spoke, I carefully added another red star to the curve above
the thousand member level, checking with the newspaper that still lay
open on my desk. The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now,
growing more rapidly with each increase.
"Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula
say it will stop?" I asked.
"When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only
so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town."
"They've opened a branch office in New York," I said carefully into the
phone, a few weeks later.
With my pencil, very carefully, I extended the membership curve from
where it was then.
After the next doubling, the curve went almost straight up and off the
page.
Allowing for a lag of contagion from one nation to another, depending
on how much their citizens intermingled, I'd give the rest of the world
about twelve years.
There was a long silence while Caswell probably drew the same graph
in his own mind. Then he laughed weakly. "Well, you asked me for a
demonstration."
That was as good an answer as any. We got together and had lunch in a
bar, if you can call it lunch. The movement we started will expand by
hook or by crook, by seduction or by bribery or by propaganda or by
conquest, but it will expand. And maybe a total world government will
be a fine thing—until it hits the end of its rope in twelve years or
so.
What happens then, I don't know.
But I don't want anyone to pin that on me. From now on, if anyone asks
me, I've never heard of Watashaw.
| Why doesn't Caswell expect the Watashaw sewing club to grow astronomically? | [
"Caswell has underestimated the female population of Watashaw.",
"Caswell has underestimated the popularity of sewing.",
"Caswell has underestimated the ingenuity of the club members.",
"Caswell thinks only women enjoy sewing."
] | 2 | false |
The Snowball Effect
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Tack power drives on a sewing circle and
you can needle the world into the darndest mess!
"All right," I said, "what
is
sociology good for?"
Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right
then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him
were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be
signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered
the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president
to see to it that the university made money. I had a job to do, and I
meant to do it.
He bit off each word with great restraint: "Sociology is the study of
social institutions, Mr. Halloway."
I tried to make him understand my position. "Look, it's the big-money
men who are supposed to be contributing to the support of this college.
To them, sociology sounds like socialism—nothing can sound worse than
that—and an institution is where they put Aunt Maggy when she began
collecting Wheaties in a stamp album. We can't appeal to them that way.
Come on now." I smiled condescendingly, knowing it would irritate him.
"What are you doing that's worth anything?"
He glared at me, his white hair bristling and his nostrils dilated
like a war horse about to whinny. I can say one thing for them—these
scientists and professors always keep themselves well under control.
He had a book in his hand and I was expecting him to throw it, but he
spoke instead:
"This department's analysis of institutional accretion, by the use of
open system mathematics, has been recognized as an outstanding and
valuable contribution to—"
The words were impressive, whatever they meant, but this still didn't
sound like anything that would pull in money. I interrupted, "Valuable
in what way?"
He sat down on the edge of his desk thoughtfully, apparently recovering
from the shock of being asked to produce something solid for his
position, and ran his eyes over the titles of the books that lined his
office walls.
"Well, sociology has been valuable to business in initiating worker
efficiency and group motivation studies, which they now use in
management decisions. And, of course, since the depression, Washington
has been using sociological studies of employment, labor and standards
of living as a basis for its general policies of—"
I stopped him with both raised hands. "Please, Professor Caswell! That
would hardly be a recommendation. Washington, the New Deal and the
present Administration are somewhat touchy subjects to the men I have
to deal with. They consider its value debatable, if you know what I
mean. If they got the idea that sociology professors are giving advice
and guidance—No, we have to stick to brass tacks and leave Washington
out of this. What, specifically, has the work of this specific
department done that would make it as worthy to receive money as—say,
a heart disease research fund?"
He began to tap the corner of his book absently on the desk, watching
me. "Fundamental research doesn't show immediate effects, Mr. Halloway,
but its value is recognized."
I smiled and took out my pipe. "All right, tell me about it. Maybe I'll
recognize its value."
Prof. Caswell smiled back tightly. He knew his department was at stake.
The other departments were popular with donors and pulled in gift
money by scholarships and fellowships, and supported their professors
and graduate students by research contracts with the government
and industry. Caswell had to show a way to make his own department
popular—or else. I couldn't fire him directly, of course, but there
are ways of doing it indirectly.
He laid down his book and ran a hand over his ruffled hair.
"Institutions—organizations, that is—" his voice became more
resonant; like most professors, when he had to explain something he
instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began
to deliver an essay—"have certain tendencies built into the way they
happen to have been organized, which cause them to expand or contract
without reference to the needs they were founded to serve."
He was becoming flushed with the pleasure of explaining his subject.
"All through the ages, it has been a matter of wonder and dismay
to men that a simple organization—such as a church to worship in,
or a delegation of weapons to a warrior class merely for defense
against an outside enemy—will either grow insensately and extend its
control until it is a tyranny over their whole lives, or, like other
organizations set up to serve a vital need, will tend to repeatedly
dwindle and vanish, and have to be painfully rebuilt.
"The reason can be traced to little quirks in the way they were
organized, a matter of positive and negative power feedbacks. Such
simple questions as, 'Is there a way a holder of authority in this
organization can use the power available to him to increase his power?'
provide the key. But it still could not be handled until the complex
questions of interacting motives and long-range accumulations of minor
effects could somehow be simplified and formulated. In working on the
problem, I found that the mathematics of open system, as introduced
to biology by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and George Kreezer, could be
used as a base that would enable me to develop a specifically social
mathematics, expressing the human factors of intermeshing authority and
motives in simple formulas.
"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the
amount of growth and period of life of any organization. The UN, to
choose an unfortunate example, is a shrinker type organization. Its
monetary support is not in the hands of those who personally benefit
by its governmental activities, but, instead, in the hands of those
who would personally lose by any extension and encroachment of its
authority on their own. Yet by the use of formula analysis—"
"That's theory," I said. "How about proof?"
"My equations are already being used in the study of limited-size
Federal corporations. Washington—"
I held up my palm again. "Please, not that nasty word again. I mean,
where else has it been put into operation? Just a simple demonstration,
something to show that it works, that's all."
He looked away from me thoughtfully, picked up the book and began to
tap it on the desk again. It had some unreadable title and his name on
it in gold letters. I got the distinct impression again that he was
repressing an urge to hit me with it.
He spoke quietly. "All right, I'll give you a demonstration. Are you
willing to wait six months?"
"Certainly, if you can show me something at the end of that time."
Reminded of time, I glanced at my watch and stood up.
"Could we discuss this over lunch?" he asked.
"I wouldn't mind hearing more, but I'm having lunch with some
executors of a millionaire's will. They have to be convinced that by,
'furtherance of research into human ills,' he meant that the money
should go to research fellowships for postgraduate biologists at the
university, rather than to a medical foundation."
"I see you have your problems, too," Caswell said, conceding me
nothing. He extended his hand with a chilly smile. "Well, good
afternoon, Mr. Halloway. I'm glad we had this talk."
I shook hands and left him standing there, sure of his place in the
progress of science and the respect of his colleagues, yet seething
inside because I, the president and dean, had boorishly demanded that
he produce something tangible.
I frankly didn't give a hoot if he blew his lid. My job isn't easy.
For a crumb of favorable publicity and respect in the newspapers and
an annual ceremony in a silly costume, I spend the rest of the year
going hat in hand, asking politely for money at everyone's door,
like a well-dressed panhandler, and trying to manage the university
on the dribble I get. As far as I was concerned, a department had to
support itself or be cut down to what student tuition pays for, which
is a handful of over-crowded courses taught by an assistant lecturer.
Caswell had to make it work or get out.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to hear what he was
going to do for a demonstration.
At lunch, three days later, while we were waiting for our order, he
opened a small notebook. "Ever hear of feedback effects?"
"Not enough to have it clear."
"You know the snowball effect, though."
"Sure, start a snowball rolling downhill and it grows."
"Well, now—" He wrote a short line of symbols on a blank page and
turned the notebook around for me to inspect it. "Here's the formula
for the snowball process. It's the basic general growth formula—covers
everything."
It was a row of little symbols arranged like an algebra equation. One
was a concentric spiral going up, like a cross-section of a snowball
rolling in snow. That was a growth sign.
I hadn't expected to understand the equation, but it was almost as
clear as a sentence. I was impressed and slightly intimidated by it.
He had already explained enough so that I knew that, if he was right,
here was the growth of the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, the
conquests of Alexander and the spread of the smoking habit and the
change and rigidity of the unwritten law of styles.
"Is it really as simple as that?" I asked.
"You notice," he said, "that when it becomes too heavy for the cohesion
strength of snow, it breaks apart. Now in human terms—"
The chops and mashed potatoes and peas arrived.
"Go on," I urged.
He was deep in the symbology of human motives and the equations of
human behavior in groups. After running through a few different
types of grower and shrinker type organizations, we came back to the
snowball, and decided to run the test by making something grow.
"You add the motives," he said, "and the equation will translate them
into organization."
"How about a good selfish reason for the ins to drag others into the
group—some sort of bounty on new members, a cut of their membership
fee?" I suggested uncertainly, feeling slightly foolish. "And maybe a
reason why the members would lose if any of them resigned, and some
indirect way they could use to force each other to stay in."
"The first is the chain letter principle," he nodded. "I've got
that. The other...." He put the symbols through some mathematical
manipulation so that a special grouping appeared in the middle of the
equation. "That's it."
Since I seemed to have the right idea, I suggested some more, and he
added some, and juggled them around in different patterns. We threw
out a few that would have made the organization too complicated, and
finally worked out an idyllically simple and deadly little organization
setup where joining had all the temptation of buying a sweepstakes
ticket, going in deeper was as easy as hanging around a race track, and
getting out was like trying to pull free from a Malayan thumb trap. We
put our heads closer together and talked lower, picking the best place
for the demonstration.
"Abington?"
"How about Watashaw? I have some student sociological surveys of it
already. We can pick a suitable group from that."
"This demonstration has got to be convincing. We'd better pick a little
group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow."
"There should be a suitable club—"
Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and
with him the President of the University, leaning across the table
toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones
over something they were writing in a notebook.
That was us.
"Ladies," said the skinny female chairman of the Watashaw Sewing
Circle. "Today we have guests." She signaled for us to rise, and we
stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. "Professor Caswell, and
Professor Smith." (My alias.) "They are making a survey of the methods
and duties of the clubs of Watashaw."
We sat down to another ripple of applause and slightly wider smiles,
and then the meeting of the Watashaw Sewing Circle began. In five
minutes I began to feel sleepy.
There were only about thirty people there, and it was a small room, not
the halls of Congress, but they discussed their business of collecting
and repairing second hand clothing for charity with the same endless
boring parliamentary formality.
I pointed out to Caswell the member I thought would be the natural
leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious
gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a
half doze while Caswell stayed awake beside me and wrote in his
notebook. After a while the resonant voice roused me to attention for
a moment. It was the tall woman holding the floor over some collective
dereliction of the club. She was being scathing.
I nudged Caswell and murmured, "Did you fix it so that a shover has a
better chance of getting into office than a non-shover?"
"I think there's a way they could find for it," Caswell whispered back,
and went to work on his equation again. "Yes, several ways to bias the
elections."
"Good. Point them out tactfully to the one you select. Not as if
she'd use such methods, but just as an example of the reason why only
she
can be trusted with initiating the change. Just mention all the
personal advantages an unscrupulous person could have."
He nodded, keeping a straight and sober face as if we were exchanging
admiring remarks about the techniques of clothes repairing, instead of
conspiring.
After the meeting, Caswell drew the tall woman in the green suit
aside and spoke to her confidentially, showing her the diagram of
organization we had drawn up. I saw the responsive glitter in the
woman's eyes and knew she was hooked.
We left the diagram of organization and our typed copy of the new
bylaws with her and went off soberly, as befitted two social science
experimenters. We didn't start laughing until our car passed the town
limits and began the climb for University Heights.
If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing
circle more growth drives than the Roman Empire.
Four months later I had time out from a very busy schedule to wonder
how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head
in. He looked up from a student research paper he was correcting.
"Caswell, about that sewing club business—I'm beginning to feel the
suspense. Could I get an advance report on how it's coming?"
"I'm not following it. We're supposed to let it run the full six
months."
"But I'm curious. Could I get in touch with that woman—what's her
name?"
"Searles. Mrs. George Searles."
"Would that change the results?"
"Not in the slightest. If you want to graph the membership rise, it
should be going up in a log curve, probably doubling every so often."
I grinned. "If it's not rising, you're fired."
He grinned back. "If it's not rising, you won't have to fire me—I'll
burn my books and shoot myself."
I returned to my office and put in a call to Watashaw.
While I was waiting for the phone to be answered, I took a piece of
graph paper and ruled it off into six sections, one for each month.
After the phone had rung in the distance for a long time, a servant
answered with a bored drawl:
"Mrs. Searles' residence."
I picked up a red gummed star and licked it.
"Mrs. Searles, please."
"She's not in just now. Could I take a message?"
I placed the star at the thirty line in the beginning of the first
section. Thirty members they'd started with.
"No, thanks. Could you tell me when she'll be back?"
"Not until dinner. She's at the meetin'."
"The sewing club?" I asked.
"No, sir, not that thing. There isn't any Sewing club any more, not
for a long time. She's at the Civic Welfare meeting."
Somehow I hadn't expected anything like that.
"Thank you," I said and hung up, and after a moment noticed I was
holding a box of red gummed stars in my hand. I closed it and put it
down on top of the graph of membership in the sewing circle. No more
members....
Poor Caswell. The bet between us was ironclad. He wouldn't let me
back down on it even if I wanted to. He'd probably quit before I put
through the first slow move to fire him. His professional pride would
be shattered, sunk without a trace. I remembered what he said about
shooting himself. It had seemed funny to both of us at the time,
but.... What a mess
that
would make for the university.
I had to talk to Mrs. Searles. Perhaps there was some outside reason
why the club had disbanded. Perhaps it had not just died.
I called back. "This is Professor Smith," I said, giving the alias I
had used before. "I called a few minutes ago. When did you say Mrs.
Searles will return?"
"About six-thirty or seven o'clock."
Five hours to wait.
And what if Caswell asked me what I had found out in the meantime? I
didn't want to tell him anything until I had talked it over with that
woman Searles first.
"Where is this Civic Welfare meeting?"
She told me.
Five minutes later, I was in my car, heading for Watashaw, driving
considerably faster than my usual speed and keeping a careful watch for
highway patrol cars as the speedometer climbed.
The town meeting hall and theater was a big place, probably with lots
of small rooms for different clubs. I went in through the center door
and found myself in the huge central hall where some sort of rally was
being held. A political-type rally—you know, cheers and chants, with
bunting already down on the floor, people holding banners, and plenty
of enthusiasm and excitement in the air. Someone was making a speech up
on the platform. Most of the people there were women.
I wondered how the Civic Welfare League could dare hold its meeting at
the same time as a political rally that could pull its members away.
The group with Mrs. Searles was probably holding a shrunken and almost
memberless meeting somewhere in an upper room.
There probably was a side door that would lead upstairs.
While I glanced around, a pretty girl usher put a printed bulletin in
my hand, whispering, "Here's one of the new copies." As I attempted to
hand it back, she retreated. "Oh, you can keep it. It's the new one.
Everyone's supposed to have it. We've just printed up six thousand
copies to make sure there'll be enough to last."
The tall woman on the platform had been making a driving, forceful
speech about some plans for rebuilding Watashaw's slum section. It
began to penetrate my mind dimly as I glanced down at the bulletin in
my hands.
"Civic Welfare League of Watashaw. The United Organization of Church
and Secular Charities." That's what it said. Below began the rules of
membership.
I looked up. The speaker, with a clear, determined voice and conscious,
forceful gestures, had entered the homestretch of her speech, an appeal
to the civic pride of all citizens of Watashaw.
"With a bright and glorious future—potentially without poor and
without uncared-for ill—potentially with no ugliness, no vistas which
are not beautiful—the best people in the best planned town in the
country—the jewel of the United States."
She paused and then leaned forward intensely, striking her clenched
hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis.
"
All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit!
"
I finally recognized Mrs. Searles, as an answering sudden blast of
sound half deafened me. The crowd was chanting at the top of its lungs:
"Recruit! Recruit!"
Mrs. Searles stood still at the speaker's table and behind her,
seated in a row of chairs, was a group that was probably the board of
directors. It was mostly women, and the women began to look vaguely
familiar, as if they could be members of the sewing circle.
I put my lips close to the ear of the pretty usher while I turned over
the stiff printed bulletin on a hunch. "How long has the League been
organized?" On the back of the bulletin was a constitution.
She was cheering with the crowd, her eyes sparkling. "I don't know,"
she answered between cheers. "I only joined two days ago. Isn't it
wonderful?"
I went into the quiet outer air and got into my car with my skin
prickling. Even as I drove away, I could hear them. They were singing
some kind of organization song with the tune of "Marching through
Georgia."
Even at the single glance I had given it, the constitution looked
exactly like the one we had given the Watashaw Sewing Circle.
All I told Caswell when I got back was that the sewing circle had
changed its name and the membership seemed to be rising.
Next day, after calling Mrs. Searles, I placed some red stars on my
graph for the first three months. They made a nice curve, rising more
steeply as it reached the fourth month. They had picked up their first
increase in membership simply by amalgamating with all the other types
of charity organizations in Watashaw, changing the club name with each
fusion, but keeping the same constitution—the constitution with the
bright promise of advantages as long as there were always new members
being brought in.
By the fifth month, the League had added a mutual baby-sitting service
and had induced the local school board to add a nursery school to the
town service, so as to free more women for League activity. But charity
must have been completely organized by then, and expansion had to be in
other directions.
Some real estate agents evidently had been drawn into the whirlpool
early, along with their ideas. The slum improvement plans began to
blossom and take on a tinge of real estate planning later in the month.
The first day of the sixth month, a big two page spread appeared in
the local paper of a mass meeting which had approved a full-fledged
scheme for slum clearance of Watashaw's shack-town section, plus plans
for rehousing, civic building, and rezoning.
And
good prospects
for attracting some new industries to the town, industries which had
already been contacted and seemed interested by the privileges offered.
And with all this, an arrangement for securing and distributing to the
club members
alone
most of the profit that would come to the town in
the form of a rise in the price of building sites and a boom in the
building industry. The profit distributing arrangement was the same one
that had been built into the organization plan for the distribution
of the small profits of membership fees and honorary promotions. It
was becoming an openly profitable business. Membership was rising more
rapidly now.
By the second week of the sixth month, news appeared in the local paper
that the club had filed an application to incorporate itself as the
Watashaw Mutual Trade and Civic Development Corporation, and all the
local real estate promoters had finished joining en masse. The Mutual
Trade part sounded to me as if the Chamber of Commerce was on the point
of being pulled in with them, ideas, ambitions and all.
I chuckled while reading the next page of the paper, on which a local
politician was reported as having addressed the club with a long
flowery oration on their enterprise, charity, and civic spirit. He
had been made an honorary member. If he allowed himself to be made a
full
member with its contractual obligations and its lures, if the
politicians went into this, too....
I laughed, filing the newspaper with the other documents on the
Watashaw test. These proofs would fascinate any businessman with the
sense to see where his bread was buttered. A businessman is constantly
dealing with organizations, including his own, and finding them either
inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to
grasp them with. Gratitude alone would bring money into the university
in carload lots.
The end of the sixth month came. The test was over and the end reports
were spectacular. Caswell's formulas were proven to the hilt.
After reading the last newspaper reports, I called him up.
"Perfect, Wilt,
perfect
! I can use this Watashaw thing to get you so
many fellowships and scholarships and grants for your department that
you'll think it's snowing money!"
He answered somewhat disinterestedly, "I've been busy working with
students on their research papers and marking tests—not following the
Watashaw business at all, I'm afraid. You say the demonstration went
well and you're satisfied?"
He was definitely putting on a chill. We were friends now, but
obviously he was still peeved whenever he was reminded that I had
doubted that his theory could work. And he was using its success to
rub my nose in the realization that I had been wrong. A man with a
string of degrees after his name is just as human as anyone else. I had
needled him pretty hard that first time.
"I'm satisfied," I acknowledged. "I was wrong. The formulas work
beautifully. Come over and see my file of documents on it if you want a
boost for your ego. Now let's see the formula for stopping it."
He sounded cheerful again. "I didn't complicate that organization
with negatives. I wanted it to
grow
. It falls apart naturally when
it stops growing for more than two months. It's like the great stock
boom before an economic crash. Everyone in it is prosperous as long as
the prices just keep going up and new buyers come into the market, but
they all knew what would happen if it stopped growing. You remember, we
built in as one of the incentives that the members know they are going
to lose if membership stops growing. Why, if I tried to stop it now,
they'd cut my throat."
I remembered the drive and frenzy of the crowd in the one early meeting
I had seen. They probably would.
"No," he continued. "We'll just let it play out to the end of its
tether and die of old age."
"When will that be?"
"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only
so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing."
The graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell
must have made some provision for—
"You underestimate their ingenuity," I said into the phone. "Since they
wanted to expand, they didn't stick to sewing. They went from general
charity to social welfare schemes to something that's pretty close to
an incorporated government. The name is now the Watashaw Mutual Trade
and Civic Development Corporation, and they're filing an application
to change it to Civic Property Pool and Social Dividend, membership
contractual, open to all. That social dividend sounds like a Technocrat
climbed on the band wagon, eh?"
While I spoke, I carefully added another red star to the curve above
the thousand member level, checking with the newspaper that still lay
open on my desk. The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now,
growing more rapidly with each increase.
"Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula
say it will stop?" I asked.
"When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only
so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town."
"They've opened a branch office in New York," I said carefully into the
phone, a few weeks later.
With my pencil, very carefully, I extended the membership curve from
where it was then.
After the next doubling, the curve went almost straight up and off the
page.
Allowing for a lag of contagion from one nation to another, depending
on how much their citizens intermingled, I'd give the rest of the world
about twelve years.
There was a long silence while Caswell probably drew the same graph
in his own mind. Then he laughed weakly. "Well, you asked me for a
demonstration."
That was as good an answer as any. We got together and had lunch in a
bar, if you can call it lunch. The movement we started will expand by
hook or by crook, by seduction or by bribery or by propaganda or by
conquest, but it will expand. And maybe a total world government will
be a fine thing—until it hits the end of its rope in twelve years or
so.
What happens then, I don't know.
But I don't want anyone to pin that on me. From now on, if anyone asks
me, I've never heard of Watashaw.
| How does the Dean feel about Caswell? | [
"The Dean despises Caswell and wants to fire him.",
"The Dean views Caswell as a friend and co-conspirator.",
"The Dean thinks Caswell is a stuck-up intellectual.",
"The Dean is irritated by Caswell's superiority complex."
] | 1 | true |
The Snowball Effect
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Tack power drives on a sewing circle and
you can needle the world into the darndest mess!
"All right," I said, "what
is
sociology good for?"
Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right
then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him
were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be
signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered
the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president
to see to it that the university made money. I had a job to do, and I
meant to do it.
He bit off each word with great restraint: "Sociology is the study of
social institutions, Mr. Halloway."
I tried to make him understand my position. "Look, it's the big-money
men who are supposed to be contributing to the support of this college.
To them, sociology sounds like socialism—nothing can sound worse than
that—and an institution is where they put Aunt Maggy when she began
collecting Wheaties in a stamp album. We can't appeal to them that way.
Come on now." I smiled condescendingly, knowing it would irritate him.
"What are you doing that's worth anything?"
He glared at me, his white hair bristling and his nostrils dilated
like a war horse about to whinny. I can say one thing for them—these
scientists and professors always keep themselves well under control.
He had a book in his hand and I was expecting him to throw it, but he
spoke instead:
"This department's analysis of institutional accretion, by the use of
open system mathematics, has been recognized as an outstanding and
valuable contribution to—"
The words were impressive, whatever they meant, but this still didn't
sound like anything that would pull in money. I interrupted, "Valuable
in what way?"
He sat down on the edge of his desk thoughtfully, apparently recovering
from the shock of being asked to produce something solid for his
position, and ran his eyes over the titles of the books that lined his
office walls.
"Well, sociology has been valuable to business in initiating worker
efficiency and group motivation studies, which they now use in
management decisions. And, of course, since the depression, Washington
has been using sociological studies of employment, labor and standards
of living as a basis for its general policies of—"
I stopped him with both raised hands. "Please, Professor Caswell! That
would hardly be a recommendation. Washington, the New Deal and the
present Administration are somewhat touchy subjects to the men I have
to deal with. They consider its value debatable, if you know what I
mean. If they got the idea that sociology professors are giving advice
and guidance—No, we have to stick to brass tacks and leave Washington
out of this. What, specifically, has the work of this specific
department done that would make it as worthy to receive money as—say,
a heart disease research fund?"
He began to tap the corner of his book absently on the desk, watching
me. "Fundamental research doesn't show immediate effects, Mr. Halloway,
but its value is recognized."
I smiled and took out my pipe. "All right, tell me about it. Maybe I'll
recognize its value."
Prof. Caswell smiled back tightly. He knew his department was at stake.
The other departments were popular with donors and pulled in gift
money by scholarships and fellowships, and supported their professors
and graduate students by research contracts with the government
and industry. Caswell had to show a way to make his own department
popular—or else. I couldn't fire him directly, of course, but there
are ways of doing it indirectly.
He laid down his book and ran a hand over his ruffled hair.
"Institutions—organizations, that is—" his voice became more
resonant; like most professors, when he had to explain something he
instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began
to deliver an essay—"have certain tendencies built into the way they
happen to have been organized, which cause them to expand or contract
without reference to the needs they were founded to serve."
He was becoming flushed with the pleasure of explaining his subject.
"All through the ages, it has been a matter of wonder and dismay
to men that a simple organization—such as a church to worship in,
or a delegation of weapons to a warrior class merely for defense
against an outside enemy—will either grow insensately and extend its
control until it is a tyranny over their whole lives, or, like other
organizations set up to serve a vital need, will tend to repeatedly
dwindle and vanish, and have to be painfully rebuilt.
"The reason can be traced to little quirks in the way they were
organized, a matter of positive and negative power feedbacks. Such
simple questions as, 'Is there a way a holder of authority in this
organization can use the power available to him to increase his power?'
provide the key. But it still could not be handled until the complex
questions of interacting motives and long-range accumulations of minor
effects could somehow be simplified and formulated. In working on the
problem, I found that the mathematics of open system, as introduced
to biology by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and George Kreezer, could be
used as a base that would enable me to develop a specifically social
mathematics, expressing the human factors of intermeshing authority and
motives in simple formulas.
"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the
amount of growth and period of life of any organization. The UN, to
choose an unfortunate example, is a shrinker type organization. Its
monetary support is not in the hands of those who personally benefit
by its governmental activities, but, instead, in the hands of those
who would personally lose by any extension and encroachment of its
authority on their own. Yet by the use of formula analysis—"
"That's theory," I said. "How about proof?"
"My equations are already being used in the study of limited-size
Federal corporations. Washington—"
I held up my palm again. "Please, not that nasty word again. I mean,
where else has it been put into operation? Just a simple demonstration,
something to show that it works, that's all."
He looked away from me thoughtfully, picked up the book and began to
tap it on the desk again. It had some unreadable title and his name on
it in gold letters. I got the distinct impression again that he was
repressing an urge to hit me with it.
He spoke quietly. "All right, I'll give you a demonstration. Are you
willing to wait six months?"
"Certainly, if you can show me something at the end of that time."
Reminded of time, I glanced at my watch and stood up.
"Could we discuss this over lunch?" he asked.
"I wouldn't mind hearing more, but I'm having lunch with some
executors of a millionaire's will. They have to be convinced that by,
'furtherance of research into human ills,' he meant that the money
should go to research fellowships for postgraduate biologists at the
university, rather than to a medical foundation."
"I see you have your problems, too," Caswell said, conceding me
nothing. He extended his hand with a chilly smile. "Well, good
afternoon, Mr. Halloway. I'm glad we had this talk."
I shook hands and left him standing there, sure of his place in the
progress of science and the respect of his colleagues, yet seething
inside because I, the president and dean, had boorishly demanded that
he produce something tangible.
I frankly didn't give a hoot if he blew his lid. My job isn't easy.
For a crumb of favorable publicity and respect in the newspapers and
an annual ceremony in a silly costume, I spend the rest of the year
going hat in hand, asking politely for money at everyone's door,
like a well-dressed panhandler, and trying to manage the university
on the dribble I get. As far as I was concerned, a department had to
support itself or be cut down to what student tuition pays for, which
is a handful of over-crowded courses taught by an assistant lecturer.
Caswell had to make it work or get out.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to hear what he was
going to do for a demonstration.
At lunch, three days later, while we were waiting for our order, he
opened a small notebook. "Ever hear of feedback effects?"
"Not enough to have it clear."
"You know the snowball effect, though."
"Sure, start a snowball rolling downhill and it grows."
"Well, now—" He wrote a short line of symbols on a blank page and
turned the notebook around for me to inspect it. "Here's the formula
for the snowball process. It's the basic general growth formula—covers
everything."
It was a row of little symbols arranged like an algebra equation. One
was a concentric spiral going up, like a cross-section of a snowball
rolling in snow. That was a growth sign.
I hadn't expected to understand the equation, but it was almost as
clear as a sentence. I was impressed and slightly intimidated by it.
He had already explained enough so that I knew that, if he was right,
here was the growth of the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, the
conquests of Alexander and the spread of the smoking habit and the
change and rigidity of the unwritten law of styles.
"Is it really as simple as that?" I asked.
"You notice," he said, "that when it becomes too heavy for the cohesion
strength of snow, it breaks apart. Now in human terms—"
The chops and mashed potatoes and peas arrived.
"Go on," I urged.
He was deep in the symbology of human motives and the equations of
human behavior in groups. After running through a few different
types of grower and shrinker type organizations, we came back to the
snowball, and decided to run the test by making something grow.
"You add the motives," he said, "and the equation will translate them
into organization."
"How about a good selfish reason for the ins to drag others into the
group—some sort of bounty on new members, a cut of their membership
fee?" I suggested uncertainly, feeling slightly foolish. "And maybe a
reason why the members would lose if any of them resigned, and some
indirect way they could use to force each other to stay in."
"The first is the chain letter principle," he nodded. "I've got
that. The other...." He put the symbols through some mathematical
manipulation so that a special grouping appeared in the middle of the
equation. "That's it."
Since I seemed to have the right idea, I suggested some more, and he
added some, and juggled them around in different patterns. We threw
out a few that would have made the organization too complicated, and
finally worked out an idyllically simple and deadly little organization
setup where joining had all the temptation of buying a sweepstakes
ticket, going in deeper was as easy as hanging around a race track, and
getting out was like trying to pull free from a Malayan thumb trap. We
put our heads closer together and talked lower, picking the best place
for the demonstration.
"Abington?"
"How about Watashaw? I have some student sociological surveys of it
already. We can pick a suitable group from that."
"This demonstration has got to be convincing. We'd better pick a little
group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow."
"There should be a suitable club—"
Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and
with him the President of the University, leaning across the table
toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones
over something they were writing in a notebook.
That was us.
"Ladies," said the skinny female chairman of the Watashaw Sewing
Circle. "Today we have guests." She signaled for us to rise, and we
stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. "Professor Caswell, and
Professor Smith." (My alias.) "They are making a survey of the methods
and duties of the clubs of Watashaw."
We sat down to another ripple of applause and slightly wider smiles,
and then the meeting of the Watashaw Sewing Circle began. In five
minutes I began to feel sleepy.
There were only about thirty people there, and it was a small room, not
the halls of Congress, but they discussed their business of collecting
and repairing second hand clothing for charity with the same endless
boring parliamentary formality.
I pointed out to Caswell the member I thought would be the natural
leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious
gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a
half doze while Caswell stayed awake beside me and wrote in his
notebook. After a while the resonant voice roused me to attention for
a moment. It was the tall woman holding the floor over some collective
dereliction of the club. She was being scathing.
I nudged Caswell and murmured, "Did you fix it so that a shover has a
better chance of getting into office than a non-shover?"
"I think there's a way they could find for it," Caswell whispered back,
and went to work on his equation again. "Yes, several ways to bias the
elections."
"Good. Point them out tactfully to the one you select. Not as if
she'd use such methods, but just as an example of the reason why only
she
can be trusted with initiating the change. Just mention all the
personal advantages an unscrupulous person could have."
He nodded, keeping a straight and sober face as if we were exchanging
admiring remarks about the techniques of clothes repairing, instead of
conspiring.
After the meeting, Caswell drew the tall woman in the green suit
aside and spoke to her confidentially, showing her the diagram of
organization we had drawn up. I saw the responsive glitter in the
woman's eyes and knew she was hooked.
We left the diagram of organization and our typed copy of the new
bylaws with her and went off soberly, as befitted two social science
experimenters. We didn't start laughing until our car passed the town
limits and began the climb for University Heights.
If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing
circle more growth drives than the Roman Empire.
Four months later I had time out from a very busy schedule to wonder
how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head
in. He looked up from a student research paper he was correcting.
"Caswell, about that sewing club business—I'm beginning to feel the
suspense. Could I get an advance report on how it's coming?"
"I'm not following it. We're supposed to let it run the full six
months."
"But I'm curious. Could I get in touch with that woman—what's her
name?"
"Searles. Mrs. George Searles."
"Would that change the results?"
"Not in the slightest. If you want to graph the membership rise, it
should be going up in a log curve, probably doubling every so often."
I grinned. "If it's not rising, you're fired."
He grinned back. "If it's not rising, you won't have to fire me—I'll
burn my books and shoot myself."
I returned to my office and put in a call to Watashaw.
While I was waiting for the phone to be answered, I took a piece of
graph paper and ruled it off into six sections, one for each month.
After the phone had rung in the distance for a long time, a servant
answered with a bored drawl:
"Mrs. Searles' residence."
I picked up a red gummed star and licked it.
"Mrs. Searles, please."
"She's not in just now. Could I take a message?"
I placed the star at the thirty line in the beginning of the first
section. Thirty members they'd started with.
"No, thanks. Could you tell me when she'll be back?"
"Not until dinner. She's at the meetin'."
"The sewing club?" I asked.
"No, sir, not that thing. There isn't any Sewing club any more, not
for a long time. She's at the Civic Welfare meeting."
Somehow I hadn't expected anything like that.
"Thank you," I said and hung up, and after a moment noticed I was
holding a box of red gummed stars in my hand. I closed it and put it
down on top of the graph of membership in the sewing circle. No more
members....
Poor Caswell. The bet between us was ironclad. He wouldn't let me
back down on it even if I wanted to. He'd probably quit before I put
through the first slow move to fire him. His professional pride would
be shattered, sunk without a trace. I remembered what he said about
shooting himself. It had seemed funny to both of us at the time,
but.... What a mess
that
would make for the university.
I had to talk to Mrs. Searles. Perhaps there was some outside reason
why the club had disbanded. Perhaps it had not just died.
I called back. "This is Professor Smith," I said, giving the alias I
had used before. "I called a few minutes ago. When did you say Mrs.
Searles will return?"
"About six-thirty or seven o'clock."
Five hours to wait.
And what if Caswell asked me what I had found out in the meantime? I
didn't want to tell him anything until I had talked it over with that
woman Searles first.
"Where is this Civic Welfare meeting?"
She told me.
Five minutes later, I was in my car, heading for Watashaw, driving
considerably faster than my usual speed and keeping a careful watch for
highway patrol cars as the speedometer climbed.
The town meeting hall and theater was a big place, probably with lots
of small rooms for different clubs. I went in through the center door
and found myself in the huge central hall where some sort of rally was
being held. A political-type rally—you know, cheers and chants, with
bunting already down on the floor, people holding banners, and plenty
of enthusiasm and excitement in the air. Someone was making a speech up
on the platform. Most of the people there were women.
I wondered how the Civic Welfare League could dare hold its meeting at
the same time as a political rally that could pull its members away.
The group with Mrs. Searles was probably holding a shrunken and almost
memberless meeting somewhere in an upper room.
There probably was a side door that would lead upstairs.
While I glanced around, a pretty girl usher put a printed bulletin in
my hand, whispering, "Here's one of the new copies." As I attempted to
hand it back, she retreated. "Oh, you can keep it. It's the new one.
Everyone's supposed to have it. We've just printed up six thousand
copies to make sure there'll be enough to last."
The tall woman on the platform had been making a driving, forceful
speech about some plans for rebuilding Watashaw's slum section. It
began to penetrate my mind dimly as I glanced down at the bulletin in
my hands.
"Civic Welfare League of Watashaw. The United Organization of Church
and Secular Charities." That's what it said. Below began the rules of
membership.
I looked up. The speaker, with a clear, determined voice and conscious,
forceful gestures, had entered the homestretch of her speech, an appeal
to the civic pride of all citizens of Watashaw.
"With a bright and glorious future—potentially without poor and
without uncared-for ill—potentially with no ugliness, no vistas which
are not beautiful—the best people in the best planned town in the
country—the jewel of the United States."
She paused and then leaned forward intensely, striking her clenched
hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis.
"
All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit!
"
I finally recognized Mrs. Searles, as an answering sudden blast of
sound half deafened me. The crowd was chanting at the top of its lungs:
"Recruit! Recruit!"
Mrs. Searles stood still at the speaker's table and behind her,
seated in a row of chairs, was a group that was probably the board of
directors. It was mostly women, and the women began to look vaguely
familiar, as if they could be members of the sewing circle.
I put my lips close to the ear of the pretty usher while I turned over
the stiff printed bulletin on a hunch. "How long has the League been
organized?" On the back of the bulletin was a constitution.
She was cheering with the crowd, her eyes sparkling. "I don't know,"
she answered between cheers. "I only joined two days ago. Isn't it
wonderful?"
I went into the quiet outer air and got into my car with my skin
prickling. Even as I drove away, I could hear them. They were singing
some kind of organization song with the tune of "Marching through
Georgia."
Even at the single glance I had given it, the constitution looked
exactly like the one we had given the Watashaw Sewing Circle.
All I told Caswell when I got back was that the sewing circle had
changed its name and the membership seemed to be rising.
Next day, after calling Mrs. Searles, I placed some red stars on my
graph for the first three months. They made a nice curve, rising more
steeply as it reached the fourth month. They had picked up their first
increase in membership simply by amalgamating with all the other types
of charity organizations in Watashaw, changing the club name with each
fusion, but keeping the same constitution—the constitution with the
bright promise of advantages as long as there were always new members
being brought in.
By the fifth month, the League had added a mutual baby-sitting service
and had induced the local school board to add a nursery school to the
town service, so as to free more women for League activity. But charity
must have been completely organized by then, and expansion had to be in
other directions.
Some real estate agents evidently had been drawn into the whirlpool
early, along with their ideas. The slum improvement plans began to
blossom and take on a tinge of real estate planning later in the month.
The first day of the sixth month, a big two page spread appeared in
the local paper of a mass meeting which had approved a full-fledged
scheme for slum clearance of Watashaw's shack-town section, plus plans
for rehousing, civic building, and rezoning.
And
good prospects
for attracting some new industries to the town, industries which had
already been contacted and seemed interested by the privileges offered.
And with all this, an arrangement for securing and distributing to the
club members
alone
most of the profit that would come to the town in
the form of a rise in the price of building sites and a boom in the
building industry. The profit distributing arrangement was the same one
that had been built into the organization plan for the distribution
of the small profits of membership fees and honorary promotions. It
was becoming an openly profitable business. Membership was rising more
rapidly now.
By the second week of the sixth month, news appeared in the local paper
that the club had filed an application to incorporate itself as the
Watashaw Mutual Trade and Civic Development Corporation, and all the
local real estate promoters had finished joining en masse. The Mutual
Trade part sounded to me as if the Chamber of Commerce was on the point
of being pulled in with them, ideas, ambitions and all.
I chuckled while reading the next page of the paper, on which a local
politician was reported as having addressed the club with a long
flowery oration on their enterprise, charity, and civic spirit. He
had been made an honorary member. If he allowed himself to be made a
full
member with its contractual obligations and its lures, if the
politicians went into this, too....
I laughed, filing the newspaper with the other documents on the
Watashaw test. These proofs would fascinate any businessman with the
sense to see where his bread was buttered. A businessman is constantly
dealing with organizations, including his own, and finding them either
inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to
grasp them with. Gratitude alone would bring money into the university
in carload lots.
The end of the sixth month came. The test was over and the end reports
were spectacular. Caswell's formulas were proven to the hilt.
After reading the last newspaper reports, I called him up.
"Perfect, Wilt,
perfect
! I can use this Watashaw thing to get you so
many fellowships and scholarships and grants for your department that
you'll think it's snowing money!"
He answered somewhat disinterestedly, "I've been busy working with
students on their research papers and marking tests—not following the
Watashaw business at all, I'm afraid. You say the demonstration went
well and you're satisfied?"
He was definitely putting on a chill. We were friends now, but
obviously he was still peeved whenever he was reminded that I had
doubted that his theory could work. And he was using its success to
rub my nose in the realization that I had been wrong. A man with a
string of degrees after his name is just as human as anyone else. I had
needled him pretty hard that first time.
"I'm satisfied," I acknowledged. "I was wrong. The formulas work
beautifully. Come over and see my file of documents on it if you want a
boost for your ego. Now let's see the formula for stopping it."
He sounded cheerful again. "I didn't complicate that organization
with negatives. I wanted it to
grow
. It falls apart naturally when
it stops growing for more than two months. It's like the great stock
boom before an economic crash. Everyone in it is prosperous as long as
the prices just keep going up and new buyers come into the market, but
they all knew what would happen if it stopped growing. You remember, we
built in as one of the incentives that the members know they are going
to lose if membership stops growing. Why, if I tried to stop it now,
they'd cut my throat."
I remembered the drive and frenzy of the crowd in the one early meeting
I had seen. They probably would.
"No," he continued. "We'll just let it play out to the end of its
tether and die of old age."
"When will that be?"
"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only
so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing."
The graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell
must have made some provision for—
"You underestimate their ingenuity," I said into the phone. "Since they
wanted to expand, they didn't stick to sewing. They went from general
charity to social welfare schemes to something that's pretty close to
an incorporated government. The name is now the Watashaw Mutual Trade
and Civic Development Corporation, and they're filing an application
to change it to Civic Property Pool and Social Dividend, membership
contractual, open to all. That social dividend sounds like a Technocrat
climbed on the band wagon, eh?"
While I spoke, I carefully added another red star to the curve above
the thousand member level, checking with the newspaper that still lay
open on my desk. The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now,
growing more rapidly with each increase.
"Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula
say it will stop?" I asked.
"When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only
so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town."
"They've opened a branch office in New York," I said carefully into the
phone, a few weeks later.
With my pencil, very carefully, I extended the membership curve from
where it was then.
After the next doubling, the curve went almost straight up and off the
page.
Allowing for a lag of contagion from one nation to another, depending
on how much their citizens intermingled, I'd give the rest of the world
about twelve years.
There was a long silence while Caswell probably drew the same graph
in his own mind. Then he laughed weakly. "Well, you asked me for a
demonstration."
That was as good an answer as any. We got together and had lunch in a
bar, if you can call it lunch. The movement we started will expand by
hook or by crook, by seduction or by bribery or by propaganda or by
conquest, but it will expand. And maybe a total world government will
be a fine thing—until it hits the end of its rope in twelve years or
so.
What happens then, I don't know.
But I don't want anyone to pin that on me. From now on, if anyone asks
me, I've never heard of Watashaw.
| What kind of organization are they looking for, for their demonstration? | [
"A small group that no one expects to lose members.",
"A large group that no one expects to lose members.",
"A small group that no one expects to grow.",
"A large group that no one expects to grow."
] | 2 | false |
The Snowball Effect
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Tack power drives on a sewing circle and
you can needle the world into the darndest mess!
"All right," I said, "what
is
sociology good for?"
Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right
then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him
were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be
signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered
the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president
to see to it that the university made money. I had a job to do, and I
meant to do it.
He bit off each word with great restraint: "Sociology is the study of
social institutions, Mr. Halloway."
I tried to make him understand my position. "Look, it's the big-money
men who are supposed to be contributing to the support of this college.
To them, sociology sounds like socialism—nothing can sound worse than
that—and an institution is where they put Aunt Maggy when she began
collecting Wheaties in a stamp album. We can't appeal to them that way.
Come on now." I smiled condescendingly, knowing it would irritate him.
"What are you doing that's worth anything?"
He glared at me, his white hair bristling and his nostrils dilated
like a war horse about to whinny. I can say one thing for them—these
scientists and professors always keep themselves well under control.
He had a book in his hand and I was expecting him to throw it, but he
spoke instead:
"This department's analysis of institutional accretion, by the use of
open system mathematics, has been recognized as an outstanding and
valuable contribution to—"
The words were impressive, whatever they meant, but this still didn't
sound like anything that would pull in money. I interrupted, "Valuable
in what way?"
He sat down on the edge of his desk thoughtfully, apparently recovering
from the shock of being asked to produce something solid for his
position, and ran his eyes over the titles of the books that lined his
office walls.
"Well, sociology has been valuable to business in initiating worker
efficiency and group motivation studies, which they now use in
management decisions. And, of course, since the depression, Washington
has been using sociological studies of employment, labor and standards
of living as a basis for its general policies of—"
I stopped him with both raised hands. "Please, Professor Caswell! That
would hardly be a recommendation. Washington, the New Deal and the
present Administration are somewhat touchy subjects to the men I have
to deal with. They consider its value debatable, if you know what I
mean. If they got the idea that sociology professors are giving advice
and guidance—No, we have to stick to brass tacks and leave Washington
out of this. What, specifically, has the work of this specific
department done that would make it as worthy to receive money as—say,
a heart disease research fund?"
He began to tap the corner of his book absently on the desk, watching
me. "Fundamental research doesn't show immediate effects, Mr. Halloway,
but its value is recognized."
I smiled and took out my pipe. "All right, tell me about it. Maybe I'll
recognize its value."
Prof. Caswell smiled back tightly. He knew his department was at stake.
The other departments were popular with donors and pulled in gift
money by scholarships and fellowships, and supported their professors
and graduate students by research contracts with the government
and industry. Caswell had to show a way to make his own department
popular—or else. I couldn't fire him directly, of course, but there
are ways of doing it indirectly.
He laid down his book and ran a hand over his ruffled hair.
"Institutions—organizations, that is—" his voice became more
resonant; like most professors, when he had to explain something he
instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began
to deliver an essay—"have certain tendencies built into the way they
happen to have been organized, which cause them to expand or contract
without reference to the needs they were founded to serve."
He was becoming flushed with the pleasure of explaining his subject.
"All through the ages, it has been a matter of wonder and dismay
to men that a simple organization—such as a church to worship in,
or a delegation of weapons to a warrior class merely for defense
against an outside enemy—will either grow insensately and extend its
control until it is a tyranny over their whole lives, or, like other
organizations set up to serve a vital need, will tend to repeatedly
dwindle and vanish, and have to be painfully rebuilt.
"The reason can be traced to little quirks in the way they were
organized, a matter of positive and negative power feedbacks. Such
simple questions as, 'Is there a way a holder of authority in this
organization can use the power available to him to increase his power?'
provide the key. But it still could not be handled until the complex
questions of interacting motives and long-range accumulations of minor
effects could somehow be simplified and formulated. In working on the
problem, I found that the mathematics of open system, as introduced
to biology by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and George Kreezer, could be
used as a base that would enable me to develop a specifically social
mathematics, expressing the human factors of intermeshing authority and
motives in simple formulas.
"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the
amount of growth and period of life of any organization. The UN, to
choose an unfortunate example, is a shrinker type organization. Its
monetary support is not in the hands of those who personally benefit
by its governmental activities, but, instead, in the hands of those
who would personally lose by any extension and encroachment of its
authority on their own. Yet by the use of formula analysis—"
"That's theory," I said. "How about proof?"
"My equations are already being used in the study of limited-size
Federal corporations. Washington—"
I held up my palm again. "Please, not that nasty word again. I mean,
where else has it been put into operation? Just a simple demonstration,
something to show that it works, that's all."
He looked away from me thoughtfully, picked up the book and began to
tap it on the desk again. It had some unreadable title and his name on
it in gold letters. I got the distinct impression again that he was
repressing an urge to hit me with it.
He spoke quietly. "All right, I'll give you a demonstration. Are you
willing to wait six months?"
"Certainly, if you can show me something at the end of that time."
Reminded of time, I glanced at my watch and stood up.
"Could we discuss this over lunch?" he asked.
"I wouldn't mind hearing more, but I'm having lunch with some
executors of a millionaire's will. They have to be convinced that by,
'furtherance of research into human ills,' he meant that the money
should go to research fellowships for postgraduate biologists at the
university, rather than to a medical foundation."
"I see you have your problems, too," Caswell said, conceding me
nothing. He extended his hand with a chilly smile. "Well, good
afternoon, Mr. Halloway. I'm glad we had this talk."
I shook hands and left him standing there, sure of his place in the
progress of science and the respect of his colleagues, yet seething
inside because I, the president and dean, had boorishly demanded that
he produce something tangible.
I frankly didn't give a hoot if he blew his lid. My job isn't easy.
For a crumb of favorable publicity and respect in the newspapers and
an annual ceremony in a silly costume, I spend the rest of the year
going hat in hand, asking politely for money at everyone's door,
like a well-dressed panhandler, and trying to manage the university
on the dribble I get. As far as I was concerned, a department had to
support itself or be cut down to what student tuition pays for, which
is a handful of over-crowded courses taught by an assistant lecturer.
Caswell had to make it work or get out.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to hear what he was
going to do for a demonstration.
At lunch, three days later, while we were waiting for our order, he
opened a small notebook. "Ever hear of feedback effects?"
"Not enough to have it clear."
"You know the snowball effect, though."
"Sure, start a snowball rolling downhill and it grows."
"Well, now—" He wrote a short line of symbols on a blank page and
turned the notebook around for me to inspect it. "Here's the formula
for the snowball process. It's the basic general growth formula—covers
everything."
It was a row of little symbols arranged like an algebra equation. One
was a concentric spiral going up, like a cross-section of a snowball
rolling in snow. That was a growth sign.
I hadn't expected to understand the equation, but it was almost as
clear as a sentence. I was impressed and slightly intimidated by it.
He had already explained enough so that I knew that, if he was right,
here was the growth of the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, the
conquests of Alexander and the spread of the smoking habit and the
change and rigidity of the unwritten law of styles.
"Is it really as simple as that?" I asked.
"You notice," he said, "that when it becomes too heavy for the cohesion
strength of snow, it breaks apart. Now in human terms—"
The chops and mashed potatoes and peas arrived.
"Go on," I urged.
He was deep in the symbology of human motives and the equations of
human behavior in groups. After running through a few different
types of grower and shrinker type organizations, we came back to the
snowball, and decided to run the test by making something grow.
"You add the motives," he said, "and the equation will translate them
into organization."
"How about a good selfish reason for the ins to drag others into the
group—some sort of bounty on new members, a cut of their membership
fee?" I suggested uncertainly, feeling slightly foolish. "And maybe a
reason why the members would lose if any of them resigned, and some
indirect way they could use to force each other to stay in."
"The first is the chain letter principle," he nodded. "I've got
that. The other...." He put the symbols through some mathematical
manipulation so that a special grouping appeared in the middle of the
equation. "That's it."
Since I seemed to have the right idea, I suggested some more, and he
added some, and juggled them around in different patterns. We threw
out a few that would have made the organization too complicated, and
finally worked out an idyllically simple and deadly little organization
setup where joining had all the temptation of buying a sweepstakes
ticket, going in deeper was as easy as hanging around a race track, and
getting out was like trying to pull free from a Malayan thumb trap. We
put our heads closer together and talked lower, picking the best place
for the demonstration.
"Abington?"
"How about Watashaw? I have some student sociological surveys of it
already. We can pick a suitable group from that."
"This demonstration has got to be convincing. We'd better pick a little
group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow."
"There should be a suitable club—"
Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and
with him the President of the University, leaning across the table
toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones
over something they were writing in a notebook.
That was us.
"Ladies," said the skinny female chairman of the Watashaw Sewing
Circle. "Today we have guests." She signaled for us to rise, and we
stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. "Professor Caswell, and
Professor Smith." (My alias.) "They are making a survey of the methods
and duties of the clubs of Watashaw."
We sat down to another ripple of applause and slightly wider smiles,
and then the meeting of the Watashaw Sewing Circle began. In five
minutes I began to feel sleepy.
There were only about thirty people there, and it was a small room, not
the halls of Congress, but they discussed their business of collecting
and repairing second hand clothing for charity with the same endless
boring parliamentary formality.
I pointed out to Caswell the member I thought would be the natural
leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious
gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a
half doze while Caswell stayed awake beside me and wrote in his
notebook. After a while the resonant voice roused me to attention for
a moment. It was the tall woman holding the floor over some collective
dereliction of the club. She was being scathing.
I nudged Caswell and murmured, "Did you fix it so that a shover has a
better chance of getting into office than a non-shover?"
"I think there's a way they could find for it," Caswell whispered back,
and went to work on his equation again. "Yes, several ways to bias the
elections."
"Good. Point them out tactfully to the one you select. Not as if
she'd use such methods, but just as an example of the reason why only
she
can be trusted with initiating the change. Just mention all the
personal advantages an unscrupulous person could have."
He nodded, keeping a straight and sober face as if we were exchanging
admiring remarks about the techniques of clothes repairing, instead of
conspiring.
After the meeting, Caswell drew the tall woman in the green suit
aside and spoke to her confidentially, showing her the diagram of
organization we had drawn up. I saw the responsive glitter in the
woman's eyes and knew she was hooked.
We left the diagram of organization and our typed copy of the new
bylaws with her and went off soberly, as befitted two social science
experimenters. We didn't start laughing until our car passed the town
limits and began the climb for University Heights.
If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing
circle more growth drives than the Roman Empire.
Four months later I had time out from a very busy schedule to wonder
how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head
in. He looked up from a student research paper he was correcting.
"Caswell, about that sewing club business—I'm beginning to feel the
suspense. Could I get an advance report on how it's coming?"
"I'm not following it. We're supposed to let it run the full six
months."
"But I'm curious. Could I get in touch with that woman—what's her
name?"
"Searles. Mrs. George Searles."
"Would that change the results?"
"Not in the slightest. If you want to graph the membership rise, it
should be going up in a log curve, probably doubling every so often."
I grinned. "If it's not rising, you're fired."
He grinned back. "If it's not rising, you won't have to fire me—I'll
burn my books and shoot myself."
I returned to my office and put in a call to Watashaw.
While I was waiting for the phone to be answered, I took a piece of
graph paper and ruled it off into six sections, one for each month.
After the phone had rung in the distance for a long time, a servant
answered with a bored drawl:
"Mrs. Searles' residence."
I picked up a red gummed star and licked it.
"Mrs. Searles, please."
"She's not in just now. Could I take a message?"
I placed the star at the thirty line in the beginning of the first
section. Thirty members they'd started with.
"No, thanks. Could you tell me when she'll be back?"
"Not until dinner. She's at the meetin'."
"The sewing club?" I asked.
"No, sir, not that thing. There isn't any Sewing club any more, not
for a long time. She's at the Civic Welfare meeting."
Somehow I hadn't expected anything like that.
"Thank you," I said and hung up, and after a moment noticed I was
holding a box of red gummed stars in my hand. I closed it and put it
down on top of the graph of membership in the sewing circle. No more
members....
Poor Caswell. The bet between us was ironclad. He wouldn't let me
back down on it even if I wanted to. He'd probably quit before I put
through the first slow move to fire him. His professional pride would
be shattered, sunk without a trace. I remembered what he said about
shooting himself. It had seemed funny to both of us at the time,
but.... What a mess
that
would make for the university.
I had to talk to Mrs. Searles. Perhaps there was some outside reason
why the club had disbanded. Perhaps it had not just died.
I called back. "This is Professor Smith," I said, giving the alias I
had used before. "I called a few minutes ago. When did you say Mrs.
Searles will return?"
"About six-thirty or seven o'clock."
Five hours to wait.
And what if Caswell asked me what I had found out in the meantime? I
didn't want to tell him anything until I had talked it over with that
woman Searles first.
"Where is this Civic Welfare meeting?"
She told me.
Five minutes later, I was in my car, heading for Watashaw, driving
considerably faster than my usual speed and keeping a careful watch for
highway patrol cars as the speedometer climbed.
The town meeting hall and theater was a big place, probably with lots
of small rooms for different clubs. I went in through the center door
and found myself in the huge central hall where some sort of rally was
being held. A political-type rally—you know, cheers and chants, with
bunting already down on the floor, people holding banners, and plenty
of enthusiasm and excitement in the air. Someone was making a speech up
on the platform. Most of the people there were women.
I wondered how the Civic Welfare League could dare hold its meeting at
the same time as a political rally that could pull its members away.
The group with Mrs. Searles was probably holding a shrunken and almost
memberless meeting somewhere in an upper room.
There probably was a side door that would lead upstairs.
While I glanced around, a pretty girl usher put a printed bulletin in
my hand, whispering, "Here's one of the new copies." As I attempted to
hand it back, she retreated. "Oh, you can keep it. It's the new one.
Everyone's supposed to have it. We've just printed up six thousand
copies to make sure there'll be enough to last."
The tall woman on the platform had been making a driving, forceful
speech about some plans for rebuilding Watashaw's slum section. It
began to penetrate my mind dimly as I glanced down at the bulletin in
my hands.
"Civic Welfare League of Watashaw. The United Organization of Church
and Secular Charities." That's what it said. Below began the rules of
membership.
I looked up. The speaker, with a clear, determined voice and conscious,
forceful gestures, had entered the homestretch of her speech, an appeal
to the civic pride of all citizens of Watashaw.
"With a bright and glorious future—potentially without poor and
without uncared-for ill—potentially with no ugliness, no vistas which
are not beautiful—the best people in the best planned town in the
country—the jewel of the United States."
She paused and then leaned forward intensely, striking her clenched
hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis.
"
All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit!
"
I finally recognized Mrs. Searles, as an answering sudden blast of
sound half deafened me. The crowd was chanting at the top of its lungs:
"Recruit! Recruit!"
Mrs. Searles stood still at the speaker's table and behind her,
seated in a row of chairs, was a group that was probably the board of
directors. It was mostly women, and the women began to look vaguely
familiar, as if they could be members of the sewing circle.
I put my lips close to the ear of the pretty usher while I turned over
the stiff printed bulletin on a hunch. "How long has the League been
organized?" On the back of the bulletin was a constitution.
She was cheering with the crowd, her eyes sparkling. "I don't know,"
she answered between cheers. "I only joined two days ago. Isn't it
wonderful?"
I went into the quiet outer air and got into my car with my skin
prickling. Even as I drove away, I could hear them. They were singing
some kind of organization song with the tune of "Marching through
Georgia."
Even at the single glance I had given it, the constitution looked
exactly like the one we had given the Watashaw Sewing Circle.
All I told Caswell when I got back was that the sewing circle had
changed its name and the membership seemed to be rising.
Next day, after calling Mrs. Searles, I placed some red stars on my
graph for the first three months. They made a nice curve, rising more
steeply as it reached the fourth month. They had picked up their first
increase in membership simply by amalgamating with all the other types
of charity organizations in Watashaw, changing the club name with each
fusion, but keeping the same constitution—the constitution with the
bright promise of advantages as long as there were always new members
being brought in.
By the fifth month, the League had added a mutual baby-sitting service
and had induced the local school board to add a nursery school to the
town service, so as to free more women for League activity. But charity
must have been completely organized by then, and expansion had to be in
other directions.
Some real estate agents evidently had been drawn into the whirlpool
early, along with their ideas. The slum improvement plans began to
blossom and take on a tinge of real estate planning later in the month.
The first day of the sixth month, a big two page spread appeared in
the local paper of a mass meeting which had approved a full-fledged
scheme for slum clearance of Watashaw's shack-town section, plus plans
for rehousing, civic building, and rezoning.
And
good prospects
for attracting some new industries to the town, industries which had
already been contacted and seemed interested by the privileges offered.
And with all this, an arrangement for securing and distributing to the
club members
alone
most of the profit that would come to the town in
the form of a rise in the price of building sites and a boom in the
building industry. The profit distributing arrangement was the same one
that had been built into the organization plan for the distribution
of the small profits of membership fees and honorary promotions. It
was becoming an openly profitable business. Membership was rising more
rapidly now.
By the second week of the sixth month, news appeared in the local paper
that the club had filed an application to incorporate itself as the
Watashaw Mutual Trade and Civic Development Corporation, and all the
local real estate promoters had finished joining en masse. The Mutual
Trade part sounded to me as if the Chamber of Commerce was on the point
of being pulled in with them, ideas, ambitions and all.
I chuckled while reading the next page of the paper, on which a local
politician was reported as having addressed the club with a long
flowery oration on their enterprise, charity, and civic spirit. He
had been made an honorary member. If he allowed himself to be made a
full
member with its contractual obligations and its lures, if the
politicians went into this, too....
I laughed, filing the newspaper with the other documents on the
Watashaw test. These proofs would fascinate any businessman with the
sense to see where his bread was buttered. A businessman is constantly
dealing with organizations, including his own, and finding them either
inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to
grasp them with. Gratitude alone would bring money into the university
in carload lots.
The end of the sixth month came. The test was over and the end reports
were spectacular. Caswell's formulas were proven to the hilt.
After reading the last newspaper reports, I called him up.
"Perfect, Wilt,
perfect
! I can use this Watashaw thing to get you so
many fellowships and scholarships and grants for your department that
you'll think it's snowing money!"
He answered somewhat disinterestedly, "I've been busy working with
students on their research papers and marking tests—not following the
Watashaw business at all, I'm afraid. You say the demonstration went
well and you're satisfied?"
He was definitely putting on a chill. We were friends now, but
obviously he was still peeved whenever he was reminded that I had
doubted that his theory could work. And he was using its success to
rub my nose in the realization that I had been wrong. A man with a
string of degrees after his name is just as human as anyone else. I had
needled him pretty hard that first time.
"I'm satisfied," I acknowledged. "I was wrong. The formulas work
beautifully. Come over and see my file of documents on it if you want a
boost for your ego. Now let's see the formula for stopping it."
He sounded cheerful again. "I didn't complicate that organization
with negatives. I wanted it to
grow
. It falls apart naturally when
it stops growing for more than two months. It's like the great stock
boom before an economic crash. Everyone in it is prosperous as long as
the prices just keep going up and new buyers come into the market, but
they all knew what would happen if it stopped growing. You remember, we
built in as one of the incentives that the members know they are going
to lose if membership stops growing. Why, if I tried to stop it now,
they'd cut my throat."
I remembered the drive and frenzy of the crowd in the one early meeting
I had seen. They probably would.
"No," he continued. "We'll just let it play out to the end of its
tether and die of old age."
"When will that be?"
"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only
so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing."
The graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell
must have made some provision for—
"You underestimate their ingenuity," I said into the phone. "Since they
wanted to expand, they didn't stick to sewing. They went from general
charity to social welfare schemes to something that's pretty close to
an incorporated government. The name is now the Watashaw Mutual Trade
and Civic Development Corporation, and they're filing an application
to change it to Civic Property Pool and Social Dividend, membership
contractual, open to all. That social dividend sounds like a Technocrat
climbed on the band wagon, eh?"
While I spoke, I carefully added another red star to the curve above
the thousand member level, checking with the newspaper that still lay
open on my desk. The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now,
growing more rapidly with each increase.
"Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula
say it will stop?" I asked.
"When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only
so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town."
"They've opened a branch office in New York," I said carefully into the
phone, a few weeks later.
With my pencil, very carefully, I extended the membership curve from
where it was then.
After the next doubling, the curve went almost straight up and off the
page.
Allowing for a lag of contagion from one nation to another, depending
on how much their citizens intermingled, I'd give the rest of the world
about twelve years.
There was a long silence while Caswell probably drew the same graph
in his own mind. Then he laughed weakly. "Well, you asked me for a
demonstration."
That was as good an answer as any. We got together and had lunch in a
bar, if you can call it lunch. The movement we started will expand by
hook or by crook, by seduction or by bribery or by propaganda or by
conquest, but it will expand. And maybe a total world government will
be a fine thing—until it hits the end of its rope in twelve years or
so.
What happens then, I don't know.
But I don't want anyone to pin that on me. From now on, if anyone asks
me, I've never heard of Watashaw.
| Why doesn't the Dean want to be associated with Watashaw? | [
"The Dean doesn't want people to think he's a socialist.",
"The Dean doesn't want people to know he's responsible for a total world government that collapsed by design.",
"The Dean doesn't want people to know he's responsible for a total world government.",
"The Dean doesn't want to be responsible for global socialism."
] | 1 | true |
The Snowball Effect
By KATHERINE MacLEAN
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1952.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Tack power drives on a sewing circle and
you can needle the world into the darndest mess!
"All right," I said, "what
is
sociology good for?"
Wilton Caswell, Ph.D., was head of my Sociology Department, and right
then he was mad enough to chew nails. On the office wall behind him
were three or four framed documents in Latin that were supposed to be
signs of great learning, but I didn't care at that moment if he papered
the walls with his degrees. I had been appointed dean and president
to see to it that the university made money. I had a job to do, and I
meant to do it.
He bit off each word with great restraint: "Sociology is the study of
social institutions, Mr. Halloway."
I tried to make him understand my position. "Look, it's the big-money
men who are supposed to be contributing to the support of this college.
To them, sociology sounds like socialism—nothing can sound worse than
that—and an institution is where they put Aunt Maggy when she began
collecting Wheaties in a stamp album. We can't appeal to them that way.
Come on now." I smiled condescendingly, knowing it would irritate him.
"What are you doing that's worth anything?"
He glared at me, his white hair bristling and his nostrils dilated
like a war horse about to whinny. I can say one thing for them—these
scientists and professors always keep themselves well under control.
He had a book in his hand and I was expecting him to throw it, but he
spoke instead:
"This department's analysis of institutional accretion, by the use of
open system mathematics, has been recognized as an outstanding and
valuable contribution to—"
The words were impressive, whatever they meant, but this still didn't
sound like anything that would pull in money. I interrupted, "Valuable
in what way?"
He sat down on the edge of his desk thoughtfully, apparently recovering
from the shock of being asked to produce something solid for his
position, and ran his eyes over the titles of the books that lined his
office walls.
"Well, sociology has been valuable to business in initiating worker
efficiency and group motivation studies, which they now use in
management decisions. And, of course, since the depression, Washington
has been using sociological studies of employment, labor and standards
of living as a basis for its general policies of—"
I stopped him with both raised hands. "Please, Professor Caswell! That
would hardly be a recommendation. Washington, the New Deal and the
present Administration are somewhat touchy subjects to the men I have
to deal with. They consider its value debatable, if you know what I
mean. If they got the idea that sociology professors are giving advice
and guidance—No, we have to stick to brass tacks and leave Washington
out of this. What, specifically, has the work of this specific
department done that would make it as worthy to receive money as—say,
a heart disease research fund?"
He began to tap the corner of his book absently on the desk, watching
me. "Fundamental research doesn't show immediate effects, Mr. Halloway,
but its value is recognized."
I smiled and took out my pipe. "All right, tell me about it. Maybe I'll
recognize its value."
Prof. Caswell smiled back tightly. He knew his department was at stake.
The other departments were popular with donors and pulled in gift
money by scholarships and fellowships, and supported their professors
and graduate students by research contracts with the government
and industry. Caswell had to show a way to make his own department
popular—or else. I couldn't fire him directly, of course, but there
are ways of doing it indirectly.
He laid down his book and ran a hand over his ruffled hair.
"Institutions—organizations, that is—" his voice became more
resonant; like most professors, when he had to explain something he
instinctively slipped into his platform lecture mannerisms, and began
to deliver an essay—"have certain tendencies built into the way they
happen to have been organized, which cause them to expand or contract
without reference to the needs they were founded to serve."
He was becoming flushed with the pleasure of explaining his subject.
"All through the ages, it has been a matter of wonder and dismay
to men that a simple organization—such as a church to worship in,
or a delegation of weapons to a warrior class merely for defense
against an outside enemy—will either grow insensately and extend its
control until it is a tyranny over their whole lives, or, like other
organizations set up to serve a vital need, will tend to repeatedly
dwindle and vanish, and have to be painfully rebuilt.
"The reason can be traced to little quirks in the way they were
organized, a matter of positive and negative power feedbacks. Such
simple questions as, 'Is there a way a holder of authority in this
organization can use the power available to him to increase his power?'
provide the key. But it still could not be handled until the complex
questions of interacting motives and long-range accumulations of minor
effects could somehow be simplified and formulated. In working on the
problem, I found that the mathematics of open system, as introduced
to biology by Ludwig von Bertalanffy and George Kreezer, could be
used as a base that would enable me to develop a specifically social
mathematics, expressing the human factors of intermeshing authority and
motives in simple formulas.
"By these formulations, it is possible to determine automatically the
amount of growth and period of life of any organization. The UN, to
choose an unfortunate example, is a shrinker type organization. Its
monetary support is not in the hands of those who personally benefit
by its governmental activities, but, instead, in the hands of those
who would personally lose by any extension and encroachment of its
authority on their own. Yet by the use of formula analysis—"
"That's theory," I said. "How about proof?"
"My equations are already being used in the study of limited-size
Federal corporations. Washington—"
I held up my palm again. "Please, not that nasty word again. I mean,
where else has it been put into operation? Just a simple demonstration,
something to show that it works, that's all."
He looked away from me thoughtfully, picked up the book and began to
tap it on the desk again. It had some unreadable title and his name on
it in gold letters. I got the distinct impression again that he was
repressing an urge to hit me with it.
He spoke quietly. "All right, I'll give you a demonstration. Are you
willing to wait six months?"
"Certainly, if you can show me something at the end of that time."
Reminded of time, I glanced at my watch and stood up.
"Could we discuss this over lunch?" he asked.
"I wouldn't mind hearing more, but I'm having lunch with some
executors of a millionaire's will. They have to be convinced that by,
'furtherance of research into human ills,' he meant that the money
should go to research fellowships for postgraduate biologists at the
university, rather than to a medical foundation."
"I see you have your problems, too," Caswell said, conceding me
nothing. He extended his hand with a chilly smile. "Well, good
afternoon, Mr. Halloway. I'm glad we had this talk."
I shook hands and left him standing there, sure of his place in the
progress of science and the respect of his colleagues, yet seething
inside because I, the president and dean, had boorishly demanded that
he produce something tangible.
I frankly didn't give a hoot if he blew his lid. My job isn't easy.
For a crumb of favorable publicity and respect in the newspapers and
an annual ceremony in a silly costume, I spend the rest of the year
going hat in hand, asking politely for money at everyone's door,
like a well-dressed panhandler, and trying to manage the university
on the dribble I get. As far as I was concerned, a department had to
support itself or be cut down to what student tuition pays for, which
is a handful of over-crowded courses taught by an assistant lecturer.
Caswell had to make it work or get out.
But the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to hear what he was
going to do for a demonstration.
At lunch, three days later, while we were waiting for our order, he
opened a small notebook. "Ever hear of feedback effects?"
"Not enough to have it clear."
"You know the snowball effect, though."
"Sure, start a snowball rolling downhill and it grows."
"Well, now—" He wrote a short line of symbols on a blank page and
turned the notebook around for me to inspect it. "Here's the formula
for the snowball process. It's the basic general growth formula—covers
everything."
It was a row of little symbols arranged like an algebra equation. One
was a concentric spiral going up, like a cross-section of a snowball
rolling in snow. That was a growth sign.
I hadn't expected to understand the equation, but it was almost as
clear as a sentence. I was impressed and slightly intimidated by it.
He had already explained enough so that I knew that, if he was right,
here was the growth of the Catholic Church and the Roman Empire, the
conquests of Alexander and the spread of the smoking habit and the
change and rigidity of the unwritten law of styles.
"Is it really as simple as that?" I asked.
"You notice," he said, "that when it becomes too heavy for the cohesion
strength of snow, it breaks apart. Now in human terms—"
The chops and mashed potatoes and peas arrived.
"Go on," I urged.
He was deep in the symbology of human motives and the equations of
human behavior in groups. After running through a few different
types of grower and shrinker type organizations, we came back to the
snowball, and decided to run the test by making something grow.
"You add the motives," he said, "and the equation will translate them
into organization."
"How about a good selfish reason for the ins to drag others into the
group—some sort of bounty on new members, a cut of their membership
fee?" I suggested uncertainly, feeling slightly foolish. "And maybe a
reason why the members would lose if any of them resigned, and some
indirect way they could use to force each other to stay in."
"The first is the chain letter principle," he nodded. "I've got
that. The other...." He put the symbols through some mathematical
manipulation so that a special grouping appeared in the middle of the
equation. "That's it."
Since I seemed to have the right idea, I suggested some more, and he
added some, and juggled them around in different patterns. We threw
out a few that would have made the organization too complicated, and
finally worked out an idyllically simple and deadly little organization
setup where joining had all the temptation of buying a sweepstakes
ticket, going in deeper was as easy as hanging around a race track, and
getting out was like trying to pull free from a Malayan thumb trap. We
put our heads closer together and talked lower, picking the best place
for the demonstration.
"Abington?"
"How about Watashaw? I have some student sociological surveys of it
already. We can pick a suitable group from that."
"This demonstration has got to be convincing. We'd better pick a little
group that no one in his right mind would expect to grow."
"There should be a suitable club—"
Picture Professor Caswell, head of the Department of Sociology, and
with him the President of the University, leaning across the table
toward each other, sipping coffee and talking in conspiratorial tones
over something they were writing in a notebook.
That was us.
"Ladies," said the skinny female chairman of the Watashaw Sewing
Circle. "Today we have guests." She signaled for us to rise, and we
stood up, bowing to polite applause and smiles. "Professor Caswell, and
Professor Smith." (My alias.) "They are making a survey of the methods
and duties of the clubs of Watashaw."
We sat down to another ripple of applause and slightly wider smiles,
and then the meeting of the Watashaw Sewing Circle began. In five
minutes I began to feel sleepy.
There were only about thirty people there, and it was a small room, not
the halls of Congress, but they discussed their business of collecting
and repairing second hand clothing for charity with the same endless
boring parliamentary formality.
I pointed out to Caswell the member I thought would be the natural
leader, a tall, well-built woman in a green suit, with conscious
gestures and a resonant, penetrating voice, and then went into a
half doze while Caswell stayed awake beside me and wrote in his
notebook. After a while the resonant voice roused me to attention for
a moment. It was the tall woman holding the floor over some collective
dereliction of the club. She was being scathing.
I nudged Caswell and murmured, "Did you fix it so that a shover has a
better chance of getting into office than a non-shover?"
"I think there's a way they could find for it," Caswell whispered back,
and went to work on his equation again. "Yes, several ways to bias the
elections."
"Good. Point them out tactfully to the one you select. Not as if
she'd use such methods, but just as an example of the reason why only
she
can be trusted with initiating the change. Just mention all the
personal advantages an unscrupulous person could have."
He nodded, keeping a straight and sober face as if we were exchanging
admiring remarks about the techniques of clothes repairing, instead of
conspiring.
After the meeting, Caswell drew the tall woman in the green suit
aside and spoke to her confidentially, showing her the diagram of
organization we had drawn up. I saw the responsive glitter in the
woman's eyes and knew she was hooked.
We left the diagram of organization and our typed copy of the new
bylaws with her and went off soberly, as befitted two social science
experimenters. We didn't start laughing until our car passed the town
limits and began the climb for University Heights.
If Caswell's equations meant anything at all, we had given that sewing
circle more growth drives than the Roman Empire.
Four months later I had time out from a very busy schedule to wonder
how the test was coming along. Passing Caswell's office, I put my head
in. He looked up from a student research paper he was correcting.
"Caswell, about that sewing club business—I'm beginning to feel the
suspense. Could I get an advance report on how it's coming?"
"I'm not following it. We're supposed to let it run the full six
months."
"But I'm curious. Could I get in touch with that woman—what's her
name?"
"Searles. Mrs. George Searles."
"Would that change the results?"
"Not in the slightest. If you want to graph the membership rise, it
should be going up in a log curve, probably doubling every so often."
I grinned. "If it's not rising, you're fired."
He grinned back. "If it's not rising, you won't have to fire me—I'll
burn my books and shoot myself."
I returned to my office and put in a call to Watashaw.
While I was waiting for the phone to be answered, I took a piece of
graph paper and ruled it off into six sections, one for each month.
After the phone had rung in the distance for a long time, a servant
answered with a bored drawl:
"Mrs. Searles' residence."
I picked up a red gummed star and licked it.
"Mrs. Searles, please."
"She's not in just now. Could I take a message?"
I placed the star at the thirty line in the beginning of the first
section. Thirty members they'd started with.
"No, thanks. Could you tell me when she'll be back?"
"Not until dinner. She's at the meetin'."
"The sewing club?" I asked.
"No, sir, not that thing. There isn't any Sewing club any more, not
for a long time. She's at the Civic Welfare meeting."
Somehow I hadn't expected anything like that.
"Thank you," I said and hung up, and after a moment noticed I was
holding a box of red gummed stars in my hand. I closed it and put it
down on top of the graph of membership in the sewing circle. No more
members....
Poor Caswell. The bet between us was ironclad. He wouldn't let me
back down on it even if I wanted to. He'd probably quit before I put
through the first slow move to fire him. His professional pride would
be shattered, sunk without a trace. I remembered what he said about
shooting himself. It had seemed funny to both of us at the time,
but.... What a mess
that
would make for the university.
I had to talk to Mrs. Searles. Perhaps there was some outside reason
why the club had disbanded. Perhaps it had not just died.
I called back. "This is Professor Smith," I said, giving the alias I
had used before. "I called a few minutes ago. When did you say Mrs.
Searles will return?"
"About six-thirty or seven o'clock."
Five hours to wait.
And what if Caswell asked me what I had found out in the meantime? I
didn't want to tell him anything until I had talked it over with that
woman Searles first.
"Where is this Civic Welfare meeting?"
She told me.
Five minutes later, I was in my car, heading for Watashaw, driving
considerably faster than my usual speed and keeping a careful watch for
highway patrol cars as the speedometer climbed.
The town meeting hall and theater was a big place, probably with lots
of small rooms for different clubs. I went in through the center door
and found myself in the huge central hall where some sort of rally was
being held. A political-type rally—you know, cheers and chants, with
bunting already down on the floor, people holding banners, and plenty
of enthusiasm and excitement in the air. Someone was making a speech up
on the platform. Most of the people there were women.
I wondered how the Civic Welfare League could dare hold its meeting at
the same time as a political rally that could pull its members away.
The group with Mrs. Searles was probably holding a shrunken and almost
memberless meeting somewhere in an upper room.
There probably was a side door that would lead upstairs.
While I glanced around, a pretty girl usher put a printed bulletin in
my hand, whispering, "Here's one of the new copies." As I attempted to
hand it back, she retreated. "Oh, you can keep it. It's the new one.
Everyone's supposed to have it. We've just printed up six thousand
copies to make sure there'll be enough to last."
The tall woman on the platform had been making a driving, forceful
speech about some plans for rebuilding Watashaw's slum section. It
began to penetrate my mind dimly as I glanced down at the bulletin in
my hands.
"Civic Welfare League of Watashaw. The United Organization of Church
and Secular Charities." That's what it said. Below began the rules of
membership.
I looked up. The speaker, with a clear, determined voice and conscious,
forceful gestures, had entered the homestretch of her speech, an appeal
to the civic pride of all citizens of Watashaw.
"With a bright and glorious future—potentially without poor and
without uncared-for ill—potentially with no ugliness, no vistas which
are not beautiful—the best people in the best planned town in the
country—the jewel of the United States."
She paused and then leaned forward intensely, striking her clenched
hand on the speaker's stand with each word for emphasis.
"
All we need is more members. Now get out there and recruit!
"
I finally recognized Mrs. Searles, as an answering sudden blast of
sound half deafened me. The crowd was chanting at the top of its lungs:
"Recruit! Recruit!"
Mrs. Searles stood still at the speaker's table and behind her,
seated in a row of chairs, was a group that was probably the board of
directors. It was mostly women, and the women began to look vaguely
familiar, as if they could be members of the sewing circle.
I put my lips close to the ear of the pretty usher while I turned over
the stiff printed bulletin on a hunch. "How long has the League been
organized?" On the back of the bulletin was a constitution.
She was cheering with the crowd, her eyes sparkling. "I don't know,"
she answered between cheers. "I only joined two days ago. Isn't it
wonderful?"
I went into the quiet outer air and got into my car with my skin
prickling. Even as I drove away, I could hear them. They were singing
some kind of organization song with the tune of "Marching through
Georgia."
Even at the single glance I had given it, the constitution looked
exactly like the one we had given the Watashaw Sewing Circle.
All I told Caswell when I got back was that the sewing circle had
changed its name and the membership seemed to be rising.
Next day, after calling Mrs. Searles, I placed some red stars on my
graph for the first three months. They made a nice curve, rising more
steeply as it reached the fourth month. They had picked up their first
increase in membership simply by amalgamating with all the other types
of charity organizations in Watashaw, changing the club name with each
fusion, but keeping the same constitution—the constitution with the
bright promise of advantages as long as there were always new members
being brought in.
By the fifth month, the League had added a mutual baby-sitting service
and had induced the local school board to add a nursery school to the
town service, so as to free more women for League activity. But charity
must have been completely organized by then, and expansion had to be in
other directions.
Some real estate agents evidently had been drawn into the whirlpool
early, along with their ideas. The slum improvement plans began to
blossom and take on a tinge of real estate planning later in the month.
The first day of the sixth month, a big two page spread appeared in
the local paper of a mass meeting which had approved a full-fledged
scheme for slum clearance of Watashaw's shack-town section, plus plans
for rehousing, civic building, and rezoning.
And
good prospects
for attracting some new industries to the town, industries which had
already been contacted and seemed interested by the privileges offered.
And with all this, an arrangement for securing and distributing to the
club members
alone
most of the profit that would come to the town in
the form of a rise in the price of building sites and a boom in the
building industry. The profit distributing arrangement was the same one
that had been built into the organization plan for the distribution
of the small profits of membership fees and honorary promotions. It
was becoming an openly profitable business. Membership was rising more
rapidly now.
By the second week of the sixth month, news appeared in the local paper
that the club had filed an application to incorporate itself as the
Watashaw Mutual Trade and Civic Development Corporation, and all the
local real estate promoters had finished joining en masse. The Mutual
Trade part sounded to me as if the Chamber of Commerce was on the point
of being pulled in with them, ideas, ambitions and all.
I chuckled while reading the next page of the paper, on which a local
politician was reported as having addressed the club with a long
flowery oration on their enterprise, charity, and civic spirit. He
had been made an honorary member. If he allowed himself to be made a
full
member with its contractual obligations and its lures, if the
politicians went into this, too....
I laughed, filing the newspaper with the other documents on the
Watashaw test. These proofs would fascinate any businessman with the
sense to see where his bread was buttered. A businessman is constantly
dealing with organizations, including his own, and finding them either
inert, cantankerous, or both. Caswell's formula could be a handle to
grasp them with. Gratitude alone would bring money into the university
in carload lots.
The end of the sixth month came. The test was over and the end reports
were spectacular. Caswell's formulas were proven to the hilt.
After reading the last newspaper reports, I called him up.
"Perfect, Wilt,
perfect
! I can use this Watashaw thing to get you so
many fellowships and scholarships and grants for your department that
you'll think it's snowing money!"
He answered somewhat disinterestedly, "I've been busy working with
students on their research papers and marking tests—not following the
Watashaw business at all, I'm afraid. You say the demonstration went
well and you're satisfied?"
He was definitely putting on a chill. We were friends now, but
obviously he was still peeved whenever he was reminded that I had
doubted that his theory could work. And he was using its success to
rub my nose in the realization that I had been wrong. A man with a
string of degrees after his name is just as human as anyone else. I had
needled him pretty hard that first time.
"I'm satisfied," I acknowledged. "I was wrong. The formulas work
beautifully. Come over and see my file of documents on it if you want a
boost for your ego. Now let's see the formula for stopping it."
He sounded cheerful again. "I didn't complicate that organization
with negatives. I wanted it to
grow
. It falls apart naturally when
it stops growing for more than two months. It's like the great stock
boom before an economic crash. Everyone in it is prosperous as long as
the prices just keep going up and new buyers come into the market, but
they all knew what would happen if it stopped growing. You remember, we
built in as one of the incentives that the members know they are going
to lose if membership stops growing. Why, if I tried to stop it now,
they'd cut my throat."
I remembered the drive and frenzy of the crowd in the one early meeting
I had seen. They probably would.
"No," he continued. "We'll just let it play out to the end of its
tether and die of old age."
"When will that be?"
"It can't grow past the female population of the town. There are only
so many women in Watashaw, and some of them don't like sewing."
The graph on the desk before me began to look sinister. Surely Caswell
must have made some provision for—
"You underestimate their ingenuity," I said into the phone. "Since they
wanted to expand, they didn't stick to sewing. They went from general
charity to social welfare schemes to something that's pretty close to
an incorporated government. The name is now the Watashaw Mutual Trade
and Civic Development Corporation, and they're filing an application
to change it to Civic Property Pool and Social Dividend, membership
contractual, open to all. That social dividend sounds like a Technocrat
climbed on the band wagon, eh?"
While I spoke, I carefully added another red star to the curve above
the thousand member level, checking with the newspaper that still lay
open on my desk. The curve was definitely some sort of log curve now,
growing more rapidly with each increase.
"Leaving out practical limitations for a moment, where does the formula
say it will stop?" I asked.
"When you run out of people to join it. But after all, there are only
so many people in Watashaw. It's a pretty small town."
"They've opened a branch office in New York," I said carefully into the
phone, a few weeks later.
With my pencil, very carefully, I extended the membership curve from
where it was then.
After the next doubling, the curve went almost straight up and off the
page.
Allowing for a lag of contagion from one nation to another, depending
on how much their citizens intermingled, I'd give the rest of the world
about twelve years.
There was a long silence while Caswell probably drew the same graph
in his own mind. Then he laughed weakly. "Well, you asked me for a
demonstration."
That was as good an answer as any. We got together and had lunch in a
bar, if you can call it lunch. The movement we started will expand by
hook or by crook, by seduction or by bribery or by propaganda or by
conquest, but it will expand. And maybe a total world government will
be a fine thing—until it hits the end of its rope in twelve years or
so.
What happens then, I don't know.
But I don't want anyone to pin that on me. From now on, if anyone asks
me, I've never heard of Watashaw.
| Why is Caswell so confident that his organizational model will cause the group to grow? | [
"Because he is an expert in pyramid schemes.",
"Because he is an expert in socialism.",
"Because he is an expert in organizational strategies.",
"Because he is an expert in human social behavior."
] | 3 | true |
THE MAN OUTSIDE
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No one, least of all Martin, could dispute
that a man's life should be guarded by his
kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?
Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother
disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way
of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better
off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this
good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin
had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of
soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in
successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble
that way.
Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story
about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really
was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell
him to call her "
Aunt Ninian
"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd
been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought
maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little
too crazy for that.
He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer
with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry
instead of mopping up the floor with him.
"But I can't understand," he would say, keeping his face straight. "Why
do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin
Conrad?"
"Because he's coming to kill you."
"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing."
Ninian sighed. "He's dissatisfied with the current social order and
killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it.
You wouldn't understand."
"You're damn right. I
don't
understand. What's it all about in
straight gas?"
"Oh, just don't ask any questions," Ninian said petulantly. "When you
get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you."
So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the
way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he
knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to
think it was disgusting.
"So if you don't like it, clean it up," he suggested.
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
"Hire a maid, then!" he jeered.
And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up
the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in
the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding
to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew
how to give them the cold shoulder.
One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming
to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very
regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and
she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and
would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so
hard inside.
But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and
hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin
had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step
without hearing "Fancy Pants!" yelled after him.
Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people
thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little
better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There
were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the
same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty
dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.
"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical
application to go by," she told him.
He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out
wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what
she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a
spectator.
When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again,
Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that
mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where
intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.
"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in," she
declared. "Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here."
And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who
came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle
Raymond.
From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and
Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many
more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.
Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play
with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents
would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if
a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be
something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as
conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she
was supposed to know better than he did.
He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before,
warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by
more luxury than he knew what to do with.
The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There
were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every
inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls
were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time
and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for
Ninian didn't know much about meals.
The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a
neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.
Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other
kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given
him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd
nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged
and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all
she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if
respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.
From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness.
They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry
out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him,
in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a
world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the
government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to
think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than
actually doing anything with the hands.
In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands;
everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear
pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was
no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of
normal living.
It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of
them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth.
They came from the future.
When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had
promised five years before.
"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an
idealist," Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.
Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and
rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery
store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized
and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear
glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun,
and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having
carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting
the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets," Raymond
continued. "Which
is
distressing—though, of course, it's not as
if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about
passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that,
and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However,
Conrad is so impatient."
"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work," Martin suggested.
"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!" Raymond
snapped. "We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all.
But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same
people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd
years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?"
He continued more mildly: "However, even you ought to be able to
understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food.
All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those
worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that
expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how
would they manage to live?"
"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how
do
you
live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for
you," Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the
past and think in the future.
"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult," Raymond said, "but
if you will persist in these childish interruptions—"
"I'm sorry," Martin said.
But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of
his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated
young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and
considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And
he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the
lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more
frightening—his race had lost something vital.
Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him,
Raymond went on blandly: "Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to
feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for
the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we
might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling
guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his
great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held
accountable for his great-grandfather."
"How about a great-great-grandchild?" Martin couldn't help asking.
Raymond flushed a delicate pink. "Do you want to hear the rest of this
or don't you?"
"Oh, I do!" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for
himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.
"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time
transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally
officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to
be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always
desperate for a fresh topic of conversation."
Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas'
assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back
in time and "eliminate!" their common great-grandfather. In that way,
there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never
get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.
"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem," Martin observed.
Raymond looked annoyed. "It's the
adolescent
way," he said, "to do
away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole
society in order to root out a single injustice?"
"Not if it were a good one otherwise."
"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps
he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such
matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea
of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather
was such a
good
man, you know." Raymond's expressive upper lip
curled. "So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of
his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty
worthless character."
"That would be me, I suppose," Martin said quietly.
Raymond turned a deep rose. "Well, doesn't that just go to prove you
mustn't believe everything you hear?" The next sentence tumbled out in
a rush. "I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other
cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it
was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you." He
beamed at Martin.
The boy smiled slowly. "Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in
eliminating
me, then none of you would exist, would you?"
Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "Well, you didn't really
suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer
altruism, did you?" he asked, turning on the charm which all the
cousins possessed to a consternating degree.
Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long
ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.
"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's
assistants," Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,
"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us."
Induced
, Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the
use of the iron maiden.
"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you
night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made
our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here
we are!"
"I see," Martin said.
Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. "After all," he pointed
out defensively, "whatever our motives, it has turned into a good
thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary
conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you
could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of
course Ninian
was
a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any
little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our
era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—"
"What did you do with them?" Martin asked.
But Raymond rushed on: "Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge,
we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale.
Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are,
the more eccentricity you can get away with. And," he added, "I might
as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this
wretched historical stint."
"So Ninian's going," said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel
curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a
remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for
him.
"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in
exile," Raymond explained, "even though our life spans are a bit longer
than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat
government." He looked inquisitively at Martin. "You're not going to
go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?"
"No...." Martin said hesitantly. "Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we
aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference." That was the
sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.
Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you weren't a sloppy
sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him,
you know."
Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring
of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. "How do you plan to
protect me when he comes?"
"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course," Raymond said
with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's
combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no
doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. "And we've got a
rather elaborate burglar alarm system."
Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring
which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was
dubious. "Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this
house
,
but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this
time
?"
"Never fear—it has a temporal radius," Raymond replied. "Factory
guarantee and all that."
"Just to be on the safe side," Martin said, "I think I'd better have
one of those guns, too."
"A splendid idea!" enthused Raymond. "I was just about to think of that
myself!"
When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at
her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful
at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding
him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the
cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and
that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the
very last.
Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The
site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a
dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether
this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his
descendants were exceedingly inept planners.
Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as
Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible
convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques,
carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man
from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise,
Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become
dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—"architecturally
dreadful, of course," Raymond had said, "but so hilariously
typical"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level
aquarium.
"How about a moat?" Martin suggested when they first came. "It seems to
go with a castle."
"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?" Raymond asked, amused.
"No," Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, "but it would make the place
seem safer somehow."
The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more
nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that
stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because
several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with
the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it,
until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.
During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the
higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably
arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At
least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of
their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy
such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of
entertainment.
"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin," Raymond
commented as he took his place at the head of the table, "because,
unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one
just—well, drifts along happily."
"Ours is a wonderful world," Grania sighed at Martin. "I only wish we
could take you there. I'm sure you would like it."
"Don't be a fool, Grania!" Raymond snapped. "Well, Martin, have you
made up your mind what you want to be?"
Martin affected to think. "A physicist," he said, not without malice.
"Or perhaps an engineer."
There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.
"Can't do that," Ives said. "Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't
know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen.
Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might
invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from
particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous."
"Might mess up our time frightfully," Bartholomew contributed, "though,
to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how."
"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over
again, Bart!" Raymond said impatiently. "Well, Martin?"
"What would you suggest?" Martin asked.
"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly.
Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of
their times."
"Furthermore," Ottillie added, "one more artist couldn't make much
difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages."
Martin couldn't hold back his question. "What was I, actually, in that
other time?"
There was a chilly silence.
"Let's not talk about it, dear," Lalage finally said. "Let's just be
thankful we've saved you from
that
!"
So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent
second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first
rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost
purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was
fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and
walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for
the sake of an ideal.
But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty
pictures.
Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the
descendants
cousin
—next assumed guardianship. Ives took his
responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged
to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received
critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest
sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not
interested.
"Takes time," Ives tried to reassure him. "One day they'll be buying
your pictures, Martin. Wait and see."
Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin
as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young
man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a
change of air and scenery.
"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented
space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it.
Tourists always like ruins best, anyway."
So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht,
which Martin christened
The Interregnum
. They traveled about from sea
to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making
trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the
nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the
same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous
museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.
The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters,
largely because they could spend so much time far away from the
contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So
they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on
The Interregnum
. He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although
there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through
time.
More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because
they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard
ship, giving each other parties and playing an
avant-garde
form of
shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually
ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of
having got advance information about the results.
Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only
when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though
they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court
his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.
He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone
together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come
from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely
accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth
proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people
left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly
interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue
of their distinguished ancestry.
"Rather feudal, isn't it?" Martin asked.
Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately
planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development.
Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been
deported.
"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds," Ives said as the two
of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse
of some ocean or other. "People, too. Mostly lower classes, except
for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering," he added
regretfully, "same as in your day.... Like now, I mean," he corrected
himself. "Maybe it
is
worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets
for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more.
Bombed. Very thorough job."
"Oh," Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested,
even.
"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after
a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the
people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—" he smiled
shamefacedly—"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed,
could I?"
"I suppose not," Martin said.
"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except
Conrad, and even he—" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better
way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything
will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything,
if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin.
"I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he
couldn't even seem to care.
During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin
had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost
wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement.
But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....
He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize
the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have
been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one
bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from
the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to
take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was
buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the
continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.
A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were
dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond
read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical
cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy
about the entire undertaking.
"He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over
Ives, "so his death was not in vain."
But Martin disagreed.
The ceaseless voyaging began again.
The Interregnum
voyaged to every
ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After
a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin
came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell
apart as the different oceans.
All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in
his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only
the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust
their elders.
As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest
in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port
for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that
era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore,
and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see
the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and
sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes
that his other work lacked.
When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit
somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way,
he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this
journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was
purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the
cousin's utter disgust.
"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you
do," the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were
scraping bottom now—advised.
Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be
disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither
purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored.
However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives
and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer
understand.
"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?" Martin idly asked
the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. "Conrad's
a very shrewd fellow," he whispered. "He's biding his time—waiting
until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!"
"Oh, I see," Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating
member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would
ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one
conversation, anyhow.
"When he does show up, I'll protect you," the cousin vowed, touching
his ray gun. "You haven't a thing to worry about."
Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. "I
have every confidence in you," he told his descendant. He himself had
given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so
The Interregnum
voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid
out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel
and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long
time.
The Interregnum
roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of
passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She
bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
| What is the flaw in the cousins' plan? | [
"Conrad could target their great-great-grandmother and achieve the same result.",
"Conrad could target their great-grandmother and achieve the same result.",
"They have kept Martin isolated for almost his entire life, he has no son. Therefore, they will cease to exist.",
"All Conrad needs to do to find Martin, is to follow the cousins back in time."
] | 2 | false |
THE MAN OUTSIDE
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No one, least of all Martin, could dispute
that a man's life should be guarded by his
kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?
Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother
disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way
of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better
off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this
good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin
had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of
soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in
successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble
that way.
Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story
about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really
was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell
him to call her "
Aunt Ninian
"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd
been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought
maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little
too crazy for that.
He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer
with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry
instead of mopping up the floor with him.
"But I can't understand," he would say, keeping his face straight. "Why
do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin
Conrad?"
"Because he's coming to kill you."
"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing."
Ninian sighed. "He's dissatisfied with the current social order and
killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it.
You wouldn't understand."
"You're damn right. I
don't
understand. What's it all about in
straight gas?"
"Oh, just don't ask any questions," Ninian said petulantly. "When you
get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you."
So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the
way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he
knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to
think it was disgusting.
"So if you don't like it, clean it up," he suggested.
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
"Hire a maid, then!" he jeered.
And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up
the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in
the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding
to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew
how to give them the cold shoulder.
One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming
to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very
regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and
she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and
would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so
hard inside.
But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and
hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin
had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step
without hearing "Fancy Pants!" yelled after him.
Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people
thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little
better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There
were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the
same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty
dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.
"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical
application to go by," she told him.
He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out
wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what
she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a
spectator.
When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again,
Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that
mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where
intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.
"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in," she
declared. "Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here."
And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who
came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle
Raymond.
From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and
Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many
more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.
Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play
with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents
would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if
a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be
something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as
conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she
was supposed to know better than he did.
He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before,
warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by
more luxury than he knew what to do with.
The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There
were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every
inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls
were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time
and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for
Ninian didn't know much about meals.
The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a
neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.
Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other
kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given
him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd
nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged
and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all
she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if
respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.
From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness.
They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry
out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him,
in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a
world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the
government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to
think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than
actually doing anything with the hands.
In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands;
everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear
pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was
no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of
normal living.
It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of
them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth.
They came from the future.
When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had
promised five years before.
"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an
idealist," Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.
Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and
rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery
store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized
and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear
glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun,
and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having
carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting
the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets," Raymond
continued. "Which
is
distressing—though, of course, it's not as
if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about
passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that,
and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However,
Conrad is so impatient."
"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work," Martin suggested.
"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!" Raymond
snapped. "We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all.
But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same
people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd
years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?"
He continued more mildly: "However, even you ought to be able to
understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food.
All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those
worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that
expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how
would they manage to live?"
"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how
do
you
live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for
you," Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the
past and think in the future.
"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult," Raymond said, "but
if you will persist in these childish interruptions—"
"I'm sorry," Martin said.
But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of
his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated
young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and
considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And
he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the
lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more
frightening—his race had lost something vital.
Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him,
Raymond went on blandly: "Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to
feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for
the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we
might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling
guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his
great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held
accountable for his great-grandfather."
"How about a great-great-grandchild?" Martin couldn't help asking.
Raymond flushed a delicate pink. "Do you want to hear the rest of this
or don't you?"
"Oh, I do!" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for
himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.
"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time
transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally
officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to
be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always
desperate for a fresh topic of conversation."
Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas'
assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back
in time and "eliminate!" their common great-grandfather. In that way,
there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never
get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.
"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem," Martin observed.
Raymond looked annoyed. "It's the
adolescent
way," he said, "to do
away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole
society in order to root out a single injustice?"
"Not if it were a good one otherwise."
"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps
he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such
matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea
of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather
was such a
good
man, you know." Raymond's expressive upper lip
curled. "So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of
his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty
worthless character."
"That would be me, I suppose," Martin said quietly.
Raymond turned a deep rose. "Well, doesn't that just go to prove you
mustn't believe everything you hear?" The next sentence tumbled out in
a rush. "I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other
cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it
was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you." He
beamed at Martin.
The boy smiled slowly. "Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in
eliminating
me, then none of you would exist, would you?"
Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "Well, you didn't really
suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer
altruism, did you?" he asked, turning on the charm which all the
cousins possessed to a consternating degree.
Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long
ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.
"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's
assistants," Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,
"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us."
Induced
, Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the
use of the iron maiden.
"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you
night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made
our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here
we are!"
"I see," Martin said.
Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. "After all," he pointed
out defensively, "whatever our motives, it has turned into a good
thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary
conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you
could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of
course Ninian
was
a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any
little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our
era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—"
"What did you do with them?" Martin asked.
But Raymond rushed on: "Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge,
we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale.
Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are,
the more eccentricity you can get away with. And," he added, "I might
as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this
wretched historical stint."
"So Ninian's going," said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel
curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a
remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for
him.
"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in
exile," Raymond explained, "even though our life spans are a bit longer
than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat
government." He looked inquisitively at Martin. "You're not going to
go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?"
"No...." Martin said hesitantly. "Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we
aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference." That was the
sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.
Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you weren't a sloppy
sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him,
you know."
Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring
of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. "How do you plan to
protect me when he comes?"
"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course," Raymond said
with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's
combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no
doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. "And we've got a
rather elaborate burglar alarm system."
Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring
which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was
dubious. "Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this
house
,
but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this
time
?"
"Never fear—it has a temporal radius," Raymond replied. "Factory
guarantee and all that."
"Just to be on the safe side," Martin said, "I think I'd better have
one of those guns, too."
"A splendid idea!" enthused Raymond. "I was just about to think of that
myself!"
When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at
her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful
at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding
him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the
cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and
that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the
very last.
Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The
site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a
dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether
this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his
descendants were exceedingly inept planners.
Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as
Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible
convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques,
carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man
from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise,
Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become
dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—"architecturally
dreadful, of course," Raymond had said, "but so hilariously
typical"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level
aquarium.
"How about a moat?" Martin suggested when they first came. "It seems to
go with a castle."
"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?" Raymond asked, amused.
"No," Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, "but it would make the place
seem safer somehow."
The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more
nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that
stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because
several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with
the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it,
until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.
During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the
higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably
arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At
least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of
their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy
such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of
entertainment.
"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin," Raymond
commented as he took his place at the head of the table, "because,
unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one
just—well, drifts along happily."
"Ours is a wonderful world," Grania sighed at Martin. "I only wish we
could take you there. I'm sure you would like it."
"Don't be a fool, Grania!" Raymond snapped. "Well, Martin, have you
made up your mind what you want to be?"
Martin affected to think. "A physicist," he said, not without malice.
"Or perhaps an engineer."
There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.
"Can't do that," Ives said. "Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't
know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen.
Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might
invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from
particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous."
"Might mess up our time frightfully," Bartholomew contributed, "though,
to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how."
"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over
again, Bart!" Raymond said impatiently. "Well, Martin?"
"What would you suggest?" Martin asked.
"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly.
Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of
their times."
"Furthermore," Ottillie added, "one more artist couldn't make much
difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages."
Martin couldn't hold back his question. "What was I, actually, in that
other time?"
There was a chilly silence.
"Let's not talk about it, dear," Lalage finally said. "Let's just be
thankful we've saved you from
that
!"
So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent
second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first
rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost
purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was
fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and
walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for
the sake of an ideal.
But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty
pictures.
Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the
descendants
cousin
—next assumed guardianship. Ives took his
responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged
to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received
critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest
sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not
interested.
"Takes time," Ives tried to reassure him. "One day they'll be buying
your pictures, Martin. Wait and see."
Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin
as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young
man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a
change of air and scenery.
"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented
space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it.
Tourists always like ruins best, anyway."
So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht,
which Martin christened
The Interregnum
. They traveled about from sea
to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making
trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the
nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the
same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous
museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.
The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters,
largely because they could spend so much time far away from the
contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So
they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on
The Interregnum
. He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although
there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through
time.
More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because
they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard
ship, giving each other parties and playing an
avant-garde
form of
shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually
ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of
having got advance information about the results.
Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only
when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though
they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court
his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.
He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone
together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come
from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely
accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth
proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people
left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly
interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue
of their distinguished ancestry.
"Rather feudal, isn't it?" Martin asked.
Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately
planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development.
Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been
deported.
"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds," Ives said as the two
of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse
of some ocean or other. "People, too. Mostly lower classes, except
for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering," he added
regretfully, "same as in your day.... Like now, I mean," he corrected
himself. "Maybe it
is
worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets
for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more.
Bombed. Very thorough job."
"Oh," Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested,
even.
"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after
a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the
people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—" he smiled
shamefacedly—"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed,
could I?"
"I suppose not," Martin said.
"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except
Conrad, and even he—" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better
way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything
will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything,
if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin.
"I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he
couldn't even seem to care.
During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin
had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost
wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement.
But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....
He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize
the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have
been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one
bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from
the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to
take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was
buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the
continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.
A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were
dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond
read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical
cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy
about the entire undertaking.
"He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over
Ives, "so his death was not in vain."
But Martin disagreed.
The ceaseless voyaging began again.
The Interregnum
voyaged to every
ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After
a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin
came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell
apart as the different oceans.
All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in
his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only
the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust
their elders.
As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest
in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port
for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that
era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore,
and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see
the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and
sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes
that his other work lacked.
When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit
somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way,
he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this
journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was
purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the
cousin's utter disgust.
"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you
do," the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were
scraping bottom now—advised.
Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be
disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither
purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored.
However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives
and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer
understand.
"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?" Martin idly asked
the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. "Conrad's
a very shrewd fellow," he whispered. "He's biding his time—waiting
until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!"
"Oh, I see," Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating
member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would
ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one
conversation, anyhow.
"When he does show up, I'll protect you," the cousin vowed, touching
his ray gun. "You haven't a thing to worry about."
Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. "I
have every confidence in you," he told his descendant. He himself had
given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so
The Interregnum
voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid
out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel
and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long
time.
The Interregnum
roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of
passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She
bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
| Why don't the cousins realize the flaw in their plan? | [
"They do not understand time travel.",
"They all originated from the same point in time.",
"They are highly interbred.",
"They are not very intelligent."
] | 3 | true |
THE MAN OUTSIDE
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No one, least of all Martin, could dispute
that a man's life should be guarded by his
kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?
Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother
disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way
of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better
off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this
good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin
had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of
soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in
successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble
that way.
Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story
about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really
was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell
him to call her "
Aunt Ninian
"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd
been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought
maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little
too crazy for that.
He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer
with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry
instead of mopping up the floor with him.
"But I can't understand," he would say, keeping his face straight. "Why
do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin
Conrad?"
"Because he's coming to kill you."
"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing."
Ninian sighed. "He's dissatisfied with the current social order and
killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it.
You wouldn't understand."
"You're damn right. I
don't
understand. What's it all about in
straight gas?"
"Oh, just don't ask any questions," Ninian said petulantly. "When you
get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you."
So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the
way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he
knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to
think it was disgusting.
"So if you don't like it, clean it up," he suggested.
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
"Hire a maid, then!" he jeered.
And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up
the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in
the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding
to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew
how to give them the cold shoulder.
One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming
to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very
regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and
she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and
would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so
hard inside.
But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and
hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin
had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step
without hearing "Fancy Pants!" yelled after him.
Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people
thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little
better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There
were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the
same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty
dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.
"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical
application to go by," she told him.
He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out
wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what
she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a
spectator.
When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again,
Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that
mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where
intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.
"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in," she
declared. "Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here."
And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who
came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle
Raymond.
From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and
Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many
more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.
Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play
with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents
would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if
a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be
something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as
conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she
was supposed to know better than he did.
He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before,
warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by
more luxury than he knew what to do with.
The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There
were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every
inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls
were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time
and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for
Ninian didn't know much about meals.
The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a
neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.
Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other
kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given
him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd
nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged
and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all
she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if
respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.
From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness.
They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry
out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him,
in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a
world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the
government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to
think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than
actually doing anything with the hands.
In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands;
everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear
pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was
no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of
normal living.
It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of
them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth.
They came from the future.
When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had
promised five years before.
"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an
idealist," Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.
Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and
rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery
store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized
and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear
glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun,
and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having
carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting
the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets," Raymond
continued. "Which
is
distressing—though, of course, it's not as
if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about
passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that,
and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However,
Conrad is so impatient."
"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work," Martin suggested.
"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!" Raymond
snapped. "We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all.
But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same
people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd
years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?"
He continued more mildly: "However, even you ought to be able to
understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food.
All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those
worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that
expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how
would they manage to live?"
"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how
do
you
live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for
you," Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the
past and think in the future.
"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult," Raymond said, "but
if you will persist in these childish interruptions—"
"I'm sorry," Martin said.
But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of
his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated
young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and
considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And
he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the
lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more
frightening—his race had lost something vital.
Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him,
Raymond went on blandly: "Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to
feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for
the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we
might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling
guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his
great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held
accountable for his great-grandfather."
"How about a great-great-grandchild?" Martin couldn't help asking.
Raymond flushed a delicate pink. "Do you want to hear the rest of this
or don't you?"
"Oh, I do!" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for
himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.
"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time
transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally
officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to
be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always
desperate for a fresh topic of conversation."
Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas'
assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back
in time and "eliminate!" their common great-grandfather. In that way,
there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never
get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.
"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem," Martin observed.
Raymond looked annoyed. "It's the
adolescent
way," he said, "to do
away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole
society in order to root out a single injustice?"
"Not if it were a good one otherwise."
"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps
he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such
matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea
of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather
was such a
good
man, you know." Raymond's expressive upper lip
curled. "So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of
his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty
worthless character."
"That would be me, I suppose," Martin said quietly.
Raymond turned a deep rose. "Well, doesn't that just go to prove you
mustn't believe everything you hear?" The next sentence tumbled out in
a rush. "I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other
cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it
was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you." He
beamed at Martin.
The boy smiled slowly. "Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in
eliminating
me, then none of you would exist, would you?"
Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "Well, you didn't really
suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer
altruism, did you?" he asked, turning on the charm which all the
cousins possessed to a consternating degree.
Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long
ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.
"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's
assistants," Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,
"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us."
Induced
, Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the
use of the iron maiden.
"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you
night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made
our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here
we are!"
"I see," Martin said.
Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. "After all," he pointed
out defensively, "whatever our motives, it has turned into a good
thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary
conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you
could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of
course Ninian
was
a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any
little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our
era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—"
"What did you do with them?" Martin asked.
But Raymond rushed on: "Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge,
we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale.
Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are,
the more eccentricity you can get away with. And," he added, "I might
as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this
wretched historical stint."
"So Ninian's going," said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel
curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a
remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for
him.
"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in
exile," Raymond explained, "even though our life spans are a bit longer
than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat
government." He looked inquisitively at Martin. "You're not going to
go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?"
"No...." Martin said hesitantly. "Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we
aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference." That was the
sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.
Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you weren't a sloppy
sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him,
you know."
Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring
of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. "How do you plan to
protect me when he comes?"
"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course," Raymond said
with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's
combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no
doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. "And we've got a
rather elaborate burglar alarm system."
Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring
which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was
dubious. "Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this
house
,
but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this
time
?"
"Never fear—it has a temporal radius," Raymond replied. "Factory
guarantee and all that."
"Just to be on the safe side," Martin said, "I think I'd better have
one of those guns, too."
"A splendid idea!" enthused Raymond. "I was just about to think of that
myself!"
When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at
her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful
at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding
him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the
cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and
that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the
very last.
Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The
site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a
dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether
this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his
descendants were exceedingly inept planners.
Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as
Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible
convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques,
carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man
from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise,
Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become
dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—"architecturally
dreadful, of course," Raymond had said, "but so hilariously
typical"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level
aquarium.
"How about a moat?" Martin suggested when they first came. "It seems to
go with a castle."
"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?" Raymond asked, amused.
"No," Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, "but it would make the place
seem safer somehow."
The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more
nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that
stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because
several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with
the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it,
until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.
During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the
higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably
arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At
least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of
their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy
such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of
entertainment.
"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin," Raymond
commented as he took his place at the head of the table, "because,
unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one
just—well, drifts along happily."
"Ours is a wonderful world," Grania sighed at Martin. "I only wish we
could take you there. I'm sure you would like it."
"Don't be a fool, Grania!" Raymond snapped. "Well, Martin, have you
made up your mind what you want to be?"
Martin affected to think. "A physicist," he said, not without malice.
"Or perhaps an engineer."
There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.
"Can't do that," Ives said. "Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't
know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen.
Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might
invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from
particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous."
"Might mess up our time frightfully," Bartholomew contributed, "though,
to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how."
"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over
again, Bart!" Raymond said impatiently. "Well, Martin?"
"What would you suggest?" Martin asked.
"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly.
Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of
their times."
"Furthermore," Ottillie added, "one more artist couldn't make much
difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages."
Martin couldn't hold back his question. "What was I, actually, in that
other time?"
There was a chilly silence.
"Let's not talk about it, dear," Lalage finally said. "Let's just be
thankful we've saved you from
that
!"
So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent
second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first
rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost
purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was
fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and
walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for
the sake of an ideal.
But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty
pictures.
Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the
descendants
cousin
—next assumed guardianship. Ives took his
responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged
to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received
critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest
sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not
interested.
"Takes time," Ives tried to reassure him. "One day they'll be buying
your pictures, Martin. Wait and see."
Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin
as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young
man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a
change of air and scenery.
"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented
space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it.
Tourists always like ruins best, anyway."
So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht,
which Martin christened
The Interregnum
. They traveled about from sea
to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making
trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the
nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the
same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous
museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.
The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters,
largely because they could spend so much time far away from the
contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So
they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on
The Interregnum
. He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although
there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through
time.
More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because
they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard
ship, giving each other parties and playing an
avant-garde
form of
shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually
ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of
having got advance information about the results.
Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only
when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though
they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court
his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.
He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone
together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come
from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely
accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth
proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people
left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly
interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue
of their distinguished ancestry.
"Rather feudal, isn't it?" Martin asked.
Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately
planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development.
Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been
deported.
"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds," Ives said as the two
of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse
of some ocean or other. "People, too. Mostly lower classes, except
for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering," he added
regretfully, "same as in your day.... Like now, I mean," he corrected
himself. "Maybe it
is
worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets
for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more.
Bombed. Very thorough job."
"Oh," Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested,
even.
"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after
a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the
people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—" he smiled
shamefacedly—"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed,
could I?"
"I suppose not," Martin said.
"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except
Conrad, and even he—" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better
way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything
will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything,
if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin.
"I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he
couldn't even seem to care.
During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin
had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost
wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement.
But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....
He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize
the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have
been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one
bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from
the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to
take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was
buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the
continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.
A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were
dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond
read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical
cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy
about the entire undertaking.
"He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over
Ives, "so his death was not in vain."
But Martin disagreed.
The ceaseless voyaging began again.
The Interregnum
voyaged to every
ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After
a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin
came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell
apart as the different oceans.
All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in
his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only
the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust
their elders.
As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest
in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port
for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that
era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore,
and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see
the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and
sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes
that his other work lacked.
When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit
somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way,
he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this
journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was
purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the
cousin's utter disgust.
"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you
do," the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were
scraping bottom now—advised.
Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be
disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither
purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored.
However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives
and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer
understand.
"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?" Martin idly asked
the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. "Conrad's
a very shrewd fellow," he whispered. "He's biding his time—waiting
until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!"
"Oh, I see," Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating
member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would
ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one
conversation, anyhow.
"When he does show up, I'll protect you," the cousin vowed, touching
his ray gun. "You haven't a thing to worry about."
Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. "I
have every confidence in you," he told his descendant. He himself had
given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so
The Interregnum
voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid
out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel
and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long
time.
The Interregnum
roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of
passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She
bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
| Why doesn't Martin explain the flaw in the plan to the cousins? | [
"Martin resents the cousins for taking Ninian away from him.",
"They have been very generous. Martin is afraid they'll leave, and he won't be wealthy anymore.",
"Martin does not want the future generations to turn out like his descendants.",
"Martin finds the cousins very irritating. If they can't figure it out, why should he explain it?"
] | 2 | true |
THE MAN OUTSIDE
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No one, least of all Martin, could dispute
that a man's life should be guarded by his
kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?
Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother
disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way
of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better
off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this
good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin
had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of
soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in
successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble
that way.
Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story
about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really
was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell
him to call her "
Aunt Ninian
"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd
been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought
maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little
too crazy for that.
He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer
with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry
instead of mopping up the floor with him.
"But I can't understand," he would say, keeping his face straight. "Why
do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin
Conrad?"
"Because he's coming to kill you."
"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing."
Ninian sighed. "He's dissatisfied with the current social order and
killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it.
You wouldn't understand."
"You're damn right. I
don't
understand. What's it all about in
straight gas?"
"Oh, just don't ask any questions," Ninian said petulantly. "When you
get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you."
So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the
way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he
knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to
think it was disgusting.
"So if you don't like it, clean it up," he suggested.
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
"Hire a maid, then!" he jeered.
And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up
the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in
the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding
to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew
how to give them the cold shoulder.
One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming
to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very
regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and
she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and
would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so
hard inside.
But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and
hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin
had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step
without hearing "Fancy Pants!" yelled after him.
Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people
thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little
better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There
were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the
same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty
dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.
"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical
application to go by," she told him.
He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out
wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what
she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a
spectator.
When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again,
Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that
mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where
intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.
"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in," she
declared. "Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here."
And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who
came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle
Raymond.
From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and
Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many
more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.
Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play
with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents
would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if
a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be
something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as
conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she
was supposed to know better than he did.
He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before,
warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by
more luxury than he knew what to do with.
The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There
were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every
inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls
were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time
and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for
Ninian didn't know much about meals.
The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a
neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.
Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other
kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given
him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd
nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged
and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all
she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if
respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.
From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness.
They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry
out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him,
in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a
world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the
government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to
think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than
actually doing anything with the hands.
In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands;
everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear
pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was
no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of
normal living.
It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of
them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth.
They came from the future.
When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had
promised five years before.
"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an
idealist," Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.
Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and
rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery
store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized
and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear
glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun,
and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having
carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting
the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets," Raymond
continued. "Which
is
distressing—though, of course, it's not as
if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about
passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that,
and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However,
Conrad is so impatient."
"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work," Martin suggested.
"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!" Raymond
snapped. "We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all.
But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same
people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd
years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?"
He continued more mildly: "However, even you ought to be able to
understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food.
All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those
worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that
expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how
would they manage to live?"
"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how
do
you
live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for
you," Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the
past and think in the future.
"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult," Raymond said, "but
if you will persist in these childish interruptions—"
"I'm sorry," Martin said.
But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of
his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated
young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and
considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And
he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the
lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more
frightening—his race had lost something vital.
Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him,
Raymond went on blandly: "Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to
feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for
the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we
might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling
guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his
great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held
accountable for his great-grandfather."
"How about a great-great-grandchild?" Martin couldn't help asking.
Raymond flushed a delicate pink. "Do you want to hear the rest of this
or don't you?"
"Oh, I do!" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for
himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.
"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time
transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally
officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to
be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always
desperate for a fresh topic of conversation."
Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas'
assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back
in time and "eliminate!" their common great-grandfather. In that way,
there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never
get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.
"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem," Martin observed.
Raymond looked annoyed. "It's the
adolescent
way," he said, "to do
away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole
society in order to root out a single injustice?"
"Not if it were a good one otherwise."
"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps
he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such
matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea
of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather
was such a
good
man, you know." Raymond's expressive upper lip
curled. "So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of
his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty
worthless character."
"That would be me, I suppose," Martin said quietly.
Raymond turned a deep rose. "Well, doesn't that just go to prove you
mustn't believe everything you hear?" The next sentence tumbled out in
a rush. "I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other
cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it
was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you." He
beamed at Martin.
The boy smiled slowly. "Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in
eliminating
me, then none of you would exist, would you?"
Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "Well, you didn't really
suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer
altruism, did you?" he asked, turning on the charm which all the
cousins possessed to a consternating degree.
Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long
ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.
"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's
assistants," Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,
"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us."
Induced
, Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the
use of the iron maiden.
"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you
night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made
our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here
we are!"
"I see," Martin said.
Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. "After all," he pointed
out defensively, "whatever our motives, it has turned into a good
thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary
conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you
could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of
course Ninian
was
a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any
little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our
era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—"
"What did you do with them?" Martin asked.
But Raymond rushed on: "Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge,
we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale.
Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are,
the more eccentricity you can get away with. And," he added, "I might
as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this
wretched historical stint."
"So Ninian's going," said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel
curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a
remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for
him.
"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in
exile," Raymond explained, "even though our life spans are a bit longer
than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat
government." He looked inquisitively at Martin. "You're not going to
go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?"
"No...." Martin said hesitantly. "Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we
aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference." That was the
sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.
Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you weren't a sloppy
sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him,
you know."
Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring
of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. "How do you plan to
protect me when he comes?"
"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course," Raymond said
with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's
combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no
doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. "And we've got a
rather elaborate burglar alarm system."
Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring
which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was
dubious. "Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this
house
,
but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this
time
?"
"Never fear—it has a temporal radius," Raymond replied. "Factory
guarantee and all that."
"Just to be on the safe side," Martin said, "I think I'd better have
one of those guns, too."
"A splendid idea!" enthused Raymond. "I was just about to think of that
myself!"
When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at
her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful
at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding
him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the
cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and
that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the
very last.
Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The
site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a
dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether
this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his
descendants were exceedingly inept planners.
Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as
Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible
convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques,
carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man
from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise,
Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become
dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—"architecturally
dreadful, of course," Raymond had said, "but so hilariously
typical"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level
aquarium.
"How about a moat?" Martin suggested when they first came. "It seems to
go with a castle."
"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?" Raymond asked, amused.
"No," Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, "but it would make the place
seem safer somehow."
The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more
nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that
stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because
several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with
the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it,
until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.
During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the
higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably
arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At
least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of
their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy
such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of
entertainment.
"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin," Raymond
commented as he took his place at the head of the table, "because,
unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one
just—well, drifts along happily."
"Ours is a wonderful world," Grania sighed at Martin. "I only wish we
could take you there. I'm sure you would like it."
"Don't be a fool, Grania!" Raymond snapped. "Well, Martin, have you
made up your mind what you want to be?"
Martin affected to think. "A physicist," he said, not without malice.
"Or perhaps an engineer."
There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.
"Can't do that," Ives said. "Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't
know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen.
Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might
invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from
particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous."
"Might mess up our time frightfully," Bartholomew contributed, "though,
to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how."
"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over
again, Bart!" Raymond said impatiently. "Well, Martin?"
"What would you suggest?" Martin asked.
"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly.
Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of
their times."
"Furthermore," Ottillie added, "one more artist couldn't make much
difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages."
Martin couldn't hold back his question. "What was I, actually, in that
other time?"
There was a chilly silence.
"Let's not talk about it, dear," Lalage finally said. "Let's just be
thankful we've saved you from
that
!"
So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent
second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first
rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost
purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was
fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and
walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for
the sake of an ideal.
But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty
pictures.
Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the
descendants
cousin
—next assumed guardianship. Ives took his
responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged
to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received
critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest
sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not
interested.
"Takes time," Ives tried to reassure him. "One day they'll be buying
your pictures, Martin. Wait and see."
Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin
as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young
man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a
change of air and scenery.
"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented
space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it.
Tourists always like ruins best, anyway."
So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht,
which Martin christened
The Interregnum
. They traveled about from sea
to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making
trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the
nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the
same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous
museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.
The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters,
largely because they could spend so much time far away from the
contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So
they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on
The Interregnum
. He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although
there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through
time.
More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because
they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard
ship, giving each other parties and playing an
avant-garde
form of
shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually
ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of
having got advance information about the results.
Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only
when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though
they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court
his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.
He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone
together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come
from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely
accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth
proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people
left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly
interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue
of their distinguished ancestry.
"Rather feudal, isn't it?" Martin asked.
Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately
planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development.
Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been
deported.
"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds," Ives said as the two
of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse
of some ocean or other. "People, too. Mostly lower classes, except
for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering," he added
regretfully, "same as in your day.... Like now, I mean," he corrected
himself. "Maybe it
is
worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets
for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more.
Bombed. Very thorough job."
"Oh," Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested,
even.
"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after
a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the
people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—" he smiled
shamefacedly—"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed,
could I?"
"I suppose not," Martin said.
"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except
Conrad, and even he—" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better
way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything
will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything,
if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin.
"I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he
couldn't even seem to care.
During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin
had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost
wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement.
But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....
He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize
the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have
been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one
bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from
the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to
take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was
buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the
continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.
A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were
dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond
read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical
cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy
about the entire undertaking.
"He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over
Ives, "so his death was not in vain."
But Martin disagreed.
The ceaseless voyaging began again.
The Interregnum
voyaged to every
ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After
a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin
came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell
apart as the different oceans.
All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in
his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only
the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust
their elders.
As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest
in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port
for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that
era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore,
and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see
the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and
sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes
that his other work lacked.
When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit
somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way,
he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this
journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was
purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the
cousin's utter disgust.
"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you
do," the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were
scraping bottom now—advised.
Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be
disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither
purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored.
However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives
and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer
understand.
"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?" Martin idly asked
the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. "Conrad's
a very shrewd fellow," he whispered. "He's biding his time—waiting
until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!"
"Oh, I see," Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating
member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would
ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one
conversation, anyhow.
"When he does show up, I'll protect you," the cousin vowed, touching
his ray gun. "You haven't a thing to worry about."
Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. "I
have every confidence in you," he told his descendant. He himself had
given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so
The Interregnum
voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid
out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel
and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long
time.
The Interregnum
roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of
passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She
bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
| Why doesn't Ninian know much about meals? | [
"In the future, all the nutrients a human needs come in an easy-to-swallow capsule.",
"In the future, they don't eat meals.",
"Ninian is not a chef.",
"Ninian is used to having servants plan and serve her meals. She's never had to buy food herself."
] | 3 | false |
THE MAN OUTSIDE
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No one, least of all Martin, could dispute
that a man's life should be guarded by his
kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?
Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother
disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way
of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better
off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this
good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin
had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of
soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in
successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble
that way.
Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story
about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really
was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell
him to call her "
Aunt Ninian
"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd
been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought
maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little
too crazy for that.
He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer
with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry
instead of mopping up the floor with him.
"But I can't understand," he would say, keeping his face straight. "Why
do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin
Conrad?"
"Because he's coming to kill you."
"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing."
Ninian sighed. "He's dissatisfied with the current social order and
killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it.
You wouldn't understand."
"You're damn right. I
don't
understand. What's it all about in
straight gas?"
"Oh, just don't ask any questions," Ninian said petulantly. "When you
get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you."
So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the
way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he
knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to
think it was disgusting.
"So if you don't like it, clean it up," he suggested.
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
"Hire a maid, then!" he jeered.
And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up
the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in
the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding
to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew
how to give them the cold shoulder.
One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming
to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very
regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and
she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and
would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so
hard inside.
But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and
hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin
had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step
without hearing "Fancy Pants!" yelled after him.
Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people
thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little
better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There
were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the
same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty
dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.
"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical
application to go by," she told him.
He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out
wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what
she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a
spectator.
When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again,
Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that
mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where
intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.
"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in," she
declared. "Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here."
And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who
came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle
Raymond.
From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and
Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many
more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.
Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play
with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents
would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if
a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be
something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as
conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she
was supposed to know better than he did.
He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before,
warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by
more luxury than he knew what to do with.
The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There
were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every
inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls
were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time
and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for
Ninian didn't know much about meals.
The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a
neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.
Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other
kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given
him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd
nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged
and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all
she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if
respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.
From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness.
They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry
out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him,
in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a
world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the
government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to
think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than
actually doing anything with the hands.
In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands;
everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear
pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was
no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of
normal living.
It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of
them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth.
They came from the future.
When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had
promised five years before.
"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an
idealist," Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.
Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and
rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery
store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized
and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear
glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun,
and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having
carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting
the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets," Raymond
continued. "Which
is
distressing—though, of course, it's not as
if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about
passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that,
and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However,
Conrad is so impatient."
"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work," Martin suggested.
"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!" Raymond
snapped. "We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all.
But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same
people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd
years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?"
He continued more mildly: "However, even you ought to be able to
understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food.
All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those
worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that
expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how
would they manage to live?"
"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how
do
you
live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for
you," Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the
past and think in the future.
"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult," Raymond said, "but
if you will persist in these childish interruptions—"
"I'm sorry," Martin said.
But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of
his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated
young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and
considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And
he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the
lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more
frightening—his race had lost something vital.
Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him,
Raymond went on blandly: "Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to
feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for
the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we
might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling
guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his
great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held
accountable for his great-grandfather."
"How about a great-great-grandchild?" Martin couldn't help asking.
Raymond flushed a delicate pink. "Do you want to hear the rest of this
or don't you?"
"Oh, I do!" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for
himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.
"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time
transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally
officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to
be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always
desperate for a fresh topic of conversation."
Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas'
assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back
in time and "eliminate!" their common great-grandfather. In that way,
there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never
get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.
"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem," Martin observed.
Raymond looked annoyed. "It's the
adolescent
way," he said, "to do
away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole
society in order to root out a single injustice?"
"Not if it were a good one otherwise."
"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps
he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such
matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea
of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather
was such a
good
man, you know." Raymond's expressive upper lip
curled. "So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of
his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty
worthless character."
"That would be me, I suppose," Martin said quietly.
Raymond turned a deep rose. "Well, doesn't that just go to prove you
mustn't believe everything you hear?" The next sentence tumbled out in
a rush. "I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other
cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it
was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you." He
beamed at Martin.
The boy smiled slowly. "Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in
eliminating
me, then none of you would exist, would you?"
Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "Well, you didn't really
suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer
altruism, did you?" he asked, turning on the charm which all the
cousins possessed to a consternating degree.
Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long
ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.
"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's
assistants," Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,
"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us."
Induced
, Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the
use of the iron maiden.
"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you
night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made
our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here
we are!"
"I see," Martin said.
Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. "After all," he pointed
out defensively, "whatever our motives, it has turned into a good
thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary
conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you
could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of
course Ninian
was
a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any
little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our
era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—"
"What did you do with them?" Martin asked.
But Raymond rushed on: "Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge,
we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale.
Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are,
the more eccentricity you can get away with. And," he added, "I might
as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this
wretched historical stint."
"So Ninian's going," said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel
curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a
remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for
him.
"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in
exile," Raymond explained, "even though our life spans are a bit longer
than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat
government." He looked inquisitively at Martin. "You're not going to
go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?"
"No...." Martin said hesitantly. "Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we
aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference." That was the
sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.
Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you weren't a sloppy
sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him,
you know."
Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring
of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. "How do you plan to
protect me when he comes?"
"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course," Raymond said
with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's
combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no
doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. "And we've got a
rather elaborate burglar alarm system."
Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring
which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was
dubious. "Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this
house
,
but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this
time
?"
"Never fear—it has a temporal radius," Raymond replied. "Factory
guarantee and all that."
"Just to be on the safe side," Martin said, "I think I'd better have
one of those guns, too."
"A splendid idea!" enthused Raymond. "I was just about to think of that
myself!"
When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at
her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful
at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding
him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the
cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and
that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the
very last.
Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The
site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a
dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether
this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his
descendants were exceedingly inept planners.
Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as
Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible
convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques,
carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man
from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise,
Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become
dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—"architecturally
dreadful, of course," Raymond had said, "but so hilariously
typical"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level
aquarium.
"How about a moat?" Martin suggested when they first came. "It seems to
go with a castle."
"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?" Raymond asked, amused.
"No," Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, "but it would make the place
seem safer somehow."
The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more
nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that
stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because
several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with
the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it,
until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.
During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the
higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably
arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At
least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of
their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy
such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of
entertainment.
"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin," Raymond
commented as he took his place at the head of the table, "because,
unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one
just—well, drifts along happily."
"Ours is a wonderful world," Grania sighed at Martin. "I only wish we
could take you there. I'm sure you would like it."
"Don't be a fool, Grania!" Raymond snapped. "Well, Martin, have you
made up your mind what you want to be?"
Martin affected to think. "A physicist," he said, not without malice.
"Or perhaps an engineer."
There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.
"Can't do that," Ives said. "Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't
know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen.
Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might
invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from
particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous."
"Might mess up our time frightfully," Bartholomew contributed, "though,
to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how."
"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over
again, Bart!" Raymond said impatiently. "Well, Martin?"
"What would you suggest?" Martin asked.
"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly.
Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of
their times."
"Furthermore," Ottillie added, "one more artist couldn't make much
difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages."
Martin couldn't hold back his question. "What was I, actually, in that
other time?"
There was a chilly silence.
"Let's not talk about it, dear," Lalage finally said. "Let's just be
thankful we've saved you from
that
!"
So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent
second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first
rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost
purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was
fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and
walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for
the sake of an ideal.
But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty
pictures.
Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the
descendants
cousin
—next assumed guardianship. Ives took his
responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged
to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received
critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest
sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not
interested.
"Takes time," Ives tried to reassure him. "One day they'll be buying
your pictures, Martin. Wait and see."
Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin
as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young
man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a
change of air and scenery.
"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented
space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it.
Tourists always like ruins best, anyway."
So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht,
which Martin christened
The Interregnum
. They traveled about from sea
to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making
trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the
nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the
same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous
museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.
The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters,
largely because they could spend so much time far away from the
contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So
they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on
The Interregnum
. He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although
there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through
time.
More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because
they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard
ship, giving each other parties and playing an
avant-garde
form of
shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually
ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of
having got advance information about the results.
Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only
when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though
they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court
his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.
He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone
together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come
from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely
accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth
proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people
left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly
interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue
of their distinguished ancestry.
"Rather feudal, isn't it?" Martin asked.
Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately
planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development.
Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been
deported.
"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds," Ives said as the two
of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse
of some ocean or other. "People, too. Mostly lower classes, except
for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering," he added
regretfully, "same as in your day.... Like now, I mean," he corrected
himself. "Maybe it
is
worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets
for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more.
Bombed. Very thorough job."
"Oh," Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested,
even.
"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after
a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the
people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—" he smiled
shamefacedly—"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed,
could I?"
"I suppose not," Martin said.
"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except
Conrad, and even he—" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better
way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything
will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything,
if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin.
"I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he
couldn't even seem to care.
During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin
had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost
wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement.
But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....
He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize
the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have
been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one
bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from
the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to
take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was
buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the
continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.
A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were
dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond
read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical
cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy
about the entire undertaking.
"He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over
Ives, "so his death was not in vain."
But Martin disagreed.
The ceaseless voyaging began again.
The Interregnum
voyaged to every
ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After
a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin
came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell
apart as the different oceans.
All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in
his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only
the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust
their elders.
As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest
in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port
for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that
era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore,
and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see
the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and
sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes
that his other work lacked.
When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit
somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way,
he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this
journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was
purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the
cousin's utter disgust.
"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you
do," the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were
scraping bottom now—advised.
Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be
disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither
purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored.
However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives
and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer
understand.
"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?" Martin idly asked
the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. "Conrad's
a very shrewd fellow," he whispered. "He's biding his time—waiting
until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!"
"Oh, I see," Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating
member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would
ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one
conversation, anyhow.
"When he does show up, I'll protect you," the cousin vowed, touching
his ray gun. "You haven't a thing to worry about."
Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. "I
have every confidence in you," he told his descendant. He himself had
given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so
The Interregnum
voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid
out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel
and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long
time.
The Interregnum
roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of
passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She
bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
| How does Conrad go back in time? | [
"Conrad stole Professor Farkas' time transmitter to send himself back in time.",
"Professor Farkas sent him back in time with the time transmitter.",
"Conrad built a time transmitter using a copy of Professor Farkas' plans.",
"Professor Farkas' assistant sent Conrad back in time using the time transmitter after Conrad gave him a bribe."
] | 2 | false |
THE MAN OUTSIDE
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No one, least of all Martin, could dispute
that a man's life should be guarded by his
kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?
Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother
disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way
of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better
off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this
good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin
had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of
soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in
successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble
that way.
Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story
about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really
was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell
him to call her "
Aunt Ninian
"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd
been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought
maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little
too crazy for that.
He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer
with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry
instead of mopping up the floor with him.
"But I can't understand," he would say, keeping his face straight. "Why
do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin
Conrad?"
"Because he's coming to kill you."
"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing."
Ninian sighed. "He's dissatisfied with the current social order and
killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it.
You wouldn't understand."
"You're damn right. I
don't
understand. What's it all about in
straight gas?"
"Oh, just don't ask any questions," Ninian said petulantly. "When you
get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you."
So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the
way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he
knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to
think it was disgusting.
"So if you don't like it, clean it up," he suggested.
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
"Hire a maid, then!" he jeered.
And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up
the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in
the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding
to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew
how to give them the cold shoulder.
One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming
to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very
regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and
she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and
would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so
hard inside.
But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and
hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin
had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step
without hearing "Fancy Pants!" yelled after him.
Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people
thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little
better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There
were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the
same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty
dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.
"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical
application to go by," she told him.
He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out
wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what
she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a
spectator.
When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again,
Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that
mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where
intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.
"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in," she
declared. "Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here."
And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who
came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle
Raymond.
From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and
Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many
more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.
Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play
with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents
would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if
a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be
something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as
conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she
was supposed to know better than he did.
He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before,
warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by
more luxury than he knew what to do with.
The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There
were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every
inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls
were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time
and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for
Ninian didn't know much about meals.
The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a
neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.
Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other
kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given
him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd
nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged
and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all
she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if
respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.
From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness.
They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry
out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him,
in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a
world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the
government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to
think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than
actually doing anything with the hands.
In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands;
everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear
pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was
no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of
normal living.
It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of
them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth.
They came from the future.
When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had
promised five years before.
"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an
idealist," Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.
Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and
rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery
store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized
and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear
glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun,
and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having
carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting
the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets," Raymond
continued. "Which
is
distressing—though, of course, it's not as
if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about
passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that,
and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However,
Conrad is so impatient."
"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work," Martin suggested.
"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!" Raymond
snapped. "We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all.
But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same
people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd
years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?"
He continued more mildly: "However, even you ought to be able to
understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food.
All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those
worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that
expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how
would they manage to live?"
"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how
do
you
live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for
you," Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the
past and think in the future.
"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult," Raymond said, "but
if you will persist in these childish interruptions—"
"I'm sorry," Martin said.
But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of
his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated
young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and
considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And
he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the
lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more
frightening—his race had lost something vital.
Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him,
Raymond went on blandly: "Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to
feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for
the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we
might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling
guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his
great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held
accountable for his great-grandfather."
"How about a great-great-grandchild?" Martin couldn't help asking.
Raymond flushed a delicate pink. "Do you want to hear the rest of this
or don't you?"
"Oh, I do!" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for
himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.
"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time
transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally
officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to
be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always
desperate for a fresh topic of conversation."
Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas'
assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back
in time and "eliminate!" their common great-grandfather. In that way,
there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never
get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.
"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem," Martin observed.
Raymond looked annoyed. "It's the
adolescent
way," he said, "to do
away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole
society in order to root out a single injustice?"
"Not if it were a good one otherwise."
"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps
he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such
matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea
of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather
was such a
good
man, you know." Raymond's expressive upper lip
curled. "So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of
his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty
worthless character."
"That would be me, I suppose," Martin said quietly.
Raymond turned a deep rose. "Well, doesn't that just go to prove you
mustn't believe everything you hear?" The next sentence tumbled out in
a rush. "I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other
cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it
was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you." He
beamed at Martin.
The boy smiled slowly. "Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in
eliminating
me, then none of you would exist, would you?"
Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "Well, you didn't really
suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer
altruism, did you?" he asked, turning on the charm which all the
cousins possessed to a consternating degree.
Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long
ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.
"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's
assistants," Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,
"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us."
Induced
, Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the
use of the iron maiden.
"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you
night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made
our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here
we are!"
"I see," Martin said.
Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. "After all," he pointed
out defensively, "whatever our motives, it has turned into a good
thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary
conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you
could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of
course Ninian
was
a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any
little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our
era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—"
"What did you do with them?" Martin asked.
But Raymond rushed on: "Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge,
we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale.
Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are,
the more eccentricity you can get away with. And," he added, "I might
as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this
wretched historical stint."
"So Ninian's going," said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel
curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a
remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for
him.
"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in
exile," Raymond explained, "even though our life spans are a bit longer
than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat
government." He looked inquisitively at Martin. "You're not going to
go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?"
"No...." Martin said hesitantly. "Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we
aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference." That was the
sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.
Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you weren't a sloppy
sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him,
you know."
Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring
of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. "How do you plan to
protect me when he comes?"
"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course," Raymond said
with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's
combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no
doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. "And we've got a
rather elaborate burglar alarm system."
Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring
which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was
dubious. "Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this
house
,
but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this
time
?"
"Never fear—it has a temporal radius," Raymond replied. "Factory
guarantee and all that."
"Just to be on the safe side," Martin said, "I think I'd better have
one of those guns, too."
"A splendid idea!" enthused Raymond. "I was just about to think of that
myself!"
When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at
her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful
at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding
him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the
cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and
that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the
very last.
Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The
site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a
dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether
this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his
descendants were exceedingly inept planners.
Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as
Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible
convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques,
carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man
from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise,
Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become
dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—"architecturally
dreadful, of course," Raymond had said, "but so hilariously
typical"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level
aquarium.
"How about a moat?" Martin suggested when they first came. "It seems to
go with a castle."
"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?" Raymond asked, amused.
"No," Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, "but it would make the place
seem safer somehow."
The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more
nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that
stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because
several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with
the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it,
until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.
During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the
higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably
arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At
least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of
their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy
such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of
entertainment.
"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin," Raymond
commented as he took his place at the head of the table, "because,
unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one
just—well, drifts along happily."
"Ours is a wonderful world," Grania sighed at Martin. "I only wish we
could take you there. I'm sure you would like it."
"Don't be a fool, Grania!" Raymond snapped. "Well, Martin, have you
made up your mind what you want to be?"
Martin affected to think. "A physicist," he said, not without malice.
"Or perhaps an engineer."
There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.
"Can't do that," Ives said. "Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't
know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen.
Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might
invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from
particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous."
"Might mess up our time frightfully," Bartholomew contributed, "though,
to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how."
"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over
again, Bart!" Raymond said impatiently. "Well, Martin?"
"What would you suggest?" Martin asked.
"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly.
Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of
their times."
"Furthermore," Ottillie added, "one more artist couldn't make much
difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages."
Martin couldn't hold back his question. "What was I, actually, in that
other time?"
There was a chilly silence.
"Let's not talk about it, dear," Lalage finally said. "Let's just be
thankful we've saved you from
that
!"
So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent
second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first
rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost
purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was
fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and
walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for
the sake of an ideal.
But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty
pictures.
Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the
descendants
cousin
—next assumed guardianship. Ives took his
responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged
to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received
critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest
sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not
interested.
"Takes time," Ives tried to reassure him. "One day they'll be buying
your pictures, Martin. Wait and see."
Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin
as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young
man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a
change of air and scenery.
"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented
space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it.
Tourists always like ruins best, anyway."
So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht,
which Martin christened
The Interregnum
. They traveled about from sea
to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making
trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the
nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the
same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous
museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.
The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters,
largely because they could spend so much time far away from the
contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So
they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on
The Interregnum
. He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although
there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through
time.
More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because
they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard
ship, giving each other parties and playing an
avant-garde
form of
shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually
ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of
having got advance information about the results.
Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only
when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though
they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court
his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.
He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone
together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come
from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely
accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth
proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people
left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly
interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue
of their distinguished ancestry.
"Rather feudal, isn't it?" Martin asked.
Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately
planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development.
Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been
deported.
"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds," Ives said as the two
of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse
of some ocean or other. "People, too. Mostly lower classes, except
for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering," he added
regretfully, "same as in your day.... Like now, I mean," he corrected
himself. "Maybe it
is
worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets
for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more.
Bombed. Very thorough job."
"Oh," Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested,
even.
"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after
a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the
people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—" he smiled
shamefacedly—"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed,
could I?"
"I suppose not," Martin said.
"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except
Conrad, and even he—" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better
way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything
will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything,
if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin.
"I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he
couldn't even seem to care.
During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin
had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost
wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement.
But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....
He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize
the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have
been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one
bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from
the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to
take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was
buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the
continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.
A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were
dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond
read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical
cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy
about the entire undertaking.
"He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over
Ives, "so his death was not in vain."
But Martin disagreed.
The ceaseless voyaging began again.
The Interregnum
voyaged to every
ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After
a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin
came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell
apart as the different oceans.
All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in
his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only
the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust
their elders.
As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest
in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port
for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that
era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore,
and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see
the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and
sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes
that his other work lacked.
When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit
somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way,
he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this
journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was
purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the
cousin's utter disgust.
"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you
do," the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were
scraping bottom now—advised.
Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be
disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither
purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored.
However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives
and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer
understand.
"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?" Martin idly asked
the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. "Conrad's
a very shrewd fellow," he whispered. "He's biding his time—waiting
until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!"
"Oh, I see," Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating
member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would
ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one
conversation, anyhow.
"When he does show up, I'll protect you," the cousin vowed, touching
his ray gun. "You haven't a thing to worry about."
Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. "I
have every confidence in you," he told his descendant. He himself had
given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so
The Interregnum
voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid
out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel
and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long
time.
The Interregnum
roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of
passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She
bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
| How did Ninian, Raymond, and the other cousins go back in time? | [
"They bribed the assistant for the plans and blackmailed or tortured someone to build the time transmitter for them.",
"Professor Farkas' assistant sent them back in time using the time transmitter after they gave him a bribe.",
"They bribed the assistant for the plans and hired a gadget enthusiast to build the time transmitter for them.",
"Professor Farkas sent them back in time with the time transmitter."
] | 0 | true |
THE MAN OUTSIDE
By EVELYN E. SMITH
Illustrated by DILLON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
No one, least of all Martin, could dispute
that a man's life should be guarded by his
kin—but by those who hadn't been born yet?
Nobody in the neighborhood was surprised when Martin's mother
disappeared and Ninian came to take care of him. Mothers had a way
of disappearing around those parts and the kids were often better
off without them. Martin was no exception. He'd never had it this
good while he was living with his old lady. As for his father, Martin
had never had one. He'd been a war baby, born of one of the tides of
soldiers—enemies and allies, both—that had engulfed the country in
successive waves and bought or taken the women. So there was no trouble
that way.
Sometimes he wondered who Ninian really was. Obviously that story
about her coming from the future was just a gag. Besides, if she really
was his great-great-grand-daughter, as she said, why would she tell
him to call her "
Aunt Ninian
"? Maybe he was only eleven, but he'd
been around and he knew just what the score was. At first he'd thought
maybe she was some new kind of social worker, but she acted a little
too crazy for that.
He loved to bait her, as he had loved to bait his mother. It was safer
with Ninian, though, because when he pushed her too far, she would cry
instead of mopping up the floor with him.
"But I can't understand," he would say, keeping his face straight. "Why
do you have to come from the future to protect me against your cousin
Conrad?"
"Because he's coming to kill you."
"Why should he kill me? I ain't done him nothing."
Ninian sighed. "He's dissatisfied with the current social order and
killing you is part of an elaborate plan he's formulated to change it.
You wouldn't understand."
"You're damn right. I
don't
understand. What's it all about in
straight gas?"
"Oh, just don't ask any questions," Ninian said petulantly. "When you
get older, someone will explain the whole thing to you."
So Martin held his peace, because, on the whole, he liked things the
way they were. Ninian really was the limit, though. All the people he
knew lived in scabrous tenement apartments like his, but she seemed to
think it was disgusting.
"So if you don't like it, clean it up," he suggested.
She looked at him as if he were out of his mind.
"Hire a maid, then!" he jeered.
And darned if that dope didn't go out and get a woman to come clean up
the place! He was so embarrassed, he didn't even dare show his face in
the streets—especially with the women buttonholing him and demanding
to know what gave. They tried talking to Ninian, but she certainly knew
how to give them the cold shoulder.
One day the truant officer came to ask why Martin hadn't been coming
to school. Very few of the neighborhood kids attended classes very
regularly, so this was just routine. But Ninian didn't know that and
she went into a real tizzy, babbling that Martin had been sick and
would make up the work. Martin nearly did get sick from laughing so
hard inside.
But he laughed out of the other side of his mouth when she went out and
hired a private tutor for him. A tutor—in that neighborhood! Martin
had to beat up every kid on the block before he could walk a step
without hearing "Fancy Pants!" yelled after him.
Ninian worried all the time. It wasn't that she cared what these people
thought of her, for she made no secret of regarding them as little
better than animals, but she was shy of attracting attention. There
were an awful lot of people in that neighborhood who felt exactly the
same way, only she didn't know that, either. She was really pretty
dumb, Martin thought, for all her fancy lingo.
"It's so hard to think these things out without any prior practical
application to go by," she told him.
He nodded, knowing what she meant was that everything was coming out
wrong. But he didn't try to help her; he just watched to see what
she'd do next. Already he had begun to assume the detached role of a
spectator.
When it became clear that his mother was never going to show up again,
Ninian bought one of those smallish, almost identical houses that
mushroom on the fringes of a city after every war, particularly where
intensive bombing has created a number of desirable building sites.
"This is a much better neighborhood for a boy to grow up in," she
declared. "Besides, it's easier to keep an eye on you here."
And keep an eye on him she did—she or a rather foppish young man who
came to stay with them occasionally. Martin was told to call him Uncle
Raymond.
From time to time, there were other visitors—Uncles Ives and
Bartholomew and Olaf, Aunts Ottillie and Grania and Lalage, and many
more—all cousins to one another, he was told, all descendants of his.
Martin was never left alone for a minute. He wasn't allowed to play
with the other kids in the new neighborhood. Not that their parents
would have let them, anyway. The adults obviously figured that if
a one-car family hired private tutors for their kid, there must be
something pretty wrong with him. So Martin and Ninian were just as
conspicuous as before. But he didn't tip her off. She was grown up; she
was supposed to know better than he did.
He lived well. He had food to eat that he'd never dreamed of before,
warm clothes that no one had ever worn before him. He was surrounded by
more luxury than he knew what to do with.
The furniture was the latest New Grand Rapids African modern. There
were tidy, colorful Picasso and Braque prints on the walls. And every
inch of the floor was modestly covered by carpeting, though the walls
were mostly unabashed glass. There were hot water and heat all the time
and a freezer well stocked with food—somewhat erratically chosen, for
Ninian didn't know much about meals.
The non-glass part of the house was of neat, natural-toned wood, with a
neat green lawn in front and a neat parti-colored garden in back.
Martin missed the old neighborhood, though. He missed having other
kids to play with. He even missed his mother. Sure, she hadn't given
him enough to eat and she'd beaten him up so hard sometimes that she'd
nearly killed him—but then there had also been times when she'd hugged
and kissed him and soaked his collar with her tears. She'd done all
she could for him, supporting him in the only way she knew how—and if
respectable society didn't like it, the hell with respectable society.
From Ninian and her cousins, there was only an impersonal kindness.
They made no bones about the fact that they were there only to carry
out a rather unpleasant duty. Though they were in the house with him,
in their minds and in their talk they were living in another world—a
world of warmth and peace and plenty where nobody worked, except in the
government service or the essential professions. And they seemed to
think even that kind of job was pretty low-class, though better than
actually doing anything with the hands.
In their world, Martin came to understand, nobody worked with hands;
everything was done by machinery. All the people ever did was wear
pretty clothes and have good times and eat all they wanted. There was
no devastation, no war, no unhappiness, none of the concomitants of
normal living.
It was then that Martin began to realize that either the whole lot of
them were insane, or what Ninian had told him at first was the truth.
They came from the future.
When Martin was sixteen, Raymond took him aside for the talk Ninian had
promised five years before.
"The whole thing's all my brother Conrad's fault. You see, he's an
idealist," Raymond explained, pronouncing the last word with distaste.
Martin nodded gravely. He was a quiet boy now, his brief past a dim and
rather ridiculous memory. Who could ever imagine him robbing a grocery
store or wielding a broken bottle now? He still was rather undersized
and he'd read so much that he'd weakened his eyes and had to wear
glasses. His face was pallid, because he spent little time in the sun,
and his speech rather overbred, his mentors from the future having
carefully eradicated all current vulgarities.
"And Conrad really got upset over the way Earth has been exploiting
the not so intelligent life-forms on the other planets," Raymond
continued. "Which
is
distressing—though, of course, it's not as
if they were people. Besides, the government has been talking about
passing laws to do away with the—well, abuses and things like that,
and I'm sure someday everything will come out all right. However,
Conrad is so impatient."
"I thought, in your world, machines did all the work," Martin suggested.
"I've told you—our world is precisely the same as this one!" Raymond
snapped. "We just come a couple of centuries or so later, that's all.
But remember, our interests are identical. We're virtually the same
people ... although it is amazing what a difference two hundred odd
years of progress and polish can make in a species, isn't it?"
He continued more mildly: "However, even you ought to be able to
understand that we can't make machinery without metal. We need food.
All that sort of thing comes from the out-system planets. And, on those
worlds, it's far cheaper to use native labor than to ship out all that
expensive machinery. After all, if we didn't give the natives jobs, how
would they manage to live?"
"How did they live before? Come to think of it, if you don't work, how
do
you
live now?... I don't mean in the now for me, but the now for
you," Martin explained laboriously. It was so difficult to live in the
past and think in the future.
"I'm trying to talk to you as if you were an adult," Raymond said, "but
if you will persist in these childish interruptions—"
"I'm sorry," Martin said.
But he wasn't, for by now he had little respect left for any of
his descendants. They were all exceedingly handsome and cultivated
young people, with superior educations, smooth ways of speaking and
considerable self-confidence, but they just weren't very bright. And
he had discovered that Raymond was perhaps the most intelligent of the
lot. Somewhere in that relatively short span of time, his line or—more
frightening—his race had lost something vital.
Unaware of the near-contempt in which his young ancestor held him,
Raymond went on blandly: "Anyhow, Conrad took it upon himself to
feel particularly guilty, because, he decided, if it hadn't been for
the fact that our great-grandfather discovered the super-drive, we
might never have reached the stars. Which is ridiculous—his feeling
guilty, I mean. Perhaps a great-grandfather is responsible for his
great-grandchildren, but a great-grandchild can hardly be held
accountable for his great-grandfather."
"How about a great-great-grandchild?" Martin couldn't help asking.
Raymond flushed a delicate pink. "Do you want to hear the rest of this
or don't you?"
"Oh, I do!" Martin said. He had pieced the whole thing together for
himself long since, but he wanted to hear how Raymond would put it.
"Unfortunately, Professor Farkas has just perfected the time
transmitter. Those government scientists are so infernally
officious—always inventing such senseless things. It's supposed to
be hush-hush, but you know how news will leak out when one is always
desperate for a fresh topic of conversation."
Anyhow, Raymond went on to explain, Conrad had bribed one of Farkas'
assistants for a set of the plans. Conrad's idea had been to go back
in time and "eliminate!" their common great-grandfather. In that way,
there would be no space-drive, and, hence, the Terrestrials would never
get to the other planets and oppress the local aborigines.
"Sounds like a good way of dealing with the problem," Martin observed.
Raymond looked annoyed. "It's the
adolescent
way," he said, "to do
away with it, rather than find a solution. Would you destroy a whole
society in order to root out a single injustice?"
"Not if it were a good one otherwise."
"Well, there's your answer. Conrad got the apparatus built, or perhaps
he built it himself. One doesn't inquire too closely into such
matters. But when it came to the point, Conrad couldn't bear the idea
of eliminating our great-grandfather—because our great-grandfather
was such a
good
man, you know." Raymond's expressive upper lip
curled. "So Conrad decided to go further back still and get rid of
his great-grandfather's father—who'd been, by all accounts, a pretty
worthless character."
"That would be me, I suppose," Martin said quietly.
Raymond turned a deep rose. "Well, doesn't that just go to prove you
mustn't believe everything you hear?" The next sentence tumbled out in
a rush. "I wormed the whole thing out of him and all of us—the other
cousins and me—held a council of war, as it were, and we decided it
was our moral duty to go back in time ourselves and protect you." He
beamed at Martin.
The boy smiled slowly. "Of course. You had to. If Conrad succeeded in
eliminating
me, then none of you would exist, would you?"
Raymond frowned. Then he shrugged cheerfully. "Well, you didn't really
suppose we were going to all this trouble and expense out of sheer
altruism, did you?" he asked, turning on the charm which all the
cousins possessed to a consternating degree.
Martin had, of course, no illusions on that score; he had learned long
ago that nobody did anything for nothing. But saying so was unwise.
"We bribed another set of plans out of another of the professor's
assistants," Raymond continued, as if Martin had answered,
"and—ah—induced a handicraft enthusiast to build the gadget for us."
Induced
, Martin knew, could have meant anything from blackmail to the
use of the iron maiden.
"Then we were all ready to forestall Conrad. If one of us guarded you
night and day, he would never be able to carry out his plot. So we made
our counter-plan, set the machine as far back as it would go—and here
we are!"
"I see," Martin said.
Raymond didn't seem to think he really did. "After all," he pointed
out defensively, "whatever our motives, it has turned into a good
thing for you. Nice home, cultured companions, all the contemporary
conveniences, plus some handy anachronisms—I don't see what more you
could ask for. You're getting the best of all possible worlds. Of
course Ninian
was
a ninny to locate in a mercantile suburb where any
little thing out of the way will cause talk. How thankful I am that our
era has completely disposed of the mercantiles—"
"What did you do with them?" Martin asked.
But Raymond rushed on: "Soon as Ninian goes and I'm in full charge,
we'll get a more isolated place and run it on a far grander scale.
Ostentation—that's the way to live here and now; the richer you are,
the more eccentricity you can get away with. And," he added, "I might
as well be as comfortable as possible while I suffer through this
wretched historical stint."
"So Ninian's going," said Martin, wondering why the news made him feel
curiously desolate. Because, although he supposed he liked her in a
remote kind of way, he had no fondness for her—or she, he knew, for
him.
"Well, five years is rather a long stretch for any girl to spend in
exile," Raymond explained, "even though our life spans are a bit longer
than yours. Besides, you're getting too old now to be under petticoat
government." He looked inquisitively at Martin. "You're not going to
go all weepy and make a scene when she leaves, are you?"
"No...." Martin said hesitantly. "Oh, I suppose I will miss her. But we
aren't very close, so it won't make a real difference." That was the
sad part: he already knew it wouldn't make a difference.
Raymond clapped him on the shoulder. "I knew you weren't a sloppy
sentimentalist like Conrad. Though you do have rather a look of him,
you know."
Suddenly that seemed to make Conrad real. Martin felt a vague stirring
of alarm. He kept his voice composed, however. "How do you plan to
protect me when he comes?"
"Well, each one of us is armed to the teeth, of course," Raymond said
with modest pride, displaying something that looked like a child's
combination spaceman's gun and death ray, but which, Martin had no
doubt, was a perfectly genuine—and lethal—weapon. "And we've got a
rather elaborate burglar alarm system."
Martin inspected the system and made one or two changes in the wiring
which, he felt, would increase its efficiency. But still he was
dubious. "Maybe it'll work on someone coming from outside this
house
,
but do you think it will work on someone coming from outside this
time
?"
"Never fear—it has a temporal radius," Raymond replied. "Factory
guarantee and all that."
"Just to be on the safe side," Martin said, "I think I'd better have
one of those guns, too."
"A splendid idea!" enthused Raymond. "I was just about to think of that
myself!"
When it came time for the parting, it was Ninian who cried—tears at
her own inadequacy, Martin knew, not of sorrow. He was getting skillful
at understanding his descendants, far better than they at understanding
him. But then they never really tried. Ninian kissed him wetly on the
cheek and said she was sure everything would work out all right and
that she'd come see him again. She never did, though, except at the
very last.
Raymond and Martin moved into a luxurious mansion in a remote area. The
site proved a well-chosen one; when the Second Atomic War came, half a
dozen years later, they weren't touched. Martin was never sure whether
this had been sheer luck or expert planning. Probably luck, because his
descendants were exceedingly inept planners.
Few people in the world then could afford to live as stylishly as
Martin and his guardian. The place not only contained every possible
convenience and gadget but was crammed with bibelots and antiques,
carefully chosen by Raymond and disputed by Martin, for, to the man
from the future, all available artifacts were antiques. Otherwise,
Martin accepted his new surroundings. His sense of wonder had become
dulled by now and the pink pseudo-Spanish castle—"architecturally
dreadful, of course," Raymond had said, "but so hilariously
typical"—impressed him far less than had the suburban split-level
aquarium.
"How about a moat?" Martin suggested when they first came. "It seems to
go with a castle."
"Do you think a moat could stop Conrad?" Raymond asked, amused.
"No," Martin smiled, feeling rather silly, "but it would make the place
seem safer somehow."
The threat of Conrad was beginning to make him grow more and more
nervous. He got Raymond's permission to take two suits of armor that
stood in the front hall and present them to a local museum, because
several times he fancied he saw them move. He also became an adept with
the ray gun and changed the surrounding landscape quite a bit with it,
until Raymond warned that this might lead Conrad to them.
During those early years, Martin's tutors were exchanged for the
higher-degreed ones that were now needful. The question inevitably
arose of what the youth's vocation in that life was going to be. At
least twenty of the cousins came back through time to hold one of
their vigorous family councils. Martin was still young enough to enjoy
such occasions, finding them vastly superior to all other forms of
entertainment.
"This sort of problem wouldn't arise in our day, Martin," Raymond
commented as he took his place at the head of the table, "because,
unless one specifically feels a call to some profession or other, one
just—well, drifts along happily."
"Ours is a wonderful world," Grania sighed at Martin. "I only wish we
could take you there. I'm sure you would like it."
"Don't be a fool, Grania!" Raymond snapped. "Well, Martin, have you
made up your mind what you want to be?"
Martin affected to think. "A physicist," he said, not without malice.
"Or perhaps an engineer."
There was a loud, excited chorus of dissent. He chuckled inwardly.
"Can't do that," Ives said. "Might pick up some concepts from us. Don't
know how; none of us knows a thing about science. But it could happen.
Subconscious osmosis, if there is such a thing. That way, you might
invent something ahead of time. And the fellow we got the plans from
particularly cautioned us against that. Changing history. Dangerous."
"Might mess up our time frightfully," Bartholomew contributed, "though,
to be perfectly frank, I can't quite understand how."
"I am not going to sit down and explain the whole thing to you all over
again, Bart!" Raymond said impatiently. "Well, Martin?"
"What would you suggest?" Martin asked.
"How about becoming a painter? Art is eternal. And quite gentlemanly.
Besides, artists are always expected to be either behind or ahead of
their times."
"Furthermore," Ottillie added, "one more artist couldn't make much
difference in history. There were so many of them all through the ages."
Martin couldn't hold back his question. "What was I, actually, in that
other time?"
There was a chilly silence.
"Let's not talk about it, dear," Lalage finally said. "Let's just be
thankful we've saved you from
that
!"
So drawing teachers were engaged and Martin became a very competent
second-rate artist. He knew he would never be able to achieve first
rank because, even though he was still so young, his work was almost
purely intellectual. The only emotion he seemed able to feel was
fear—the ever-present fear that someday he would turn a corridor and
walk into a man who looked like him—a man who wanted to kill him for
the sake of an ideal.
But the fear did not show in Martin's pictures. They were pretty
pictures.
Cousin Ives—now that Martin was older, he was told to call the
descendants
cousin
—next assumed guardianship. Ives took his
responsibilities more seriously than the others did. He even arranged
to have Martin's work shown at an art gallery. The paintings received
critical approval, but failed to evoke any enthusiasm. The modest
sale they enjoyed was mostly to interior decorators. Museums were not
interested.
"Takes time," Ives tried to reassure him. "One day they'll be buying
your pictures, Martin. Wait and see."
Ives was the only one of the descendants who seemed to think of Martin
as an individual. When his efforts to make contact with the other young
man failed, he got worried and decided that what Martin needed was a
change of air and scenery.
"'Course you can't go on the Grand Tour. Your son hasn't invented
space travel yet. But we can go see this world. What's left of it.
Tourists always like ruins best, anyway."
So he drew on the family's vast future resources and bought a yacht,
which Martin christened
The Interregnum
. They traveled about from sea
to ocean and from ocean to sea, touching at various ports and making
trips inland. Martin saw the civilized world—mostly in fragments; the
nearly intact semi-civilized world and the uncivilized world, much the
same as it had been for centuries. It was like visiting an enormous
museum; he couldn't seem to identify with his own time any more.
The other cousins appeared to find the yacht a congenial head-quarters,
largely because they could spend so much time far away from the
contemporary inhabitants of the planet and relax and be themselves. So
they never moved back to land. Martin spent the rest of his life on
The Interregnum
. He felt curiously safer from Conrad there, although
there was no valid reason why an ocean should stop a traveler through
time.
More cousins were in residence at once than ever before, because
they came for the ocean voyage. They spent most of their time aboard
ship, giving each other parties and playing an
avant-garde
form of
shuffleboard and gambling on future sporting events. That last usually
ended in a brawl, because one cousin was sure to accuse another of
having got advance information about the results.
Martin didn't care much for their company and associated with them only
when not to have done so would have been palpably rude. And, though
they were gregarious young people for the most part, they didn't court
his society. He suspected that he made them feel uncomfortable.
He rather liked Ives, though. Sometimes the two of them would be alone
together; then Ives would tell Martin of the future world he had come
from. The picture drawn by Raymond and Ninian had not been entirely
accurate, Ives admitted. True, there was no war or poverty on Earth
proper, but that was because there were only a couple of million people
left on the planet. It was an enclave for the highly privileged, highly
interbred aristocracy, to which Martin's descendants belonged by virtue
of their distinguished ancestry.
"Rather feudal, isn't it?" Martin asked.
Ives agreed, adding that the system had, however, been deliberately
planned, rather than the result of haphazard natural development.
Everything potentially unpleasant, like the mercantiles, had been
deported.
"Not only natives livin' on the other worlds," Ives said as the two
of them stood at the ship's rail, surrounded by the limitless expanse
of some ocean or other. "People, too. Mostly lower classes, except
for officials and things. With wars and want and suffering," he added
regretfully, "same as in your day.... Like now, I mean," he corrected
himself. "Maybe it
is
worse, the way Conrad thinks. More planets
for us to make trouble on. Three that were habitable aren't any more.
Bombed. Very thorough job."
"Oh," Martin murmured, trying to sound shocked, horrified—interested,
even.
"Sometimes I'm not altogether sure Conrad was wrong," Ives said, after
a pause. "Tried to keep us from getting to the stars, hurting the
people—I expect you could call them people—there. Still—" he smiled
shamefacedly—"couldn't stand by and see my own way of life destroyed,
could I?"
"I suppose not," Martin said.
"Would take moral courage. I don't have it. None of us does, except
Conrad, and even he—" Ives looked out over the sea. "Must be a better
way out than Conrad's," he said without conviction. "And everything
will work out all right in the end. Bound to. No sense to—to anything,
if it doesn't." He glanced wistfully at Martin.
"I hope so," said Martin. But he couldn't hope; he couldn't feel; he
couldn't even seem to care.
During all this time, Conrad still did not put in an appearance. Martin
had gotten to be such a crack shot with the ray pistol that he almost
wished his descendant would show up, so there would be some excitement.
But he didn't come. And Martin got to thinking....
He always felt that if any of the cousins could have come to realize
the basic flaw in the elaborate plan they had concocted, it would have
been Ives. However, when the yacht touched at Tierra del Fuego one
bitter winter, Ives took a severe chill. They sent for a doctor from
the future—one of the descendants who had been eccentric enough to
take a medical degree—but he wasn't able to save Ives. The body was
buried in the frozen ground at Ushuaia, on the southern tip of the
continent, a hundred years or more before the date of his birth.
A great many of the cousins turned up at the simple ceremony. All were
dressed in overwhelming black and showed a great deal of grief. Raymond
read the burial service, because they didn't dare summon a clerical
cousin from the future; they were afraid he might prove rather stuffy
about the entire undertaking.
"He died for all of us," Raymond concluded his funeral eulogy over
Ives, "so his death was not in vain."
But Martin disagreed.
The ceaseless voyaging began again.
The Interregnum
voyaged to every
ocean and every sea. Some were blue and some green and some dun. After
a while, Martin couldn't tell one from another. Cousin after cousin
came to watch over him and eventually they were as hard for him to tell
apart as the different oceans.
All the cousins were young, for, though they came at different times in
his life, they had all started out from the same time in theirs. Only
the young ones had been included in the venture; they did not trust
their elders.
As the years went by, Martin began to lose even his detached interest
in the land and its doings. Although the yacht frequently touched port
for fuel or supplies—it was more economical to purchase them in that
era than to have them shipped from the future—he seldom went ashore,
and then only at the urging of a newly assigned cousin anxious to see
the sights. Most of the time Martin spent in watching the sea—and
sometimes he painted it. There seemed to be a depth to his seascapes
that his other work lacked.
When he was pressed by the current cousin to make a land visit
somewhere, he decided to exhibit a few of his sea paintings. That way,
he could fool himself into thinking that there was some purpose to this
journey. He'd come to believe that perhaps what his life lacked was
purpose, and for a while he kept looking for meaning everywhere, to the
cousin's utter disgust.
"Eat, drink and be merry, or whatever you Romans say when you do as you
do," the cousin—who was rather woolly in history; the descendants were
scraping bottom now—advised.
Martin showed his work in Italy, so that the cousin could be
disillusioned by the current crop of Romans. He found that neither
purpose nor malice was enough; he was still immeasurably bored.
However, a museum bought two of the paintings. Martin thought of Ives
and felt an uncomfortable pang of a sensation he could no longer
understand.
"Where do you suppose Conrad has been all this time?" Martin idly asked
the current cousin—who was passing as his nephew by now.
The young man jumped, then glanced around him uncomfortably. "Conrad's
a very shrewd fellow," he whispered. "He's biding his time—waiting
until we're off guard. And then—pow!—he'll attack!"
"Oh, I see," Martin said.
He had often fancied that Conrad would prove to be the most stimulating
member of the whole generation. But it seemed unlikely that he would
ever have a chance for a conversation with the young man. More than one
conversation, anyhow.
"When he does show up, I'll protect you," the cousin vowed, touching
his ray gun. "You haven't a thing to worry about."
Martin smiled with all the charm he'd had nothing to do but acquire. "I
have every confidence in you," he told his descendant. He himself had
given up carrying a gun long ago.
There was a war in the Northern Hemisphere and so
The Interregnum
voyaged to southern waters. There was a war in the south and they hid
out in the Arctic. All the nations became too drained of power—fuel
and man and will—to fight, so there was a sterile peace for a long
time.
The Interregnum
roamed the seas restlessly, with her load of
passengers from the future, plus one bored and aging contemporary. She
bore big guns now, because of the ever-present danger of pirates.
| Why does Martin prefer to live on the yacht? | [
"Martin is used to being isolated now. The people on land live in a different world than he does.",
"The people on land were always at war. Martin wants no part of it.",
"The people on land are too different from the cousins. Living on the yacht avoids questions from locals.",
"Martin thinks being on the ocean will make it harder for Conrad to find him."
] | 0 | true |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| How does Rikud change through the story? | [
"He questions his world, his lack of autonomy, and what it really means to live.",
"He realizes that he will one day have a mate chosen for him, and children as well.",
"He realizes his desire to feel pain, and to hurt for the first time.",
"He questions his \"strange\" thoughts, and how pervasive they are."
] | 0 | true |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| What seems to be true about the world Rikud lives in? | [
"It's run by machines, and no longer run by people. There is no room for decisions.",
"Change never happens. It's a concept that's been erased.",
"Women and men are segregated, because they can't live with one another.",
"It's run by machines, and no longer run by people. They remember a time when they could make decisions, but no longer can."
] | 0 | true |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| Why is Rikud oddly satisfied about Crifer's limp foot? | [
"It's new and interesting. Rikud is tired of the regular.",
"It means that people can hurt, which Rikud has an interest in.",
"He dislikes Crifer, and enjoys the fact that he is stuck with an anomaly.",
"It's evidence that imperfections still exist, and validates Rikud's feelings."
] | 3 | false |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| What does the viewport allow Rikud to realize? | [
"There is more to the world outside of the ship they are on.",
"The viewport is not a flat space, and objects can pass through it.",
"The stars are indeed changing.",
"The garden outside is moving."
] | 0 | true |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| What struggle does the door in the library represent? | [
"The struggle between man and machine, and the power machine now has over them.",
"The struggle for Rikud and all the others to conceptualize what they don't know or haven't seen before.",
"Rikud's fear of what's behind it.",
"The struggle between authority and the people it runs."
] | 1 | true |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| What happens when Rikud grows violent when the others don't believe him. | [
"They start grabbing at one another to deescalate the situation.",
"They all start to do it, because they've never seen violence before and don't understand it.",
"Confusion breaks out.",
"Everyone grows fearful and watches what Rikud does."
] | 1 | true |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| Why does everyone begin to starve and grow thirsty? | [
"Without the buzzer, there is no food or drink to have.",
"The buzzer no longer works, and no one knows how to fix it.",
"Rikud broke the buzzer, and they're all waiting.",
"Rikud broke the buzzer, and without it they don't know how to care for themselves."
] | 3 | false |
The Sense of Wonder
By MILTON LESSER
Illustrated by HARRY ROSENBAUM
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction September 1951.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
When nobody aboard ship remembers where it's
going, how can they tell when it has arrived?
Every day for a week now, Rikud had come to the viewport to watch
the great changeless sweep of space. He could not quite explain the
feelings within him; they were so alien, so unnatural. But ever since
the engines somewhere in the rear of the world had changed their tone,
from the steady whining Rikud had heard all twenty-five years of his
life, to the sullen roar that came to his ears now, the feelings had
grown.
If anyone else had noticed the change, he failed to mention it. This
disturbed Rikud, although he could not tell why. And, because he had
realized this odd difference in himself, he kept it locked up inside
him.
Today, space looked somehow different. The stars—it was a meaningless
concept to Rikud, but that was what everyone called the bright
pinpoints of light on the black backdrop in the viewport—were not
apparent in the speckled profusion Rikud had always known. Instead,
there was more of the blackness, and one very bright star set apart
by itself in the middle of the viewport.
If he had understood the term, Rikud would have told himself this was
odd. His head ached with the half-born thought. It was—it was—what
was it?
Someone was clomping up the companionway behind Rikud. He turned and
greeted gray-haired old Chuls.
"In five more years," the older man chided, "you'll be ready to sire
children. And all you can do in the meantime is gaze out at the stars."
Rikud knew he should be exercising now, or bathing in the rays of the
health-lamps. It had never occurred to him that he didn't feel like it;
he just didn't, without comprehending.
Chuls' reminder fostered uneasiness. Often Rikud had dreamed of the
time he would be thirty and a father. Whom would the Calculator select
as his mate? The first time this idea had occurred to him, Rikud
ignored it. But it came again, and each time it left him with a feeling
he could not explain. Why should he think thoughts that no other man
had? Why should he think he was thinking such thoughts, when it always
embroiled him in a hopeless, infinite confusion that left him with a
headache?
Chuls said, "It is time for my bath in the health-rays. I saw you here
and knew it was your time, too...."
His voice trailed off. Rikud knew that something which he could not
explain had entered the elder man's head for a moment, but it had
departed almost before Chuls knew of its existence.
"I'll go with you," Rikud told him.
A hardly perceptible purple glow pervaded the air in the room of the
health-rays. Perhaps two score men lay about, naked, under the ray
tubes. Chuls stripped himself and selected the space under a vacant
tube. Rikud, for his part, wanted to get back to the viewport and watch
the one new bright star. He had the distinct notion it was growing
larger every moment. He turned to go, but the door clicked shut and a
metallic voice said. "Fifteen minutes under the tubes, please."
Rikud muttered to himself and undressed. The world had begun to annoy
him. Now why shouldn't a man be permitted to do what he wanted, when
he wanted to do it?
There
was a strange thought, and Rikud's brain
whirled once more down the tortuous course of half-formed questions and
unsatisfactory answers.
He had even wondered what it was like to get hurt. No one ever got
hurt. Once, here in this same ray room, he had had the impulse to hurl
himself head-first against the wall, just to see what would happen.
But something soft had cushioned the impact—something which had come
into being just for the moment and then abruptly passed into non-being
again, something which was as impalpable as air.
Rikud had been stopped in this action, although there was no real
authority to stop him. This puzzled him, because somehow he felt that
there should have been authority. A long time ago the reading machine
in the library had told him of the elders—a meaningless term—who had
governed the world. They told you to do something and you did it, but
that was silly, because now no one told you to do anything. You only
listened to the buzzer.
And Rikud could remember the rest of what the reading machine had said.
There had been a revolt—again a term without any real meaning, a term
that could have no reality outside of the reading machine—and the
elders were overthrown. Here Rikud had been lost utterly. The people
had decided that they did not know where they were going, or why, and
that it was unfair that the elders alone had this authority. They were
born and they lived and they died as the elders directed, like little
cogs in a great machine. Much of this Rikud could not understand, but
he knew enough to realize that the reading machine had sided with the
people against the elders, and it said the people had won.
Now in the health room, Rikud felt a warmth in the rays. Grudgingly, he
had to admit to himself that it was not unpleasant. He could see the
look of easy contentment on Chuls' face as the rays fanned down upon
him, bathing his old body in a forgotten magic which, many generations
before Rikud's time, had negated the necessity for a knowledge of
medicine. But when, in another ten years, Chuls would perish of old
age, the rays would no longer suffice. Nothing would, for Chuls. Rikud
often thought of his own death, still seventy-five years in the future,
not without a sense of alarm. Yet old Chuls seemed heedless, with only
a decade to go.
Under the tube at Rikud's left lay Crifer. The man was short and heavy
through the shoulders and chest, and he had a lame foot. Every time
Rikud looked at that foot, it was with a sense of satisfaction. True,
this was the only case of its kind, the exception to the rule, but it
proved the world was not perfect. Rikud was guiltily glad when he saw
Crifer limp.
But, if anyone else saw it, he never said a word. Not even Crifer.
Now Crifer said, "I've been reading again, Rikud."
"Yes?" Almost no one read any more, and the library was heavy with the
smell of dust. Reading represented initiative on the part of Crifer; it
meant that, in the two unoccupied hours before sleep, he went to the
library and listened to the reading machine. Everyone else simply sat
about and talked. That was the custom. Everyone did it.
But if he wasn't reading himself, Rikud usually went to sleep. All the
people ever talked about was what they had done during the day, and it
was always the same.
"Yes," said Crifer. "I found a book about the stars. They're also
called astronomy, I think."
This was a new thought to Rikud, and he propped his head up on one
elbow. "What did you find out?"
"That's about all. They're just called astronomy, I think."
"Well, where's the book?" Rikud would read it tomorrow.
"I left it in the library. You can find several of them under
'astronomy,' with a cross-reference under 'stars.' They're synonymous
terms."
"You know," Rikud said, sitting up now, "the stars in the viewport are
changing."
"Changing?" Crifer questioned the fuzzy concept as much as he
questioned what it might mean in this particular case.
"Yes, there are less of them, and one is bigger and brighter than the
others."
"Astronomy says some stars are variable," Crifer offered, but Rikud
knew his lame-footed companion understood the word no better than he
did.
Over on Rikud's right, Chuls began to dress. "Variability," he told
them, "is a contradictory term. Nothing is variable. It can't be."
"I'm only saying what I read in the book," Crifer protested mildly.
"Well, it's wrong. Variability and change are two words without
meaning."
"People grow old," Rikud suggested.
A buzzer signified that his fifteen minutes under the rays were up, and
Chuls said, "It's almost time for me to eat."
Rikud frowned. Chuls hadn't even seen the connection between the two
concepts, yet it was so clear. Or was it? He had had it a moment ago,
but now it faded, and change and old were just two words.
His own buzzer sounded a moment later, and it was with a strange
feeling of elation that he dressed and made his way back to the
viewport. When he passed the door which led to the women's half of the
world, however, he paused. He wanted to open that door and see a woman.
He had been told about them and he had seen pictures, and he dimly
remembered his childhood among women. But his feelings had changed;
this was different. Again there were inexplicable feelings—strange
channelings of Rikud's energy in new and confusing directions.
He shrugged and reserved the thought for later. He wanted to see the
stars again.
The view had changed, and the strangeness of it made Rikud's pulses
leap with excitement. All the stars were paler now than before, and
where Rikud had seen the one bright central star, he now saw a globe of
light, white with a tinge of blue in it, and so bright that it hurt his
eyes to look.
Yes, hurt! Rikud looked and looked until his eyes teared and he had to
turn away. Here was an unknown factor which the perfect world failed
to control. But how could a star change into a blinking blue-white
globe—if, indeed, that was the star Rikud had seen earlier? There
was that word change again. Didn't it have something to do with age?
Rikud couldn't remember, and he suddenly wished he could read Crifer's
book on astronomy, which meant the same as stars. Except that it was
variable, which was like change, being tied up somehow with age.
Presently Rikud became aware that his eyes were not tearing any longer,
and he turned to look at the viewport. What he saw now was so new that
he couldn't at first accept it. Instead, he blinked and rubbed his
eyes, sure that the ball of blue-white fire somehow had damaged them.
But the new view persisted.
Of stars there were few, and of the blackness, almost nothing. Gone,
too, was the burning globe. Something loomed there in the port, so huge
that it spread out over almost the entire surface. Something big and
round, all grays and greens and browns, and something for which Rikud
had no name.
A few moments more, and Rikud no longer could see the sphere. A section
of it had expanded outward and assumed the rectangular shape of the
viewport, and its size as well. It seemed neatly sheered down the
middle, so that on one side Rikud saw an expanse of brown and green,
and on the other, blue.
Startled, Rikud leaped back. The sullen roar in the rear of the world
had ceased abruptly. Instead an ominous silence, broken at regular
intervals by a sharp booming.
Change—
"Won't you eat, Rikud?" Chuls called from somewhere down below.
"Damn the man," Rikud thought. Then aloud: "Yes, I'll eat. Later."
"It's time...." Chuls' voice trailed off again, impotently.
But Rikud forgot the old man completely. A new idea occurred to him,
and for a while he struggled with it. What he saw—what he had always
seen, except that now there was the added factor of change—perhaps did
not exist
in
the viewport.
Maybe it existed
through
the viewport.
That was maddening. Rikud turned again to the port, where he could see
nothing but an obscuring cloud of white vapor, murky, swirling, more
confusing than ever.
"Chuls," he called, remembering, "come here."
"I am here," said a voice at his elbow.
Rikud whirled on the little figure and pointed to the swirling cloud of
vapor. "What do you see?"
Chuls looked. "The viewport, of course."
"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There—through the viewport and in it—was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.
He told Chuls, but Chuls had responded, "It is the viewport."
Crifer, on the other hand, wasn't so sure. "It looks like the garden,"
he admitted to Rikud. "But why should the garden be in the viewport?"
Somehow, Rikud knew this question for a healthy sign. But he could
not tell them of his most amazing thought of all. The change in the
viewport could mean only one thing. The world had been walking—the
word seemed all wrong to Rikud, but he could think of no other, unless
it were running. The world had been walking somewhere. That somewhere
was the garden and the world had arrived.
"It is an old picture of the garden," Chuls suggested, "and the plants
are different."
"Then they've changed?"
"No, merely different."
"Well, what about the viewport?
It
changed. Where are the stars?
Where are they, Chuls, if it did not change?"
"The stars come out at night."
"So there is a change from day to night!"
"I didn't say that. The stars simply shine at night. Why should they
shine during the day when the world wants them to shine only at night?"
"Once they shone all the time."
"Naturally," said Crifer, becoming interested. "They are variable."
Rikud regretted that he never had had the chance to read that book on
astronomy. He hadn't been reading too much lately. The voice of the
reading machine had begun to bore him. He said, "Well, variable or not,
our whole perspective has changed."
And when Chuls looked away in disinterest, Rikud became angry. If only
the man would realize! If only anyone would realize! It all seemed so
obvious. If he, Rikud, walked from one part of the world to another,
it was with a purpose—to eat, or to sleep, or perhaps to bathe in the
health-rays. Now if the world had walked from—somewhere, through the
vast star-speckled darkness and to the great garden outside, this also
was purposeful. The world had arrived at the garden for a reason. But
if everyone lived as if the world still stood in blackness, how could
they find the nature of that purpose?
"I will eat," Chuls said, breaking Rikud's revery.
Damn the man, all he did was eat!
Yet he did have initiative after a sort. He knew when to eat. Because
he was hungry.
And Rikud, too, was hungry.
Differently.
He had long wondered about the door in the back of the library, and
now, as Crifer sat cross-legged on one of the dusty tables, reading
machine and book on astronomy or stars in his lap, Rikud approached the
door.
"What's in here?" he demanded.
"It's a door, I think," said Crifer.
"I know, but what's beyond it?"
"Beyond it? Oh, you mean
through
the door."
"Yes."
"Well," Crifer scratched his head, "I don't think anyone ever opened
it. It's only a door."
"I will," said Rikud.
"You will what?"
"Open it. Open the door and look inside."
A long pause. Then, "Can you do it?"
"I think so."
"You can't, probably. How can anyone go where no one has been before?
There's nothing. It just isn't. It's only a door, Rikud."
"No—" Rikud began, but the words faded off into a sharp intake of
breath. Rikud had turned the knob and pushed. The door opened silently,
and Crifer said, "Doors are variable, too, I think."
Rikud saw a small room, perhaps half a dozen paces across, at the other
end of which was another door, just like the first. Halfway across,
Rikud heard a voice not unlike that of the reading machine.
He missed the beginning, but then:
—therefore, permit no unauthorized persons to go through this
door. The machinery in the next room is your protection against the
rigors of space. A thousand years from now, journey's end, you may
have discarded it for something better—who knows? But if you have
not, then here is your protection. As nearly as possible, this ship
is a perfect, self-sustaining world. It is more than that: it is
human-sustaining as well. Try to hurt yourself and the ship will not
permit it—within limits, of course. But you can damage the ship, and
to avoid any possibility of that, no unauthorized persons are to be
permitted through this door—
Rikud gave the voice up as hopeless. There were too many confusing
words. What in the world was an unauthorized person? More interesting
than that, however, was the second door. Would it lead to another
voice? Rikud hoped that it wouldn't.
When he opened the door a strange new noise filled his ears, a gentle
humming, punctuated by a
throb-throb-throb
which sounded not unlike
the booming of the engines last week, except that this new sound didn't
blast nearly so loudly against his eardrums. And what met Rikud's
eyes—he blinked and looked again, but it was still there—cogs and
gears and wheels and nameless things all strange and beautiful because
they shone with a luster unfamiliar to him.
"Odd," Rikud said aloud. Then he thought, "Now there's a good word, but
no one quite seems to know its meaning."
Odder still was the third door. Rikud suddenly thought there might
exist an endless succession of them, especially when the third one
opened on a bare tunnel which led to yet another door.
Only this one was different. In it Rikud saw the viewport. But how? The
viewport stood on the other end of the world. It did seem smaller, and,
although it looked out on the garden, Rikud sensed that the topography
was different. Then the garden extended even farther than he had
thought. It was endless, extending all the way to a ridge of mounds way
off in the distance.
And this door one could walk through, into the garden. Rikud put his
hand on the door, all the while watching the garden through the new
viewport. He began to turn the handle.
Then he trembled.
What would he do out in the garden?
He couldn't go alone. He'd die of the strangeness. It was a silly
thought; no one ever died of anything until he was a hundred. Rikud
couldn't fathom the rapid thumping of his heart. And Rikud's mouth felt
dry; he wanted to swallow, but couldn't.
Slowly, he took his hand off the door lever. He made his way back
through the tunnel and then through the room of machinery and finally
through the little room with the confusing voice to Crifer.
By the time he reached the lame-footed man, Rikud was running. He did
not dare once to look back. He stood shaking at Crifer's side, and
sweat covered him in a clammy film. He never wanted to look at the
garden again. Not when he knew there was a door through which he could
walk and then might find himself in the garden.
It was so big.
Three or four days passed before Rikud calmed himself enough to
talk about his experience. When he did, only Crifer seemed at all
interested, yet the lame-footed man's mind was inadequate to cope with
the situation. He suggested that the viewport might also be variable
and Rikud found himself wishing that his friend had never read that
book on astronomy.
Chuls did not believe Rikud at all. "There are not that many doors in
the world," he said. "The library has a door and there is a door to the
women's quarters; in five years, the Calculator will send you through
that. But there are no others."
Chuls smiled an indulgent smile and Rikud came nearer to him. "Now, by
the world, there are two other doors!"
Rikud began to shout, and everyone looked at him queerly.
"What are you doing that for?" demanded Wilm, who was shorter even than
Crifer, but had no lame foot.
"Doing what?"
"Speaking so loudly when Chuls, who is close, obviously has no trouble
hearing you."
"Maybe yelling will make him understand."
Crifer hobbled about on his good foot, doing a meaningless little jig.
"Why don't we go see?" he suggested. Then, confused, he frowned.
"Well, I won't go," Chuls replied. "There's no reason to go. If Rikud
has been imagining things, why should I?"
"I imagined nothing. I'll show you—"
"You'll show me nothing because I won't go."
Rikud grabbed Chuls' blouse with his big fist. Then, startled by what
he did, his hands began to tremble. But he held on, and he tugged at
the blouse.
"Stop that," said the older man, mildly.
Crifer hopped up and down. "Look what Rikud's doing! I don't know what
he's doing, but look. He's holding Chuls' blouse."
"Stop that," repeated Chuls, his face reddening.
"Only if you'll go with me." Rikud was panting.
Chuls tugged at his wrist. By this time a crowd had gathered. Some of
them watched Crifer jump up and down, but most of them watched Rikud
holding Chuls' blouse.
"I think I can do that," declared Wilm, clutching a fistful of Crifer's
shirt.
Presently, the members of the crowd had pretty well paired off, each
partner grabbing for his companion's blouse. They giggled and laughed
and some began to hop up and down as Crifer had done.
A buzzer sounded and automatically Rikud found himself releasing Chuls.
Chuls said, forgetting the incident completely, "Time to retire."
In a moment, the room was cleared. Rikud stood alone. He cleared his
throat and listened to the sound, all by itself in the stillness. What
would have happened if they hadn't retired? But they always did things
punctually like that, whenever the buzzer sounded. They ate with the
buzzer, bathed in the health-rays with it, slept with it.
What would they do if the buzzer stopped buzzing?
This frightened Rikud, although he didn't know why. He'd like it,
though. Maybe then he could take them outside with him to the big
garden of the two viewports. And then he wouldn't be afraid because he
could huddle close to them and he wouldn't be alone.
Rikud heard the throbbing again as he stood in the room of the
machinery. For a long time he watched the wheels and cogs and gears
spinning and humming. He watched for he knew not how long. And then he
began to wonder. If he destroyed the wheels and the cogs and the gears,
would the buzzer stop? It probably would, because, as Rikud saw it, he
was clearly an "unauthorized person." He had heard the voice again
upon entering the room.
He found a metal rod, bright and shiny, three feet long and half as
wide as his arm. He tugged at it and it came loose from the wires that
held it in place. He hefted it carefully for a moment, and then he
swung the bar into the mass of metal. Each time he heard a grinding,
crashing sound. He looked as the gears and cogs and wheels crumbled
under his blows, shattered by the strength of his arm.
Almost casually he strode about the room, but his blows were not
casual. Soon his easy strides had given way to frenzied running. Rikud
smashed everything in sight.
When the lights winked out, he stopped. Anyway, by that time the room
was a shambles of twisted, broken metal. He laughed, softly at first,
but presently he was roaring, and the sound doubled and redoubled in
his ears because now the throbbing had stopped.
He opened the door and ran through the little corridor to the smaller
viewport. Outside he could see the stars, and, dimly, the terrain
beneath them. But everything was so dark that only the stars shone
clearly. All else was bathed in a shadow of unreality.
Rikud never wanted to do anything more than he wanted to open that
door. But his hands trembled too much when he touched it, and once,
when he pressed his face close against the viewport, there in the
darkness, something bright flashed briefly through the sky and was gone.
Whimpering, he fled.
All around Rikud were darkness and hunger and thirst. The buzzer did
not sound because Rikud had silenced it forever. And no one went to
eat or drink. Rikud himself had fumbled through the blackness and the
whimpering to the dining room, his tongue dry and swollen, but the
smooth belt that flowed with water and with savory dishes did not run
any more. The machinery, Rikud realized, also was responsible for food.
Chuls said, over and over, "I'm hungry."
"We will eat and we will drink when the buzzer tells us," Wilm replied
confidently.
"It won't any more," Rikud said.
"What won't?"
"The buzzer will never sound again. I broke it."
Crifer growled. "I know. You shouldn't have done it. That was a bad
thing you did, Rikud."
"It was not bad. The world has moved through the blackness and the
stars and now we should go outside to live in the big garden there
beyond the viewport."
"That's ridiculous," Chuls said.
Even Crifer now was angry at Rikud. "He broke the buzzer and no one can
eat. I hate Rikud, I think."
There was a lot of noise in the darkness, and someone else said, "I
hate Rikud." Then everyone was saying it.
Rikud was sad. Soon he would die, because no one would go outside with
him and he could not go outside alone. In five more years he would have
had a woman, too. He wondered if it was dark and hungry in the women's
quarters. Did women eat?
Perhaps they ate plants. Once, in the garden, Rikud had broken off a
frond and tasted it. It had been bitter, but not unpleasant. Maybe the
plants in the viewport would even be better.
"We will not be hungry if we go outside," he said. "We can eat there."
"We can eat if the buzzer sounds, but it is broken," Chuls said dully.
Crifer shrilled, "Maybe it is only variable and will buzz again."
"No," Rikud assured him. "It won't."
"Then you broke it and I hate you," said Crifer. "We should break you,
too, to show you how it is to be broken."
"We must go outside—through the viewport." Rikud listened to the odd
gurgling sound his stomach made.
A hand reached out in the darkness and grabbed at his head. He heard
Crifer's voice. "I have Rikud's head." The voice was nasty, hostile.
Crifer, more than anyone, had been his friend. But now that he had
broken the machinery, Crifer was his enemy, because Crifer came nearer
to understanding the situation than anyone except Rikud.
The hand reached out again, and it struck Rikud hard across the face.
"I hit him! I hit him!"
Other hands reached out, and Rikud stumbled. He fell and then someone
was on top of him, and he struggled. He rolled and was up again, and
he did not like the sound of the angry voices. Someone said, "Let us
do to Rikud what he said he did to the machinery." Rikud ran. In the
darkness, his feet prodded many bodies. There were those who were too
weak to rise. Rikud, too, felt a strange light-headedness and a gnawing
hurt in his stomach. But it didn't matter. He heard the angry voices
and the feet pounding behind him, and he wanted only to get away.
It was dark and he was hungry and everyone who was strong enough to run
was chasing him, but every time he thought of the garden outside, and
how big it was, the darkness and the hunger and the people chasing him
were unimportant. It was so big that it would swallow him up completely
and positively.
He became sickly giddy thinking about it.
But if he didn't open the door and go into the garden outside, he would
die because he had no food and no water and his stomach gurgled and
grumbled and hurt. And everyone was chasing him.
He stumbled through the darkness and felt his way back to the library,
through the inner door and into the room with the voice—but the
voice didn't speak this time—through its door and into the place of
machinery. Behind him, he could hear the voices at the first door, and
he thought for a moment that no one would come after him. But he heard
Crifer yell something, and then feet pounding in the passage.
Rikud tripped over something and sprawled awkwardly across the floor.
He felt a sharp hurt in his head, and when he reached up to touch it
with his hands there in the darkness, his fingers came away wet.
He got up slowly and opened the next door. The voices behind him were
closer now. Light streamed in through the viewport. After the darkness,
it frightened Rikud and it made his eyes smart, and he could hear those
behind him retreating to a safe distance. But their voices were not
far away, and he knew they would come after him because they wanted to
break him.
Rikud looked out upon the garden and he trembled. Out there was life.
The garden stretched off in unthinkable immensity to the cluster of
low mounds against the bright blue which roofed the many plants. If
plants could live out there as they did within the world, then so could
people. Rikud and his people
should
. This was why the world had moved
across the darkness and the stars for all Rikud's lifetime and more.
But he was afraid.
He reached up and grasped the handle of the door and he saw that his
fingers were red with the wetness which had come from his hurt head.
Slowly he slipped to the cool floor—how his head was burning!—and for
a long time he lay there, thinking he would never rise again. Inside he
heard the voices again, and soon a foot and then another pounded on
the metal of the passage. He heard Crifer's voice louder than the rest:
"There is Rikud on the floor!"
Tugging at the handle of the door, Rikud pulled himself upright.
Something small and brown scurried across the other side of the
viewport and Rikud imagined it turned to look at him with two hideous
red eyes.
Rikud screamed and hurtled back through the corridor, and his face
was so terrible in the light streaming in through the viewport that
everyone fled before him. He stumbled again in the place of the
machinery, and down on his hands and knees he fondled the bits of metal
which he could see in the dim light through the open door.
"Where's the buzzer?" he sobbed. "I must find the buzzer."
Crifer's voice, from the darkness inside, said, "You broke it. You
broke it. And now we will break you—"
Rikud got up and ran. He reached the door again and then he slipped
down against it, exhausted. Behind him, the voices and the footsteps
came, and soon he saw Crifer's head peer in through the passageway.
Then there were others, and then they were walking toward him.
His head whirled and the viewport seemed to swim in a haze. Could it
be variable, as Crifer had suggested? He wondered if the scurrying
brown thing waited somewhere, and nausea struck at the pit of his
stomach. But if the plants could live out there and the scurrying thing
could live and that was why the world had moved through the blackness,
then so could he live out there, and Crifer and all the others....
So tightly did he grip the handle that his fingers began to hurt. And
his heart pounded hard and he felt the pulses leaping on either side of
his neck.
He stared out into the garden, and off into the distance, where the
blue-white globe which might have been a star stood just above the row
of mounds.
Crifer was tugging at him, trying to pull him away from the door, and
someone was grabbing at his legs, trying to make him fall. He kicked
out and the hands let go, and then he turned the handle and shoved the
weight of his body with all his strength against the door.
It opened and he stepped outside into the warmth.
The air was fresh, fresher than any air Rikud had ever breathed. He
walked around aimlessly, touching the plants and bending down to feel
the floor, and sometimes he looked at the blue-white globe on the
horizon. It was all very beautiful.
Near the ship, water that did not come from a machine gurgled across
the land, and Rikud lay down and drank. It was cool and good, and when
he got up, Crifer and Wilm were outside the world, and some of the
others followed. They stood around for a long time before going to the
water to drink.
Rikud sat down and tore off a piece of a plant, munching on it. It was
good.
Crifer picked his head up, from the water, his chin wet. "Even feelings
are variable. I don't hate you now, Rikud."
Rikud smiled, staring at the ship. "People are variable, too, Crifer.
That is, if those creatures coming from the ship are people."
"They're women," said Crifer.
They were strangely shaped in some ways, and yet in others completely
human, and their voices were high, like singing. Rikud found them oddly
exciting. He liked them. He liked the garden, for all its hugeness.
With so many people, and especially now with women, he was not afraid.
It was much better than the small world of machinery, buzzer,
frightening doors and women by appointment only.
Rikud felt at home.
| What does Rikud's victory represent? | [
"Victory over authority.",
"Victory over the world, and overcoming its changes.",
"Victory over fear of the unknown, and embracing of change.",
"Victory over indecision."
] | 2 | false |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| What does the dead man represent for Ben? | [
"His conscious. He is manifesting as Ben's rage, and the anger that he felt during the incident.",
"The end of his freedom. He represents his new life as an outlaw.",
"His conscious. He is manifesting as Ben's unaddressed guilt, and what he can never run away from.",
"The end of his career. He sees the dead man as the loss of his livelihood."
] | 2 | false |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| Why does Ben take offence to Cobb's comments about spacemen? | [
"He takes a lot of pride in his job, and dislikes Cobb disparaging it.",
"It's deeply personal to him. Because of his parent's death, he'd taken an interest in the job.",
"It's deeply personal to him. He grew up venerating space and space travel. He spent his whole life preparing for it.",
"He knows that spacemen account for the life people like Cobb can live, because of his work."
] | 2 | true |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| Ben runs from the crime scene, but isn't remorseful for doing so. Why is that, even though he killed a man? | [
"It gave him enough time to remember the renegades, and make the plan to go meet them.",
"He felt he was justified in killing Cobb.",
"Running away game him opportunity to reflect.",
"Running gave him autonomy, and to decide how the next part of his life would pan out."
] | 3 | true |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| What is the irony in Ben's contempt for a single action destroying "a man's life and his dream?" | [
"If he had stayed and made the decision to confess, he wouldn't have ruined his life.",
"He'd just deliberately ended a man's life, and his running from what he's done.",
"It's against the morals of what he claims to stand by.",
"He'd just done the same to a man by striking him without thought, and is now running from his guilt."
] | 3 | true |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| Why does the Martian boy speak so many languages? | [
"He must meet humans from many places, and has just taken to learning a little of everything.",
"Martians have a different perception of Earth culture, and it's what he thinks is appropriate.",
"He must meet humans from many places, and has only picked up bits of language here and there.",
"He is trying to confuse Ben, and get him to say something."
] | 2 | false |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| Why is the rumor that Martians can read minds especially scary to Ben? | [
"If they can, they definitely know he's guilty of what he's done.",
"It would mean that Martians are fully aware of what Earth people are thinking, and manipulating them.",
"If they can, he's uncomfortable with the notion that they can read his thoughts.",
"Not being able to confirm if it's true or not makes Ben wary of interacting with any of them."
] | 0 | true |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| Why is Ben a potential asset to Maggie and her husband? | [
"He's an astrogator, and one that's now off the radar. He's free to do the kind of job they need.",
"He's an astrogator, and a very talented one at that. He can complete the job they need done.",
"As a space officer, he can help get them out of any legal trouble they might encounter.",
"He's in a position where he can't say no. He has to do whatever they tell him."
] | 1 | false |
A Coffin for Jacob
By EDWARD W. LUDWIG
Illustrated by EMSH
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Galaxy Science Fiction May 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With never a moment to rest, the pursuit
through space felt like a game of hounds
and hares ... or was it follow the leader?
Ben Curtis eased his pale, gaunt body through the open doorway of the
Blast Inn, the dead man following silently behind him.
His fear-borne gaze traveled into the dimly illumined Venusian gin
mill. The place was like an evil caldron steaming with a brew whose
ingredients had been culled from the back corners of three planets.
Most of the big room lay obscured behind a shimmering veil of tobacco
smoke and the sweet, heavy fumes of Martian Devil's Egg. Here and
there, Ben saw moving figures. He could not tell if they were Earthmen,
Martians or Venusians.
Someone tugged at his greasy coat. He jumped, thinking absurdly that it
was the dead man's hand.
"
Coma esta, senor?
" a small voice piped. "
Speken die Deutsch?
Desirez-vous d'amour? Da? Nyet?
"
Ben looked down.
The speaker was an eager-eyed Martian boy of about ten. He was like
a red-skinned marionette with pipestem arms and legs, clad in a torn
skivvy shirt and faded blue dungarees.
"I'm American," Ben muttered.
"Ah,
buena
! I speak English
tres
fine,
senor
. I have Martian
friend, she
tres
pretty and
tres
fat. She weigh almost eighty
pounds,
monsieur
. I take you to her,
si
?"
Ben shook his head.
He thought,
I don't want your Martian wench. I don't want your opium
or your Devil's Egg or your Venusian kali. But if you had a drug that'd
bring a dead man to life, I'd buy and pay with my soul.
"It is deal,
monsieur
? Five dollars or twenty
keelis
for visit
Martian friend. Maybe you like House of Dreams. For House of Dreams—"
"I'm not buying."
The dirty-faced kid shrugged. "Then I show you to good table,—
tres
bien
. I do not charge you,
senor
."
The boy grabbed his hand. Because Ben could think of no reason for
resisting, he followed. They plunged into shifting layers of smoke and
through the drone of alcohol-cracked voices.
They passed the bar with its line of lean-featured, slit-eyed
Earthmen—merchant spacemen.
They wormed down a narrow aisle flanked by booths carved from Venusian
marble that jutted up into the semi-darkness like fog-blanketed
tombstones.
Several times, Ben glimpsed the bulky figures of CO
2
-breathing
Venusians, the first he'd ever seen.
They were smoky gray, scaly, naked giants, toads in human shape.
They stood solitary and motionless, aloof, their green-lidded eyes
unblinking. They certainly didn't look like telepaths, as Ben had heard
they were, but the thought sent a fresh rivulet of fear down his spine.
Once he spied a white-uniformed officer of Hoover City's Security
Police. The man was striding down an aisle, idly tapping his neuro-club
against the stone booths.
Keep walking
, Ben told himself.
You look the same as anyone else
here. Keep walking. Look straight ahead.
The officer passed. Ben breathed easier.
"Here we are,
monsieur
," piped the Martian boy. "A
tres
fine table.
Close in the shadows."
Ben winced. How did this kid know he wanted to sit in the shadows?
Frowning, he sat down—he and the dead man.
He listened to the lonely rhythms of the four-piece Martian orchestra.
The Martians were fragile, doll-like creatures with heads too large for
their spindly bodies. Their long fingers played upon the strings of
their
cirillas
or crawled over the holes of their flutes like spider
legs. Their tune was sad. Even when they played an Earth tune, it still
seemed a song of old Mars, charged with echoes of lost voices and
forgotten grandeur.
For an instant, Ben's mind rose above the haunting vision of the dead
man. He thought,
What are they doing here, these Martians? Here, in
a smoke-filled room under a metalite dome on a dust-covered world?
Couldn't they have played their music on Mars? Or had they, like me,
felt the challenge of new worlds?
He sobered. It didn't matter. He ordered a whiskey from a Chinese
waiter. He wet his lips but did not drink. His gaze wandered over the
faces of the Inn's other occupants.
You've got to find him
, he thought.
You've got to find the man with
the red beard. It's the only way you can escape the dead man.
The dead man was real. His name was Cobb. He was stout and flabby and
about forty and he hated spacemen.
His body was buried now—probably in the silent gray wastes outside
Luna City. But he'd become a kind of invisible Siamese twin, as much a
part of Ben as sight in his eyes.
Sometimes the image would be shuffling drunkenly beside him, its lips
spitting whiskey-slurred curses.
Again, its face would be a pop-eyed mask of surprise as Ben's fist
thudded into its jaw. More often, the face would be frozen in the
whiteness of death. The large eyes would stare. Blood would trickle
from a corner of the gaping mouth.
You can forget a living man. You can defeat him or submit to him or
ignore him, and the matter is over and done. You can't escape from a
memory that has burned into your mind.
It had begun a week ago in Luna City. The flight from White Sands had
been successful. Ben, quietly and moderately, wanted to celebrate.
He stopped alone in a rocketfront bar for a beer. The man named Cobb
plopped his portly and unsteady posterior on the stool next to him.
"Spacemen," he muttered, "are getting like flies. Everywhere, all you
see's spacemen."
He was a neatly dressed civilian.
Ben smiled. "If it weren't for spacemen, you wouldn't be here."
"The name's Cobb." The man hiccoughed. "Spacemen in their white monkey
suits. They think they're little tin gods. Betcha you think you're a
little tin god." He downed a shot of whiskey.
Ben stiffened. He was twenty-four and dressed in the white,
crimson-braided uniform of the
Odyssey's
junior astrogation officer.
He was three months out of the Academy at White Sands and the shining
uniform was like a key to all the mysteries of the Universe.
He'd sought long for that key.
At the age of five—perhaps in order to dull the memory of his parents'
death in a recent strato-jet crash—he'd spent hours watching the night
sky for streaking flame-tails of Moon rockets. At ten, he'd ground
his first telescope. At fourteen, he'd converted an abandoned shed on
the government boarding-school grounds to a retreat which housed his
collection of astronomy and rocketry books.
At sixteen, he'd spent every weekend holiday hitchhiking from Boys
Town No. 5 in the Catskills to Long Island Spaceport. There, among
the grizzled veterans of the old Moon Patrol, he'd found friends who
understood his dream and who later recommended his appointment to the
U. S. Academy for the Conquest of Space.
And a month ago, he'd signed aboard the
Odyssey
—the first ship, it
was rumored, equipped to venture as far as the asteroids and perhaps
beyond.
Cobb was persistent: "Damn fools shoulda known enough to stay on Earth.
What the hell good is it, jumpin' from planet to planet?"
The guy's drunk
, Ben thought. He took his drink and moved three
stools down the bar.
Cobb followed. "You don't like the truth, eh, kid? You don't like
people to call you a sucker."
Ben rose and started to leave the bar, but Cobb grabbed his arm and
held him there.
"Thas what you are—a sucker. You're young now. Wait ten years. You'll
be dyin' of radiation rot or a meteor'll get you. Wait and see, sucker!"
Until this instant, Ben had suppressed his anger. Now, suddenly and
without warning, it welled up into savage fury.
His fist struck the man on the chin. Cobb's eyes gaped in shocked
horror. He spun backward. His head cracked sickeningly on the edge of
the bar. The sound was like a punctuation mark signaling the end of
life.
He sank to the floor, eyes glassy, blood tricking down his jaw.
Ben knew that he was dead.
Then, for a single absurd second, Ben was seized with terror—just as,
a moment before, he'd been overwhelmed with anger.
He ran.
For some twenty minutes, he raced through a dizzying, nightmare world
of dark rocketfront alleys and shouting voices and pursuing feet.
At last, abruptly, he realized that he was alone and in silence. He saw
that he was still on the rocketfront, but in the Tycho-ward side of the
city.
He huddled in a dark corner of a loading platform and lit a cigarette.
A thousand stars—a thousand motionless balls of silver fire—shone
above him through Luna City's transparent dome.
He was sorry he'd hit Cobb, of course. He was not sorry he'd run.
Escaping at least gave him a power of choice, of decision.
You can do two things
, he thought.
You can give yourself up, and that's what a good officer would do.
That would eliminate the escape charge. You'd get off with voluntary
manslaughter. Under interplanetary law, that would mean ten years in
prison and a dishonorable discharge. And then you'd be free.
But you'd be through with rockets and space. They don't want new
men over thirty-four for officers on rockets or even for third-class
jet-men on beat-up freighters—they don't want convicted killers. You'd
get the rest of the thrill of conquering space through video and by
peeking through electric fences of spaceports.
Or—
There were old wives' tales of a group of renegade spacemen who
operated from the Solar System's frontiers. The spacemen weren't
outlaws. They were misfits, rejectees from the clearing houses on Earth.
And whereas no legally recognized ship had ventured past Mars, the
souped-up renegade rigs had supposedly hit the asteroids. Their
headquarters was Venus. Their leader—a subject of popular and
fantastic conjecture in the men's audiozines—was rumored to be a
red-bearded giant.
So
, Ben reflected,
you can take a beer-and-pretzels tale seriously.
You can hide for a couple of days, get rid of your uniform, change your
name. You can wait for a chance to get to Venus. To hell with your
duty. You can try to stay in space, even if you exile yourself from
Earth.
After all, was it right for a single second, a single insignificant
second, to destroy a man's life and his dream?
He was lucky. He found a tramp freighter whose skipper was on his last
flight before retirement. Discipline was lax, investigation of new
personnel even more so.
Ben Curtis made it to Venus.
There was just one flaw in his decision. He hadn't realized that the
memory of the dead man's face would haunt him, torment him, follow him
as constantly as breath flowed into his lungs.
But might not the rumble of atomic engines drown the murmuring dead
voice? Might not the vision of alien worlds and infinite spaceways
obscure the dead face?
So now he sat searching for a perhaps nonexistent red-bearded giant,
and hoping and doubting and fearing, all at once.
"You look for someone,
senor
?"
He jumped. "Oh. You still here?"
"
Oui.
" The Martian kid grinned, his mouth full of purple teeth. "I
keep you company on your first night in Hoover City,
n'est-ce-pas
?"
"This isn't my first night here," Ben lied. "I've been around a while."
"You are spacemen?"
Ben threw a fifty-cent credit piece on the table. "Here. Take off, will
you?"
Spiderlike fingers swept down upon the coin. "
Ich danke, senor.
You
know why city is called Hoover City?"
Ben didn't answer.
"They say it is because after women come, they want first thing a
thousand vacuum cleaners for dust. What is vacuum cleaner,
monsieur
?"
Ben raised his hand as if to strike the boy.
"
Ai-yee
, I go. You keep listen to good Martian music."
The toothpick of a body melted into the semi-darkness.
Minutes passed. There were two more whiskeys. A ceaseless parade of
faces broke through the smoky veil that enclosed him—reddish balloon
faces, scaly reptilian faces, white-skinned, slit-eyed faces, and
occasionally a white, rouged, powdered face. But nowhere was there a
face with a red beard.
A sense of hopelessness gripped Ben Curtis. Hoover City was but one of
a dozen cities of Venus. Each had twenty dives such as this.
He needed help.
But his picture must have been 'scoped to Venusian visiscreens. A
reward must have been offered for his capture. Whom could he trust? The
Martian kid, perhaps?
Far down the darkened aisle nearest him, his eyes caught a flash of
white. He tensed.
Like the uniform of a Security Policeman, he thought.
His gaze shifted to another aisle and another hint of whiteness.
And then he saw another and another and another.
Each whiteness became brighter and closer, like shrinking spokes of a
wheel with Ben as their focal point.
You idiot! The damned Martian kid! You should have known!
Light showered the room in a dazzling explosion. Ben, half blinded,
realized that a broad circle of unshaded globes in the ceiling had been
turned on.
The light washed away the room's strangeness and its air of brooding
wickedness, revealing drab concrete walls and a debris-strewn floor.
Eyes blinked and squinted. There were swift, frightened movements and
a chorus of angry murmurs. The patrons of the Blast Inn were like
tatter-clad occupants of a house whose walls have been ripped away.
Ben Curtis twisted his lean body erect. His chair tumbled backward,
falling.
The white-clad men charged, neuro-clubs upraised.
A woman screamed. The music ceased. The Martian orchestra slunk with
feline stealth to a rear exit. Only the giant Venusians remained
undisturbed. They stood unmoving, their staring eyes shifting lazily in
Ben's direction.
"Curtis!" one of the policemen yelled. "You're covered! Hold it!"
Ben whirled away from the advancing police, made for the exit into
which the musicians had disappeared.
A hissing sound traveled past his left ear, a sound like compressed air
escaping from a container. A dime-sized section of the concrete wall
ahead of him crumbled.
He stumbled forward. They were using deadly neuro-pistols now, not the
mildly stunning neuro-clubs.
Another hiss passed his cheek. He was about twelve feet from the exit.
Another second
, his brain screamed.
Just another second—
Or would the exits be guarded?
He heard the hiss.
It hit directly in the small of his back. There was no pain, just a
slight pricking sensation, like the shallow jab of a needle.
He froze as if yanked to a stop by a noose. His body seemed to be
growing, swelling into balloon proportions. He knew that the tiny
needle had imbedded itself deep in his flesh, knew that the paralyzing
mortocain was spreading like icy fire into every fiber and muscle of
his body.
He staggered like a man of stone moving in slow motion. He'd have
fifteen—maybe twenty—seconds before complete lethargy of mind and
body overpowered him.
In the dark world beyond his fading consciousness, he heard a voice
yell, "Turn on the damn lights!"
Then a pressure and a coldness were on his left hand. He realized that
someone had seized it.
A soft feminine voice spoke to him. "You're wounded? They hit you?"
"Yes." His thick lips wouldn't let go of the word.
"You want to escape—even now?"
"Yes."
"You may die if you don't give yourself up."
"No, no."
He tried to stumble toward the exit.
"All right then. Not that way. Here, this way."
Heavy footsteps thudded toward them. A few yards away, a flashlight
flicked on.
Hands were guiding him. He was aware of being pushed and pulled. A
door closed behind him. The glare of the flashlight faded from his
vision—if he still had vision.
"You're sure?" the voice persisted.
"I'm sure," Ben managed to say.
"I have no antidote. You may die."
His mind fought to comprehend. With the anti-paralysis injection,
massage and rest, a man could recover from the effects of mortocain
within half a day. Without treatment, the paralysis could spread to
heart and lungs. It could become a paralysis of death. An effective
weapon: the slightest wound compelled the average criminal to surrender
at once.
"Anti ... anti ..." The words were as heavy as blobs of mercury forced
from his throat. "No ... I'm sure ... sure."
He didn't hear the answer or anything else.
Ben Curtis had no precise sensation of awakening. Return to
consciousness was an intangible evolution from a world of black
nothingness to a dream-like state of awareness.
He felt the pressure of hands on his naked arms and shoulders,
hands that massaged, manipulated, fought to restore circulation and
sensitivity. He knew they were strong hands. Their strength seemed to
transfer itself to his own body.
For a long time, he tried to open his eyes. His lids felt welded
shut. But after a while, they opened. His world of darkness gave way
to a translucent cloak of mist. A round, featureless shape hovered
constantly above him—a face, he supposed.
He tried to talk. Although his lips moved slightly, the only sound was
a deep, staccato grunting.
But he heard someone say, "Don't try to talk." It was the same gentle
voice he'd heard in the Blast Inn. "Don't talk. Just lie still and
rest. Everything'll be all right."
Everything all right
, he thought dimly.
There were long periods of lethargy when he was aware of nothing. There
were periods of light and of darkness. Gradually he grew aware of
things. He realized that the soft rubber mouth of a spaceman's oxygen
mask was clamped over his nose. He felt the heat of electric blankets
swathed about his body. Occasionally a tube would be in his mouth and
he would taste liquid food and feel a pleasant warmth in his stomach.
Always, it seemed, the face was above him, floating in the obscuring
mist. Always, it seemed, the soft voice was echoing in his ears:
"Swallow this now. That's it. You must have food." Or, "Close your
eyes. Don't strain. It won't be long. You're getting better."
Better
, he'd think.
Getting better....
At last, after one of the periods of lethargy, his eyes opened. The
mist brightened, then dissolved.
He beheld the cracked, unpainted ceiling of a small room, its colorless
walls broken with a single, round window. He saw the footboard of his
aluminite bed and the outlines of his feet beneath a faded blanket.
Finally he saw the face and figure that stood at his side.
"You are better?" the kind voice asked.
The face was that of a girl probably somewhere between twenty-five
and thirty. Her features, devoid of makeup, had an unhealthy-looking
pallor, as if she hadn't used a sunlamp for many weeks. Yet, at the
same time, her firm slim body suggested a solidity and a strength. Her
straight brown hair was combed backward, tight upon her scalp, and
drawn together in a knot at the nape of her neck.
"I—I am better," he murmured. His words were still slow and thick. "I
am going to live?"
"You will live."
He thought for a moment. "How long have I been here?"
"Nine days."
"You took care of me?" He noted the deep, dark circles beneath her
sleep-robbed eyes.
She nodded.
"You're the one who carried me when I was shot?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
Suddenly he began to cough. Breath came hard. She held the oxygen mask
in readiness. He shook his head, not wanting it.
"Why?" he asked again.
"It would be a long story. Perhaps I'll tell you tomorrow."
A new thought, cloaked in sudden fear, entered his murky consciousness.
"Tell me, will—will I be well again? Will I be able to walk?"
He lay back then, panting, exhausted.
"You have nothing to worry about," the girl said softly. Her cool hand
touched his hot forehead. "Rest. We'll talk later."
His eyes closed and breath came easier. He slept.
When he next awoke, his gaze turned first to the window. There was
light outside, but he had no way of knowing if this was morning, noon
or afternoon—or on what planet.
He saw no white-domed buildings of Hoover City, no formal lines of
green-treed parks, no streams of buzzing gyro-cars. There was only a
translucent and infinite whiteness. It was as if the window were set on
the edge of the Universe overlooking a solemn, silent and matterless
void.
The girl entered the room.
"Hi," she said, smiling. The dark half-moons under her eyes were less
prominent. Her face was relaxed.
She increased the pressure in his rubberex pillows and helped him rise
to a sitting position.
"Where are we?" he asked.
"Venus."
"We're not in Hoover City?"
"No."
He looked at her, wondering. "You won't tell me?"
"Not yet. Later, perhaps."
"Then how did you get me here? How did we escape from the Inn?"
She shrugged. "We have friends who can be bribed. A hiding place in the
city, the use of a small desert-taxi, a pass to leave the city—these
can be had for a price."
"You'll tell me your name?"
"Maggie."
"Why did you save me?"
Her eyes twinkled mischievously. "Because you're a good astrogator."
His own eyes widened. "How did you know that?"
She sat on a plain chair beside his bed. "I know everything about you,
Lieutenant Curtis."
"How did you learn my name? I destroyed all my papers—"
"I know that you're twenty-four. Born July 10, 1971. Orphaned at four,
you attended Boys Town in the Catskills till you were 19. You graduated
from the Academy at White Sands last June with a major in Astrogation.
Your rating for the five-year period was 3.8—the second highest in a
class of fifty-seven. Your only low mark in the five years was a 3.2 in
History of Martian Civilization. Want me to go on?"
Fascinated, Ben nodded.
"You were accepted as junior astrogation officer aboard the
Odyssey
.
You did well on your flight from Roswell to Luna City. In a barroom
fight in Luna City, you struck and killed a man named Arthur Cobb, a
pre-fab salesman. You've been charged with second degree murder and
escape. A reward of 5,000 credits has been offered for your capture.
You came to Hoover City in the hope of finding a renegade group of
spacemen who operate beyond Mars. You were looking for them in the
Blast Inn."
He gaped incredulously, struggling to rise from his pillows. "I—don't
get it."
"There are ways of finding out what we want to know. As I told you, we
have many friends."
He fell back into his pillows, breathing hard. She rose quickly.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have told you yet. I felt so happy
because you're alive. Rest now. We'll talk again soon."
"Maggie, you—you said I'd live. You didn't say I'd be able to walk
again."
She lowered her gaze. "I hope you'll be able to."
"But you don't think I will, do you?"
"I don't know. We'll try walking tomorrow. Don't think about it now.
Rest."
He tried to relax, but his mind was a vortex of conjecture.
"Just one more question," he almost whispered.
"Yes?"
"The man I killed—did he have a wife?"
She hesitated. He thought,
Damn it, of all the questions, why did I
ask that?
Finally she said, "He had a wife."
"Children?"
"Two. I don't know their ages."
She left the room.
He sank into the softness of his bed. As he turned over on his side,
his gaze fell upon an object on a bureau in a far corner of the room.
He sat straight up, his chest heaving.
The object was a tri-dimensional photo of a rock-faced man in a
merchant spaceman's uniform. He was a giant of a man with a neatly
trimmed
red beard
!
Ben stared at the photo for a long time. At length, he slipped into
restless sleep. Images of faces and echoes of words spun through his
brain.
The dead man returned to him. Bloodied lips cursed at him. Glassy eyes
accused him. Somewhere were two lost children crying in the night.
And towering above him was a red-bearded man whose great hands reached
down and beckoned to him. Ben crawled through the night on hands and
knees, his legs numb and useless. The crying of the children was a
chilling wail in his ears.
His head rose and turned to the red-bearded man. His pleading voice
screamed out to him in a thick, harsh cackle. Yet even as he screamed,
the giant disappeared, to be replaced by white-booted feet stomping
relentlessly toward him.
He awoke still screaming....
A night without darkness passed. Ben lay waiting for Maggie's return, a
question already formed in his mind.
She came and at once he asked, "Who is the man with the red beard?"
She smiled. "I was right then when I gave you that thumbnail biog. You
were
looking for him, weren't you?"
"Who is he?"
She sat on the chair beside him.
"My husband," she said softly.
He began to understand. "And your husband needs an astrogator? That's
why you saved me?"
"We need all the good men we can get."
"Where is he?"
She cocked her head in mock suspicion. "Somewhere between Mercury and
Pluto. He's building a new base for us—and a home for me. When his
ship returns, I'll be going to him."
"Why aren't you with him now?"
"He said unexplored space is no place for a woman. So I've been
studying criminal reports and photos from the Interplanetary Bureau of
Investigation and trying to find recruits like yourself. You know how
we operate?"
He told her the tales he'd heard.
She nodded. "There are quite a few of us now—about a thousand—and a
dozen ships. Our base used to be here on Venus, down toward the Pole.
The dome we're in now was designed and built by us a few years ago
after we got pushed off Mars. We lost a few men in the construction,
but with almost every advance in space, someone dies."
"Venus is getting too civilized. We're moving out and this dome is only
a temporary base when we have cases like yours. The new base—I might
as well tell you it's going to be an asteroid. I won't say which one."
"Don't get the idea that we're outlaws. Sure, about half our group is
wanted by the Bureau, but we make honest livings. We're just people
like yourself and Jacob."
"Jacob? Your husband?"
She laughed. "Makes you think of a Biblical character, doesn't it?
Jacob's anything but that. And just plain 'Jake' reminds one of a
grizzled old uranium prospector and he isn't like that, either."
She lit a cigarette. "Anyway, the wanted ones stay out beyond the
frontiers. Jacob and those like him can never return to Earth—not even
to Hoover City—except dead. The others are physical or psycho rejects
who couldn't get clearance if they went back to Earth. They know
nothing but rocketing and won't give up. They bring in our ships to
frontier ports like Hoover City to unload cargo and take on supplies."
"Don't the authorities object?"
"Not very strongly. The I. B. I. has too many problems right here to
search the whole System for a few two-bit crooks. Besides, we carry
cargoes of almost pure uranium and tungsten and all the stuff that's
scarce on Earth and Mars and Venus. Nobody really cares whether it
comes from the asteroids or Hades. If we want to risk our lives mining
it, that's our business."
She pursed her lips. "But if they guessed how strong we are or that we
have friends planted in the I. B. I.—well, things might be different.
There probably would be a crackdown."
Ben scowled. "What happens if there
is
a crackdown? And what will you
do when Space Corps ships officially reach the asteroids? They can't
ignore you then."
"Then we move on. We dream up new gimmicks for our crates and take them
to Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto. In time, maybe, we'll be
pushed out of the System itself. Maybe it won't be the white-suited
boys who'll make that first hop to the stars. It
could
be us, you
know—if we live long enough. But that Asteroid Belt is murder. You
can't follow the text-book rules of astrogation out there. You make up
your own."
Ben stiffened. "And that's why you want me for an astrogator."
Maggie rose, her eyes wistful. "If you want to come—and if you get
well." She looked at him strangely.
"Suppose—" He fought to find the right words. "Suppose I got well and
decided not to join Jacob. What would happen to me? Would you let me
go?"
Her thin face was criss-crossed by emotion—alarm, then bewilderment,
then fear. "I don't know. That would be up to Jacob."
He lay biting his lip, staring at the photo of Jacob. She touched his
hand and it seemed that sadness now dominated the flurry of emotion
that had coursed through her.
"The only thing that matters, really," she murmured, "is your walking
again. We'll try this afternoon. Okay?"
"Okay," he said.
When she left, his eyes were still turned toward Jacob's photo.
He was like two people, he thought.
Half of him was an officer of the Space Corps. Perhaps one single
starry-eyed boy out of ten thousand was lucky enough to reach that goal.
He remembered a little picture book his mother had given him when she
was alive. Under the bright pictures of spacemen were the captions:
"A Space Officer Is Honest" "A Space Officer Is Loyal." "A Space
Officer Is Dutiful."
Honesty, loyalty, duty. Trite words, but without those concepts,
mankind would never have broken away from the planet that held it
prisoner for half a million years.
Without them, Everson, after three failures and a hundred men dead,
would never have landed on the Moon twenty-seven years ago.
| What does Ben seem to fear, more than anything else? | [
"The law, and atoning for his crime.",
"Losing his position and the chance to fly spaceships.",
"The dead man, and the way he persists in his mind.",
"Maggie and her husband, and the position they've put him in."
] | 1 | true |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| Had the truck driver driving along Route 202 not noticed the change in road ahead while traveling, what would have likely happened? | [
"He would have driven down into the pit where Superior was formerly located.",
"He would have passed right over the town and missed it totally.",
"He would have spilled his coffee while trying to make the sudden stop.",
"He would have floated above the ground and continued driving into the town of Superior."
] | 0 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| What had given it away to Don that the attractive redhead he saw on the train was not actually a natural redhead? | [
"Her skin tone was too off to match the hair color.",
"The red tone of her hair was far too bright to be considered natural.",
"She was carrying box hair dye.",
"Her dark roots were showing."
] | 3 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| Why did Miss Jervis think that Don worked for the government? | [
"Because it seemed as though everyone in the area worked for the government.",
"His appearance made her think so.",
"Because he was familiar with Senator Bobby Thebold.",
"Because he was handcuffed to a briefcase."
] | 3 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| Why did the citizens of Superior fear the edge of the town? | [
"They feared that they would plummet to the ground because of gravity.",
"They feared they would fall with the flow of the stream.",
"They feared they would vanish if they left the edge.",
"They feared they would be sucked into a vortex."
] | 0 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| Based on the information in the text, why would Don choose to leave Superior? | [
"He had to deliver the handcuffed briefcase.",
"He had a family to return to that would be expecting him at home.",
"He feared the future of Superior.",
"His wife would not appreciate him spending time with Alis."
] | 0 | false |
And Then the Town Took Off
by RICHARD WILSON
ACE BOOKS, INC.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N.Y.
AND THEN THE TOWN TOOK OFF
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
For
Felicitas K. Wilson
THE SIOUX SPACEMAN
Copyright ©, 1960, by Ace Books, Inc.
Printed in U.S.A.
THE CITY THAT RAN OFF THE MAP
The town of Superior, Ohio, certainly was living up to its name! In what
was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply
picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!
Radio messages stated simply that Superior had seceded from Earth. But
Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that
nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they
accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local
townspeople, a crackpot professor.
But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious
that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up
to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his
days on the smallest—and the nuttiest—planet in the galaxy!
I
The town of Superior, Ohio, disappeared on the night of October 31.
A truck driver named Pierce Knaubloch was the first to report it. He had
been highballing west along Route 202, making up for the time he'd spent
over a second cup of coffee in a diner, when he screeched to a stop. If
he'd gone another twenty-five feet he'd have gone into the pit where
Superior had been.
Knaubloch couldn't see the extent of the pit because it was too dark,
but it looked big. Bigger than if a nitro truck had blown up, which was
his first thought. He backed up two hundred feet, set out flares, then
sped off to a telephone.
The state police converged on the former site of Superior from several
directions. Communicating by radiophone across the vast pit, they
confirmed that the town undoubtedly was missing. They put in a call to
the National Guard.
The guard surrounded the area with troops—more than a thousand were
needed—to keep people from falling into the pit. A pilot who flew over
it reported that it looked as if a great ice-cream scoop had bitten into
the Ohio countryside.
The Pennsylvania Railroad complained that one of its passenger trains
was missing. The train's schedule called for it to pass through but not
stop at Superior at 11:58. That seemed to fix the time of the
disappearance at midnight. The truck driver had made his discovery
shortly after midnight.
Someone pointed out that October 31 was Halloween and that midnight was
the witching hour.
Somebody else said nonsense, they'd better check for radiation. A civil
defense official brought up a Geiger counter, but no matter how he shook
it and rapped on it, it refused to click.
A National Guard officer volunteered to take a jeep down into the pit,
having found a spot that seemed navigable. He was gone a long time but
when he came out the other side he reported that the pit was concave,
relatively smooth, and did not smell of high explosives. He'd found no
people, no houses—no sign of anything except the pit itself.
The Governor of Ohio asked Washington whether any unidentified planes
had been over the state. Washington said no. The Pentagon and the Atomic
Energy Commission denied that they had been conducting secret
experiments.
Nor had there been any defense plants in Superior that might have blown
up. The town's biggest factory made kitchen sinks and the next biggest
made bubble gum.
A United Airlines pilot found Superior early on the morning of November
1. The pilot, Captain Eric Studley, who had never seen a flying saucer
and hoped never to see one, was afraid now that he had. The object
loomed out of a cloudbank at twelve thousand feet and Studley changed
course to avoid it. He noted with only minimum satisfaction that his
co-pilot also saw the thing and wondered why it wasn't moving at the
terrific speed flying saucers were allegedly capable of.
Then he saw the church steeple on it.
A few minutes later he had relayed a message from Superior, formerly of
Ohio, addressed to whom it might concern:
It said that Superior had seceded from Earth.
One other radio message came from Superior, now airborne, on that first
day. A ham radio operator reported an unidentified voice as saying
plaintively:
"
Cold
up here!"
Don Cort had been dozing in what passed for the club car on the Buckeye
Cannonball when the train braked to a stop. He looked out the window,
hoping this was Columbus, where he planned to catch a plane east. But it
wasn't Columbus. All he could see were some lanterns jogging as trainmen
hurried along the tracks.
The conductor looked into the car. The redhead across the aisle in whom
Don had taken a passing interest earlier in the evening asked, "Why did
we stop?"
"Somebody flagged us down," the conductor said. "We don't make a station
stop at Superior on this run."
The girl's hair was a subtle red, but false. When Don had entered the
club car he'd seen her hatless head from above and noticed that the hair
along the part was dark. Her eyes had been on a book and Don had the
opportunity for a brief study of her face. The cheeks were full and
untouched by make-up. There were lines at the corners of her mouth which
indicated a tendency to arrange her expression into one of disapproval.
The lips were full, like the cheeks, but it was obvious that the scarlet
lipstick had contrived a mouth a trifle bigger than the one nature had
given her.
Her glance upward at that moment interrupted his examination, which had
been about to go on to her figure. Later, though, he was able to observe
that it was more than adequate.
If the girl had given Don Cort more than that one glance, or if it had
been a trained, all-encompassing glance, she would have seen a man in
his mid-twenties—about her age—lean, tall and straight-shouldered,
with once-blond hair now verging on dark brown, a face neither handsome
nor ugly, and a habit of drawing the inside of his left cheek between
his teeth and nibbling at it thoughtfully.
But it was likely that all she noticed then was the brief case he
carried, attached by a chain to a handcuff on his left wrist.
"Will we be here long?" Don asked the conductor. He didn't want to miss
his plane at Columbus. The sooner he got to Washington, the sooner he'd
get rid of the brief case. The handcuff it was attached to was one
reason why his interest in the redhead had been only passing.
"Can't say," the conductor told him. He let the door close again and
went down to the tracks.
Don hesitated, shrugged at the redhead, said, "Excuse me," and followed
the conductor. About a dozen people were milling around the train as it
sat in the dark, hissing steam. Don made his way up to the locomotive
and found a bigger knot of people gathered in front of the cowcatcher.
Some sort of barricade had been put up across the tracks and it was
covered with every imaginable kind of warning device. There were red
lanterns, both battery and electric; flashlights; road flares; and even
an old red shirt.
Don saw two men who must have been the engineer and the fireman talking
to an old bearded gentleman wearing a civil defense helmet, a topcoat
and riding boots.
"You'd go over the edge, I tell you," the old gentleman was saying.
"If you don't get this junk off the line," the engineer said, "I'll plow
right through it. Off the edge! you crazy or something?"
"Look for yourself," the old man in the white helmet said. "Go ahead.
Look."
The engineer was exasperated. He turned to the fireman. "You look. Humor
the old man. Then let's go."
The bearded man—he called himself Professor Garet—went off with the
fireman. Don followed them. They had tramped a quarter of a mile along
the gravel when the fireman stopped. "Okay," he said "where's the edge?
I don't see nothing." The tracks seemed to stretch forever into the
darkness.
"It's another half mile or so," the professor said.
"Well, let's hurry up. We haven't got all night."
The old man chuckled. "I'm afraid you have."
They came to it at last, stopping well back from it. Professor Garet
swelled with pride, it seemed, as he made a theatrical gesture.
"Behold," he said. "Something even Columbus couldn't find. The edge of
the world."
True, everything seemed to stop, and they could see stars shining low on
the horizon where stars could not properly be expected to be seen.
Don Cort and the fireman walked cautiously toward the edge while the
professor ambled ahead with the familiarity of one who had been there
before. But there was a wind and they did not venture too close.
Nevertheless, Don could see that it apparently was a neat, sharp edge,
not one of your old ragged, random edges such as might have been caused
by an explosion. This one had the feeling of design behind it.
Standing on tiptoe and repressing a touch of giddiness, Don looked over
the edge. He didn't have to stand on tiptoe any more than he had to sit
on the edge of his seat during the exciting part of a movie, but the
situation seemed to call for it. Over the edge could be seen a big
section of Ohio. At least he supposed it was Ohio.
Don looked at the fireman, who had an unbelieving expression on his
face, then at the bearded old man, who was smiling and nodding.
"You see what I mean," he said. "You would have gone right over. I
believe you would have had a two-mile fall."
"Of course you could have stayed aboard the train," the man driving the
old Pontiac said, "but I really think you'll be more comfortable at
Cavalier."
Don Cort, sitting in the back seat of the car with the redhead from the
club car, asked, "Cavalier?"
"The college. The institute, really; it's not accredited. What did you
say your name was, miss?"
"Jen Jervis," she said. "Geneva Jervis, formally."
"Miss Jervis. I'm Civek. You know Mr. Cort, I suppose."
The girl smiled sideways. "We have a nodding acquaintance." Don nodded
and grinned.
"There's plenty of room in the dormitories," Civek said. "People don't
exactly pound on the gates and scream to be admitted to Cavalier."
"Are you connected with the college?" Don asked.
"Me? No. I'm the mayor of Superior. The old town's really come up in the
world, hasn't it?"
"Overnight," Geneva Jervis said. "If what Mr. Cort and the fireman say
is true. I haven't seen the edge myself."
"You'll have a better chance to look at it in the morning," the mayor
said, "if we don't settle back in the meantime."
"Was there any sort of explosion?" Don asked.
"No. There wasn't any sensation at all, as far as I noticed. I was
watching the late show—or trying to. My house is down in a hollow and
reception isn't very good, especially with old English movies. Well, all
of a sudden the picture sharpened up and I could see just as plain. Then
the phone rang and it was Professor Garet."
"The old fellow with the whiskers and the riding boots?" Jen Jervis
asked.
"Yes. Osbert Garet, Professor of Magnology at the Cavalier Institute of
Applied Sciences."
"Professor of what?"
"Magnology. As I say, the school isn't accredited. Well, Professor
Garet telephoned and said, 'Hector'—that's my name, Hector
Civek—'everything's up in the air.' He was having his little joke, of
course. I said, 'What?' and then he told me."
"Told you what?" Jen Jervis asked. "I mean, does he have any theory
about it?"
"He has a theory about everything. I think what he was trying to convey
was that this—this levitation confirmed his magnology principle."
"What's that?" Don asked.
"I haven't the faintest idea. I'm a politician, not a scientist.
Professor Garet went on about it for a while, on the telephone, about
magnetism and gravity, but I think he was only calling as a courtesy, so
the mayor wouldn't look foolish the next morning, not knowing his town
had flown the coop."
"What's the population of Superior?"
"Three thousand, including the students at the institute. Three thousand
and forty, counting you people from the train. I guess you'll be with us
for a while."
"What do you mean by that?" Jen Jervis asked.
"Well, I don't see how you can get down. Do you?"
"Does Superior have an airport?" Don asked. "I've got to get back to—to
Earth." It sounded odd to put it that way.
"Nope," Civek said. "No airport. No place for a plane to land, either."
"Maybe not a plane," Don said, "but a helicopter could land just about
anywhere."
"No helicopters here, either."
"Maybe not. But I'll bet they're swarming all over you by morning."
"Hm," said Hector Civek. Don couldn't quite catch his expression in the
rearview mirror. "I suppose they could, at that. Well, here's Cavalier.
You go right in that door, where the others are going. There's Professor
Garet. I've got to see him—excuse me."
The mayor was off across the campus. Don looked at Geneva Jervis, who
was frowning. "Are you thinking," he asked, "that Mayor Civek was
perhaps just a little less than completely honest with us?"
"I'm thinking," she said, "that I should have stayed with Aunt Hattie
another night, then taken a plane to Washington."
"Washington?" Don said. "That's where I'm going. I mean where I
was
going before Superior became airborne. What do you do in Washington,
Miss Jervis?"
"I work for the Government. Doesn't everybody?"
"Not everybody. Me, for instance."
"No?" she said. "Judging by that satchel you're handcuffed to, I'd have
thought you were a courier for the Pentagon. Or maybe State."
He laughed quickly and loudly because she was getting uncomfortably
close. "Oh, no. Nothing so glamorous. I'm a messenger for the Riggs
National Bank, that's all. Where do you work?"
"I'm with Senator Bobby Thebold, S.O.B."
Don laughed again. "He sure is."
"
Mister
Cort!" she said, annoyed. "You know as well as I do that
S.O.B. stands for Senate Office Building. I'm his secretary."
"I'm sorry. We'd better get out and find a place to sleep. It's getting
late."
"
Places
to sleep," she corrected. She looked angry.
"Of course," Don said, puzzled by her emphasis. "Come on. Where they put
you, you'll probably be surrounded by co-eds, even if I could get out of
this cuff."
He took her bag in his free hand and they were met by a gray-haired
woman who introduced herself as Mrs. Garet. "We'll try to make you
comfortable," she said. "What a night, eh? The professor is simply
beside himself. We haven't had so much excitement since the
cosmolineator blew up."
They had a glimpse of the professor, still in his CD helmet, going
around a corner, gesticulating wildly to someone wearing a white
laboratory smock.
II
Don Cort had slept, but not well. He had tried to fold the brief case to
pull it through his sleeve so he could take his coat off, but whatever
was inside the brief case was too big. Cavalier had given him a room to
himself at one end of a dormitory and he'd taken his pants off but had
had to sleep with his coat and shirt on. He got up, feeling gritty, and
did what little dressing was necessary.
It was eight o'clock, according to the watch on the unhandcuffed wrist,
and things were going on. He had a view of the campus from his window. A
bright sun shone on young people moving generally toward a squat
building, and other people going in random directions. The first were
students going to breakfast, he supposed, and the others were faculty
members. The air was very clear and the long morning shadows distinct.
Only then did he remember completely that he and the whole town of
Superior were up in the air.
He went through the dormitory. A few students were still sleeping. The
others had gone from their unmade beds. He shivered as he stepped
outdoors. It was crisp, if not freezing, and his breath came out
visibly. First he'd eat, he decided, so he'd be strong enough to go take
a good look over the edge, in broad daylight, to the Earth below.
The mess hall, or whatever they called it, was cafeteria style and he
got in line with a tray for juice, eggs and coffee. He saw no one he
knew, but as he was looking for a table a willowy blonde girl smiled and
gestured to the empty place opposite her.
"You're Mr. Cort," she said. "Won't you join me?"
"Thanks," he said, unloading his tray. "How did you know?"
"The mystery man with the handcuff. You'd be hard to miss. I'm
Alis—that's A-l-i-s, not A-l-i-c-e—Garet. Are you with the FBI? Or did
you escape from jail?"
"How do you do. No, just a bank messenger. What an unusual name.
Professor Garet's daughter?"
"The same," she said. "Also the only. A pity, because if there'd been
two of us I'd have had a fifty-fifty chance of going to OSU. As it is,
I'm duty-bound to represent the second generation at the nut factory."
"Nut factory? You mean Cavalier?" Don struggled to manipulate knife and
fork without knocking things off the table with his clinging brief case.
"Here, let me cut your eggs for you," Alis said. "You'd better order
them scrambled tomorrow. Yes, Cavalier. Home of the crackpot theory and
the latter-day alchemist."
"I'm sure it's not that bad. Thanks. As for tomorrow, I hope to be out
of here by then."
"How do you get down from an elephant? Old riddle. You don't; you get
down from ducks. How do you plan to get down from Superior?"
"I'll find a way. I'm more interested at the moment in how I got up
here."
"You were levitated, like everybody else."
"You make it sound deliberate, Miss Garet, as if somebody hoisted a
whole patch of real estate for some fell purpose."
"Scarcely
fell
, Mr. Cort. As for it being deliberate, that seems to be
a matter of opinion. Apparently you haven't seen the papers."
"I didn't know there were any."
"Actually there's only one, the
Superior Sentry
, a weekly. This is an
extra. Ed Clark must have been up all night getting it out." She opened
her purse and unfolded a four-page tabloid.
Don blinked at the headline:
Town Gets High
"Ed Clark's something of an eccentric, like everybody else in Superior,"
Alis said.
Don read the story, which seemed to him a capricious treatment of an
apparently grave situation.
Residents having business beyond the outskirts of town today are
advised not to. It's a long way down. Where Superior was surrounded by
Ohio, as usual, today Superior ends literally at the town line.
A Citizens' Emergency Fence-Building Committee is being formed, but in
the meantime all are warned to stay well away from the edge. The law of
gravity seems to have been repealed for the town but it is doubtful if
the same exemption would apply to a dubious individual bent on
investigating....
Don skimmed the rest. "I don't see anything about it being deliberate."
Alis had been creaming and sugaring Don's coffee. She pushed it across
to him and said, "It's not on page one. Ed Clark and Mayor Civek don't
get along, so you'll find the mayor's statement in a box on page three,
bottom."
Don creased the paper the other way, took a sip of coffee, nodded his
thanks, and read:
Mayor Claims Secession From Earth
Mayor Hector Civek, in a proclamation issued locally by hand and
dropped to the rest of the world in a plastic shatter-proof bottle, said
today that Superior has seceded from Earth. His reasons were as vague as
his explanation.
The "reasons" include these: (1) Superior has been discriminated against
by county, state and federal agencies; (2) Cavalier Institute has been
held up to global derision by orthodox (presumably meaning accredited)
colleges and universities; and (3) chicle exporters have conspired
against the Superior Bubble Gum Company by unreasonably raising prices.
The "explanation" consists of a 63-page treatise on applied magnology by
Professor Osbert Garet of Cavalier which the editor (a) does not
understand; (b) lacks space to publish; and which (it being atrociously
handwritten) he (c) has not the temerity to ask his linotype operator to
set.
Don said, "I'm beginning to like this Ed Clark."
"He's a doll," Alis said. "He's about the only one in town who stands up
to Father."
"Does your father claim that
he
levitated Superior off the face of the
Earth?"
"Not to me he doesn't. I'm one of those banes of his existence, a
skeptic. He gave up trying to magnolize me when I was sixteen. I had a
science teacher in high school—not in Superior, incidentally—who gave
me all kinds of embarrassing questions to ask Father. I asked them,
being a natural-born needler, and Father has disowned me intellectually
ever since."
"How old are you, Miss Garet, if I may ask?"
She sat up straight and tucked her sweater tightly into her skirt,
emphasizing her good figure. To a male friend Don would have described
the figure as outstanding. She had mocking eyes, a pert nose and a mouth
of such moist red softness that it seemed perpetually waiting to be
kissed. All in all she could have been the queen of a campus much more
densely populated with co-eds than Cavalier was.
"You may call me Alis," she said. "And I'm nineteen."
Don grinned. "Going on?"
"Three months past. How old are
you
, Mr. Cort?"
"Don's the name I've had for twenty-six years. Please use it."
"Gladly. And now, Don, unless you want another cup of coffee, I'll go
with you to the end of the world."
"On such short notice?" Don was intrigued. Last night the redhead from
the club car had repelled an advance that hadn't been made, and this
morning a blonde was apparently making an advance that hadn't been
solicited. He wondered where Geneva Jervis was, but only vaguely.
"I'll admit to the
double entendre
," Alis said. "What I meant—for
now—was that we can stroll out to where Superior used to be attached to
the rest of Ohio and see how the Earth is getting along without us."
"Delighted. But don't you have any classes?"
"Sure I do. Non-Einsteinian Relativity 1, at nine o'clock. But I'm a
demon class-cutter, which is why I'm still a Senior at my advanced age.
On to the brink!"
They walked south from the campus and came to the railroad track. The
train was standing there with nowhere to go. It had been abandoned
except for the conductor, who had dutifully spent the night aboard.
"What's happening?" he asked when he saw them. "Any word from down
there?"
"Not that I know of," Don said. He introduced him to Alis Garet. "What
are you going to do?"
"What
can
I do?" the conductor asked.
"You can go over to Cavalier and have breakfast," Alis said. "Nobody's
going to steal your old train."
The conductor reckoned as how he might just do that, and did.
"You know," Don said, "I was half-asleep last night but before the train
stopped I thought it was running alongside a creek for a while."
"South Creek," Alis said. "That's right. It's just over there."
"Is it still? I mean hasn't it all poured off the edge by now? Was that
Superior's water supply?"
Alis shrugged. "All I know is you turn on the faucet and there's water.
Let's go look at the creek."
They found it coursing along between the banks.
"Looks just about the same," she said.
"That's funny. Come on; let's follow it to the edge."
The brink, as Alis called it, looked even more awesome by daylight.
Everything stopped short. There were the remnants of a cornfield, with
the withered stalks cut down, then there was nothing. There was South
Creek surging along, then nothing. In the distance a clump of trees,
with a few autumn leaves still clinging to their branches, simply ended.
"Where is the water going?" Don asked. "I can't make it out."
"Down, I'd say. Rain for the Earth-people."
"I should think it'd be all dried up by now. I'm going to have a look."
"Don't! You'll fall off!"
"I'll be careful." He walked cautiously toward the edge. Alis followed
him, a few feet behind. He stopped a yard from the brink and waited for
a spell of dizziness to pass. The Earth was spread out like a
topographer's map, far below. Don took another wary step, then sat down.
"Chicken," said Alis. She laughed uncertainly, then she sat down, too.
"I still can't see where the water goes," Don said. He stretched out on
his stomach and began to inch forward. "You stay there."
Finally he had inched to a point where, by stretching out a hand, he
could almost reach the edge. He gave another wriggle and the fingers of
his right hand closed over the brink. For a moment he lay there,
panting, head pressed to the ground.
"How do you feel?" Alis asked.
"Scared. When I get my courage back I'll pick up my head and look."
Alis put a hand out tentatively, then purposefully took hold of his
ankle and held it tight. "Just in case a high wind comes along," she
said.
"Thanks. It helps. Okay, here we go." He lifted his head. "Damn."
"What?"
"It still isn't clear. Do you have a pocket mirror?"
"I have a compact." She took it out of her bag with her free hand and
tossed it to him. It rolled and Don had to grab to keep it from going
over the edge. Alis gave a little shriek. Don was momentarily unnerved
and had to put his head back on the ground. "Sorry," she said.
Don opened the compact and carefully transferred it to his right hand.
He held it out beyond the edge and peered into it, focusing it on the
end of the creek. "Now I've got it. The water
isn't
going off the
edge!"
"It isn't? Then where is it going?"
"Down, of course, but it's as if it's going into a well, or a vertical
tunnel, just short of the edge."
"Why? How?"
"I can't see too well, but that's my impression. Hold on now. I'm coming
back." He inched away from the edge, then got up and brushed himself
off. He returned her compact. "I guess you know where we go next."
"The other end of the creek?"
"Exactly."
South Creek did not bisect Superior, as Don thought it might, but flowed
in an arc through a southern segment of it. They had about two miles to
go, past South Creek Bridge—which used to lead to Ladenburg, Alis
said—past Raleigh Country Club (a long drive would really put the ball
out of play, Don thought) and on to the edge again.
But as they approached what they were forced to consider the source of
the creek, they found a wire fence at the spot. "This is new," Alis
said.
The fence, which had a sign on it,
warning—electrified
, was
semicircular, with each end at the edge and tarpaulins strung behind it
so they could see the mouth of the creek. The water flowed from under
the tarp and fence.
"Look how it comes in spurts," Alis said.
"As if it's being pumped."
Smaller print on the sign said:
Protecting mouth of South Creek, one of
two sources of water for Superior. Electrical charge in fence is
sufficient to kill.
It was signed:
Vincent Grande, Chief of Police,
Hector Civek, Mayor
.
"What's the other source, besides the faucet in your bathroom?" Don
asked.
"North Lake, maybe," Alis said. "People fish there but nobody's allowed
to swim."
"Is the lake entirely within the town limits?"
"I don't know."
"If it were on the edge, and if I took a rowboat out on it, I wonder
what would happen?"
"I know one thing—I wouldn't be there holding your ankle while you
found out."
She took his arm as they gazed past the electrified fence at the Earth
below and to the west.
"It's impressive, isn't it?" she said. "I wonder if that's Indiana way
over there?"
He patted her hand absent-mindedly. "I wonder if it's west at all. I
mean, how do we know Superior is maintaining the same position up here
as it used to down there?"
"We could tell by the sun, silly."
"Of course," he said, grinning at his stupidity. "And I guess we're not
high enough to see very far. If we were we'd be able to see the Great
Lakes—or Lake Erie, anyway."
They were musing about the geography when a plane came out of a
cloudbank and, a second later, veered sharply. They could make out UAL
on the underside of a wing. As it turned they imagined they could see
faces peering out of the windows. They waved and thought they saw one or
two people wave back. Then the plane climbed toward the east and was
gone.
"Well," Don said as they turned to go back to Cavalier, "now we know
that they know. Maybe we'll begin to get some answers. Or, if not
answers, then transportation."
"Transportation?" Alis squeezed the arm she was holding. "Why? Don't you
like it here?"
"If you mean don't I like you, the answer is yes, of course I do. But if
I don't get out of this handcuff soon so I can take a bath and get into
clean clothes, you're not going to like me."
"You're still quite acceptable, if a bit whiskery." She stopped, still
holding his arm, and he turned so they were face to face. "So kiss me,"
she said, "before you deteriorate."
They were in the midst of an extremely pleasant kiss when the brief case
at the end of Don's handcuff began to talk to him.
| Why was Don unable to shower while on Superior? | [
"He feared that someone would steal the briefcase if he left it unattended.",
"The water supply was lacking from the stream flowing out of Superior.",
"There was an electrical current flowing throughout the water in Superior.",
"He was unable to remove the briefcase in order to remove his clothing,"
] | 3 | false |
Subsets and Splits