Complete Short Fiction, page 49
With a terrific effort he caught himself. He saw that Dr. Lell was smiling again, and that helped! Trembling, he leaned back in his chair; and, after a moment, he was sufficiently recovered to feel a surge of anger at the way the chill clung to his body, and at the tiny quaver in his voice, as he began to answer:
“My name is John Bellmore Garson—age thirty-three—professor of physics at the University of—research scientist—blood type number—”
There were too many questions, an exhaustive drain of detail out of his mind, the history of his life, his aspirations. In the end, the deadly truth was a cold weight inside him. His life, his conscious life, was at stake now—this minute! Here was not even the shadow of comedy, but a precise, thorough, machinelike grilling. He must pass this test or—
“Dr. Lell!” The insistent voice of the machine broke in. “What is the state of this man’s mind at this moment?”
Dr. Lell said promptly, coolly: “A state of tremendous doubt. His subconscious is in a turmoil of uncertainty. I need hardly add that his subconscious knows his character.”
Garson drew a deep breath. He felt utterly sick at the simple way he had been disintegrated. And by one newness! A machine that needed neither telephone nor radio—if it was a machine! His voice was a rasping thing in his own ears, as he snapped:
“My subconscious can go straight to hell! I’m a reasonable person. I’ve made up my mind. I play ball with your organization to the limit.” The silence that followed was unnaturally long; and when at last the machine spoke, his relief lasted only till its final words penetrated. The disembodied voice said coldly:
“I am pessimistic—but bring him over for the test after the usual preliminaries!”
Preliminaries! Was it possible that this mindshaking test had been but the preliminary to the preliminary of the real test?
Rigid with dismay, he stood up to follow the bleakly smiling Dr. Lell out of the room.
He began to feel better, as he walked behind Dr. Lell along the gray-blue hallway. In a small way, he had won. Whatever these other tests were, how could they possibly ignore his determined conviction that he must co-operate? As for himself—
For himself, there was this colossal world of the future. Surely, he could resign himself to his lot for the duration of this silly war and lose himself in the amazing immensity of a science that included time machines, fireballs, and Observer Machines that judged men with a cold, remorseless logic and spoke out of thin air.
He frowned. There must be some trick to that, some “telephone” in the nearby wall. Damned if he’d believe that any force could focus sound without intermediary instruments, just as Norma couldn’t have been made older in the police station without—
The thought collapsed.
For a paralyzed moment, he stared down where the floor had been.
It wasn’t there!
With a gasp, Garson grabbed at the opaque wall; and then, as a low laugh from the doctor, and the continued hardness beneath his feet, told the extent of the illusion, he controlled himself—and stared in utter fascination.
Below him was a section of a room, whose limits he could not see because the opaque walls barred his vision on either side. A milling pack of men filled every available foot of space that he could see. Men, oh—The ironic voice of Dr. Dell pierced his stunned senses, echoing his thoughts with brittle words:
“Men, yes, men! Recruits out of all times. Soldiers-to-be from the ages, and not yet do they know their destiny.”
The voice ended, but the indescribable scene went on. Men squirmed, shoved, fought. Upturned faces showed stark puzzlement, anger, fear, amusement, and all the combinations of all the possible emotions. There were men in clothes that sparkled with every color of the rainbow; there were the drab-clothed, the in-betweens; there were—
Garson caught his flitting mind into an observant tightness. In spite of the radical difference in the dress styles of the men who floundered down there like sheep in a slaughterhouse pen, there was a sameness about them that could only mean one thing. They were all—
“You’re right!” It was that cool, taunting voice again. “They’re all Americans, all from this one city now called Delpa. From our several thousand machines located in the various ages of Delpa, we obtain about four thousand men an hour during the daylight hours. What you see below is the main receiving room.
“The recruits come sliding down the time chutes, and are promptly revived and shoved in there. Naturally at this stage there is a certain amount of confusion. But let us proceed further.”
Garson scarcely noticed as the solid floor leaped into place beneath his feet. The vague thought did come that at no time had he seen Dr. Lell press a button or manipulate a control of any kind, neither when the Observer Machine spoke with ventriloquistic wizardry, nor when the floor was made invisible, nor now when it again became opaque. Possibly here was some form of mental control. His mind leaped to a personal danger:
What was the purpose of this—preliminary? Were they showing him horror, then watching his reactions? He felt abrupt rage. What did they expect from a man brought up in twentieth-century environment? Nothing here had anything to do with his intellectual conviction that he was caught and that therefore he must co-operate. But—four thousand men in one hour from one city! Why, it meant—
“And here,” Dr. Lell said, and his voice was as calm as the placid waters of a pond, “we have one of several hundred smaller rooms that make a great circle around the primary time machine. You can see the confusion has diminished.”
Truth, Garson thought, had never suffered greater understatement than those words. There was absolute absence of confusion. Men sat on chesterfields. Some were looking at books; others chatted like people in a silent movie; their lips moved, but no sound penetrated the illusive transparency of the floor.
“I didn’t,” came that calm, smooth, confident voice, “show you the intermediate stage that leads up to this clublike atmosphere. A thousand frightened men confronted with danger could make trouble. But we winnow them down psychologically and physically till we have one man going through that door at the end of the room—ah, there’s one going now. Let us by all means follow him. You see, at this point we dispense with coddling and bring forth the naked reality.”
The reality was a metal, boiler-shaped affair, with a furnacelike door; and four beast humans simply grabbed the startled newcomer and thrust him feet first into the door.
The man must have screamed; for, once, his face twisted upward, and the contorted fear, the almost idiotic gaping and working of the mouth came at Garson like some enormous physical blow. As from a great distance, he heard Dr. Lell say:
“It helps at this stage to disorganize the patient’s mind, for the depersonalizing machine can then do a better job.”
Abruptly, the impersonalness went out of his voice. In an icily curt tone, he said: “It is useless continuing this little lecture tour. To my mind, your reactions have fully justified the pessimism of the Observer. There will be no further delay.”
The deadly words scarcely touched him. He was drained of emotion, of hope; and that first blaze of scientific eagerness was a dull, aching ember.
After that incredible succession of blows, he accepted the failure verdict as—merited!
It was consciousness of the sardonic profile of his captor that brought the first emergence from that dark defeatism. Damn it, there was still the fact that he was logistically committed to this world. He’d have to harden himself, narrow his emotions down to a channel that would include only Norma and himself. If these people and their machine condemned on the basis of feelings, then he’d have to show them how stony-cold his intellect could be.
He braced himself. Where the devil was this all-knowing machine?
The corridor ended abruptly in a plain, black door, exactly like all the other doors, that held not the faintest promise of anything important beyond.
Amazingly, it opened onto a street!
A street of the city of the future!
Garson stiffened. His brain soared beyond contemplation of his own danger in a burning anticipation; and then, almost instantly, began to sag.
Puzzled, he stared at a scene that was utterly different from his expectations. In a vague way, mindful of the effects of war, he had pictured devastated magnificence. Instead—
Before his gaze stretched a depressingly narrow, unsightly street. Dark, unwashed buildings towered up to hide the sun. A trickle of the squat, semihuman men and women, beastlike creatures, moved stolidly along narrow areas of pavement marked off by black lines, that constituted the only method of distinguishing the road from the sidewalk.
The street stretched away for miles; and it was all like that, as far as he could see clearly. Intensely disappointed, conscious even of disgust, Garson turned away—and grew aware that Dr. Lell was staring at him with a grim smile. The doctor said laconically;
“What you are looking for, Professor Garson, you will not find, not in this or similar cities of the ‘Slaves,’ but in the palace cities of the Glorious and the Planetarians—”
He stopped, as if his words had brought an incredibly unpleasant thought; to Garson’s amazement, his face twisted with rage; his voice almost choked, as he spat; “Those damnable Planetarians! When I think what their so-called ideals are bringing the world to, I—”
The spasm of fury passed; he said quietly: “Several hundred years ago, a mixed commission of Glorious and Planetarians surveyed the entire physical resources of the Solar System. Men had made themselves practically immortal; theoretically, this body of mine will last a million years, barring major accidents. It was decided available resources would maintain ten million men on Earth, ten million on Venus, five million on Mars and ten million altogether on the moons of Jupiter for one million years at the then existing high standard of consumption, roughly amounting to about four million dollars a year per person at 1941 values.
“If in the meantime Man conquered the stars, all these figures were subject to revision, though then, as now, the latter possibility was considered as remote as the stars themselves. Under examination, the problem, so apparently simple, has shown itself intricate beyond the scope of our mathematics.”
He paused, and Garson ventured: “We had versions of planned states in our time, too, but they always broke down because of human nature. That seems to have happened again.”
Not for a second had Garson considered his statement dangerous. The effect of his words was startling. The lean, handsome face became like frozen marble. Harshly, Dr. Lell said:
“Do not dare to compare your Naziism or Communism to—us! We are the rulers of all future time, and who in the past could ever stand against us if we chose to dominate? We shall win this war, in spite of being on the verge of defeat, for we are building the greatest time-energy barrier that has ever existed. With it, we shall destroy—or no one will win! We’ll teach those moralistic scum of the planets to prate about man’s rights and the freedom of the spirit. Blast them all!”
It was stunning. There was a passion of pride here, a violence of emotion altogether outside any possible anticipation. And yet—the fact remained that his own opinions were what they were, and he could not actually hope to conceal them from either Dr. Lell or the Observer; so—
He said: “I see an aristocratic hierarchy and a swarm of beast-men slaves. How do they fit into the picture, anyway? What about the resources they require? There certainly seem to be hundreds of thousands in this city alone.”
The man was staring at him in rigid hostility, that brought a sudden chill to Garson’s spine. Genuinely, he hadn’t expected that any reasonable statement he might make would be used against him. Dr. Lell said too quietly:
“Basically, they do not use any resources. They live in cities of stone and brick, and eat the produce of the indefatigable soil.”
His voice was suddenly as sharp as steel. “And now, Professor Garson, I assure you that you have already condemned yourself. The Observer is located in that metal building across the street because the strain of energy from the great primary time machine would affect its sensitive parts if it was any nearer. I can think of no other explanation that you require, and I certainly have no desire to remain in the company of a man who will be an automaton in half an hour. Come along!”
Briefly, there was no impulse in him to argue, nothing but awareness of this monstrous city. Here it was again, the old, old story of the aristocrat justifying his black crime against his fellow man. Originally, there must have been deliberate physical degradation, deliberate misuse of psychology. The very name by which these people called themselves, the Glorious, seemed a heritage from days when dastardly and enormous efforts must have been made to arouse hysterical hero worship in the masses.
Dr. Lell’s dry voice said: “Your disapproval of our slaves is shared by the Planetarians. They also oppose our methods of depersonalizing our recruits. It is easy to see that they and you have many things in common, and if only you could escape to their side—”
With an effort, Garson pulled himself out of his private world. He was being led on, not even skillfully; and it was only too apparent now that every word Dr. Lell spoke had the purpose of making him reveal himself. For a moment, he was conscious of genuine impatience; then puzzlement came.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “What you’re doing cannot be bringing forth any new facts. I’m the product of my environment. You know what that environment is, and what type of normal human being it must inevitably produce. As I’ve said, my whole case rests on co-oper—”
It was the difference in the texture of the sky at the remote end of that street that snatched his attention. A faint, unnormal, scarlet tinge it was, like a mist, an unnatural, unearthly sunset, only it was hours yet before the sun would set.
Astoundingly, he felt himself taut, growing tauter. He said in a tense voice:
“What’s that?”
“That,” Dr. Lell’s curt, amused voice came at him, “is the war.”
Garson restrained a crazy impulse to burst out laughing. For weeks speculation about this gigantic war of the future had intertwined with his gathering anxiety about Norma. And now this—this red haze on the horizon of an otherwise undamaged city—the war!
The dark flash of inner laughter faded, as Dr. Lell said:
“It is not so funny as you think. Most of Delpa is intact because it is protected by a local time-energy barrier. Delpa is actually under siege, fifty miles inside enemy territory.”
He must have caught the thought that came to Garson. He said good-humoredly: “You’re right. All you have to do is get out of Delpa, and you’ll be safe.”
Garson said angrily: “It’s a thought that would occur naturally to any intelligent person. Don’t forget you have Miss Matheson.”
Dr. Lell seemed not to have heard. “The red haze you see is the point where the enemy has neutralized our energy barrier. It is there that they attack us unceasingly day and night with an inexhaustible store of robot machines.
“We are unfortunate in not having the factory capacity in Delpa to build robot weapons, so we use a similar type manned by depersonalized humans. Unfortunately, again, the cost in lives is high: ninety-eight percent of recruits. Every day, too, we lose about forty feet of the city, and, of course, in the end, Delpa will fall.”
He smiled, an almost gentle smile. Garson was amazed to notice that he seemed suddenly in high good humor. Dr. Lell said:
“You can see how effective even a small time-energy barrier is. When we complete the great barrier two years hence, our entire front line will be literally impregnable. And now, as for your co-operation argument, it’s worthless. Men are braver than they think, braver than reason. But let’s forget argument. In a minute, the machine will give us the truth of this matter—”
At first sight, the Observer Machine was a solid bank of flickering lights that steadied oddly, seemed almost to glare as they surveyed him. Garson stood quite still, scarcely breathing; a dim thought came that this—this wall of black metal machine and lights was utterly unimpressive.
He found himself analyzing the lack: It was too big and too stationary. If it had been small and possessed of shape, however ugly, and movement, there might have been a suggestion of abnormal personality.
But here was nothing, but a myriad of lights. As he watched, the lights began to wink again. Abruptly, they blinked out, all except a little colored design of them at the bottom right-hand corner.
Behind him, the door opened, and Dr. Lell came into the silent room. “I’m glad,” he said quietly, “that the result was what it was. We are desperately in need of good assistants.
“To illustrate,” he went on, as they emerged into the brightness of the unpleasant street, “I am, for instance, in charge of the recruiting station in 1941, but I’m there only when an intertime alarm system has warned me. In the interim, I am employed on scientific duties of the second order—first order being work that, by its very nature, must continue without interruption.”
They were back in the same great building from which he had come; and ahead stretched the same gray-blue, familiar corridor, only this time Dr. Lell opened the first of several doors. He bowed politely.
“After you, professor!”
A fraction too late, Garson’s fist flailed the air where that dark, strong face had been. They stared at each other, Garson tight-lipped, his brain like a steel bar. The superman said softly:
“You will always be that instant too slow, professor. It is a lack you cannot remedy. You know, of course, that my little speech was designed to keep you quiet during the trip back here, and that, actually, you failed the test. What you do not know is that you failed startlingly, with a recalcitrancy grading of 6, which is the very worst, and intelligence AA plus, almost the best. It is too bad because we genuinely need capable assistants. I regret—”
“Let me do the regretting!” Garson cut him off roughly. “If I remember rightly, it was just below here that your beast men were forcing a man into the depersonalizing machine. Perhaps, on the staircase going down, I can find some way of tripping you up, and knocking that little gun you’re palming right out of your hand.”
