COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works, page 323
"Look," he said. "I was drunk. Oh, this is crazy. It can't be happening. You're not alive—Are you alive? Did you put the finger on that guy I just saw in the hospital? Listen!"
It was dark and cold. Bottles glimmered against the mirror behind the bar. Foster went over and opened one. He poured the whiskey down his throat.
After a while, it didn't seem so fantastic for him to be standing there arguing with a juke-box.
"So you're feminine," he said. "I'll bring you flowers tomorrow. I'm really beginning to believe! Of course I believe! I can't write songs. Not by myself. You've got to help me. I'll never look at a—another girl."
He tilted the bottle again.
"You're just in the sulks," he said. "You'll come out of it. You love me. You know you do. This is crazy!"
The bottle had mysteriously vanished. He went behind the bar to find another. Then, with a conviction that made him freeze motionless, he knew that there was someone else in the room.
He was hidden in the shadows where he stood. Only his eyes moved as he looked toward the newcomers. There were two of them, and they were not human.
They—moved—toward the juke-box, in a rather indescribable fashion. One of them pulled out a small, shining cylinder from the juke-box's interior.
Foster, sweat drying on his cheeks, could hear them thinking.
"Current report for the last twenty-four hours, Earth time. Put in a fresh recording cylinder. Change the records, too."
Foster watched them change the records. Austin had said that the discs were replaced daily. And the blond man, dying in the hospital, had said other things. It couldn't be real. The creatures he stared at could not exist. They blurred before his eyes.
"A human is here," one of them thought. "He has seen us. We had better eliminate him."
The blurry, inhuman figures came toward him. Foster, trying to scream, dodged around the end of the bar and ran toward the juke-box. He threw his arms around its unresponsive sides and gasped:
"Stop them! Don't let them kill me!"
He couldn't see the creatures now but he knew that they were immediately behind him. The clarity of panic sharpened his vision. One title on the juke-box's list of records stood out vividly. He thrust his forefinger against the black button beside the title "Love Me Forever."
Something touched his shoulder and tightened, drawing him back.
Lights flickered within the juke-box. A record swung out. The needle lowered into its black groove.
The juke-box started to play "I'll Be Glad When You're Dead, You Rascal You."
The End
PROJECT
Astounding Science Fiction - April 1947
with Henry Kuttner
(as by Lewis Padgett)
There's the old saying that, to train a dog, you must be smarter than the dog. A sound proposition, too. It would apply to other projects, too ...
-
Mar Vista General had been in existence as a research unit for eighty-four years. Technically it was classed as a service. Actually it was something else. Not since its metamorphosis from a hospital in the middle of the twentieth century had an outsider entered Mar Vista.
For, if they entered, they had already been elected to the Council. And only the Council itself knew what that implied.
Mary Gregson crushed out a cigarette and said, "We've got to postpone the visit! In fact—we've got to keep Mitchell out of here!"
Samuel Ashworth, a thin, dark, undistinguished-looking young man, shook his head in reproof. "Quite impossible. There's been too much anti-Council feeling built up already. It's a concession that we don't have to entertain an entire investigating committee."
"One man's as bad as a committee," Mary snapped. "You know as well as I do what will happen. Mitchell will talk, and—"
"And?"
"How can we defend ourselves?"
Ashworth glanced around at the other members of the Council. There weren't many present, though Mar Vista General housed thirty men and thirty women. Most of them were busy at their tasks. Ashworth said, "Well, we face extinction. We know that would probably ruin the present culture. Only Mar Vista General has stabilized it this far. Once the Central Power stations are activated, we'll be able to defend ourselves and enforce our wishes. That we're sure of."
"They're not activated yet," said Bronson sourly. He was a white-haired surgical specialist whose pessimism seemed to increase yearly. "We've been putting this crisis off too long. It's come to a showdown. Mitchell has said—let me in now; or else. If we let him in—"
"Can't we fake it?" somebody asked.
Mary said, "Rebuild the whole General in a few hours?"
Ashworth said mildly, "When Mitchell comes in the gates, there'll be thousands of people waiting at their televisors to see him come out. There's so much tension and ill-feeling against us that we don't dare try any tricks. I still say—tell Mitchell the truth."
"You're crazy," Bronson growled. "We'd be lynched."
"We broke a law," Ashworth admitted, "but it's proved successful. It's saved mankind."
"If you tell a blind man he was walking on the edge of a cliff, he might believe you and he might not. Especially if you asked him for a reward for rescuing him."
Ashworth smiled. "I'm not saying we can convince Mitchell. I am saying we can delay him. Work on the Central Power project is going forward steadily. A few hours may make all the difference. Once the stations are activated, we can do as we please."
Mary Gregson hesitated over another cigarette. "I'm beginning to swing over to your side, Sam. Mitchell has to report every fifteen minutes, by visor, to the world."
"A precaution. To make sure he's safe. It shows what a spot we're in, if the people suspect us that much."
Mary said, "Well, he's going through the Lower College now. But that's never been top secret. It won't delay him long. He'll be hammering at the door pretty soon. How long do we have?"
"I don't know," Ashworth admitted. "It's a gamble. We can't send out rush orders to finish the Power stations instantly. We'd tip our hand. When they're activated, we'll be notified—but till then, we've got to confuse and delay Mitchell. For my money, nothing would confuse and delay him more than the truth. Psychology's my specialty, you know. I think I could hold the line."
"You know what it means?" Mary asked, and Ashworth met her eyes steadily.
He nodded.
"Yes," he said. "I know exactly what it means."
-
Mar Vista General was a gigantic, windowless, featureless white block set like an altar in the midst of acres of technical constructions. Hundreds of specialized buildings covering all branches of science made a sea of which Mar Vista General was the central island. The sea was navigable; it was the Lower College, open to the public, who could watch the technicians working out plans and processes that had come from the inviolate island of Mar Vista General.
The white building had a small gateway of metal, on which was embossed WE SERVE. Under it was the anachronistic serpent-staff of Aesculapius, relic of the days when Mar Vista had actually been a hospital.
The white building was isolated, but there were lines of communication. Underground pneumatic tubes ran to the Lower College. Televisors transmitted blueprints and plans. But no outsider ever passed those metal gates, just as no Councilman or Councilwoman ever left Mar Vista General—until the fifteen-year tenure of office had expired. Even then—
That matter was secret too. In fact, a great deal of history, for the last eighty-odd years, was secret. The text-tapes truthfully described World War II and the atomic blast—all accurate enough—but the years of unrest culminating in the Second American Revolution were subtly twisted so that students missed the true implications. The radioactive crater that had supplanted St. Louis, former rail and shipping center, remained a monument to the ambitions of the Revolutionists, led by Simon Vankirk, the sociology teacher turned rabble-rouser, and the present centralized, autocratic world government was a monument to the defeat of Vankirk's armies. Now the Global Unit held power, a developed coalition of the governments of the former great powers.
And time had stepped up its pace. Progress moves in direct ratio to technological advances. Unless, of course, those advances come so rapidly that humanity lags behind, and then there is the danger of war and chaos. But the Second Revolution had been stopped before Vankirk crossed the Mississippi on his way eastward, and thereafter the Global Unit had appeared—and enforced its laws very firmly.
Five hundred years of progress had been compressed into eight decades. The present world would have seemed quite strange to a visitor from 1950. The background and history of the new set-up could have been made clear to such an improbable visitor, by the text tapes, with their detailed charts and graphs, but—
The text tapes would have lied.
-
Senator Rufus Mitchell might have been a butcher or a politician. He belonged in an old-fashioned cartoon, with his jowled red face, his two-and-a-half chins, his swag belly, and the enormous cigar jutting from firm, skeptical lips at a sharp angle. Which merely proves that types continue indefinitely; Cruikshank had drawn Mitchells, but not as politicians; today, Rufus Mitchell was a hard-headed, clever, iconoclastic man who could smell a bomb's proximity fuse before it came too close. He hoped so, anyway. That was why he had managed to create the Commission, despite opposition of the laissez-faire bloc in the Global Unit.
"Open covenants openly arrived at," he shouted, hoping to confuse his opponent both by decibels and semantic ambiguity. But sleek, smiling Senator Quinn wasn't having any. He was an old man, with silvery white hair and a buttery voice, and now he drank his surrogate highball and lay back, watching figures move in a slow dance on the ceiling screen.
"Do you know what you're talking about, Rufus?" he murmured.
Mitchell said, "The Global Unit doesn't work behind closed doors. Why should Mar Vista General?"
"Because all the knowledge would leak out if the doors were opened," Quinn said. They were in a lounge, resting, after their selective tour of the Lower College, and Mitchell was wishing he'd had another partner instead of Quinn. The man was ready to give up now!
"I'm satisfied," Quinn remarked, after a pause. "I don't know what the devil you want, anyhow."
Mitchell lowered his voice. "You know as well as I do that Mar Vista's advice is a little more than that. We haven't turned down a recommendation from this place since the Global Unit started."
"Well? The world's running along nicely, isn't it?"
Mitchell stabbed his cigar at his fellow solon. "Who runs the planet? Global Unit—or Mar Vista?"
Quinn said, "Suppose Mar Vista runs it. Would you be willing to immure yourself in the place, under totally abnormal conditions, just so you could have the pleasure of knowing you were one of the bosses? The Franciscan friars had a smart idea. They had to give away all their worldly possessions and take a vow of poverty before they could become friars. Nobody envied them. Nobody envies the Council."
"How do we know what goes on in Mar Vista?"
"At worst it's an Arabian Nights' heaven. Or at best."
"Listen," Mitchell said, changing his approach. "I don't care what their pleasures are. I want to know what they're up to. They're running the world. Well—it's time they showed their hand. I still don't see any reason for the Central Power project."
"Well, don't look at me. I'm no electrophysicist. I gather that we'll be able to tune in on a power supply from anywhere. And unlimited power."
"Unlimited," Mitchell nodded. "But why? It's dangerous. Atomic-power has been rigidly controlled for eighty years. That's why the planet's still here. If anybody can tune in—anybody can play with neutrons. You know what that might mean."
Quinn wearily ticked off points on his fingers. "We have the enforced census. We have enforced psychological tests. We have a spy system and we have revoked the habeas corpus. Not to mention a lot of similar safeguards. The Global Unit has absolute power, and can control the life of everybody on earth, practically speaking."
"But Mar Vista General has absolute power over the Global Unit," Mitchell said triumphantly. "We've seen the Lower College, and there's nothing to see except a lot of technicians. And gadgets."
"Oh, blah."
"Sit back and drink your surrogate," Mitchell said. "When the Central Power stations are activated, anyone can tune it. But sit back and swig away. There may be another atomic war. There may be more mutants. This time they may grow up."
"They can't," Quinn said. "The smart ones are nonviable."
"Oh, blah," Mitchell plagiarized.
Quinn said, rather wearily, "You know very well that the only truly dangerous mutations are so alien they show their stigmata before maturation. Once they turn blue or sprout extra hands or tentatively try to fly, they can be spotted and destroyed. But there aren't any more mutants, and you're a scaremonger. I can't stop you from going to Mar Vista if you want. Only I don't see the reason. You've a lifetime tenure of office as senior senator."
Mitchell said, "I represent the people." He hesitated, and then, oddly, laughed. "I know. It's a cliché. But I do feel a responsibility."
"To get your picture on the news-tapes."
"I've done research on this subject. I've found some hints and clues."
"The status quo is safe," Quinn said.
"Is it? Well, here's our guide. Do you want to wait here, or—"
"I'll wait here," Quinn said, settling back comfortably with a fresh drink.
-
Here and there, at selected spots on the earth's surface, men worked at intricate tasks. The Central Power stations were metal hemispheres, smooth as glass outside, complicated as a maze within. The setting-up was in its final phase. The actual construction had not taken long, for advances in engineering had been fantastically rapid. In 1950 the job would have lasted for ten years. Now it took three months, from inception to near-completion. Delicate balance-checks and precision integration were the final factors, and that was going on now.
The Global Unit had authorized the installation of Central Power. But the suggestion, with detailed plans, had come from Mar Vista General.
All over the world the stations were spotted. A changed world. Different, far different, from the world of eighty years before.
Physically it had altered.
And, mentally, the outlook had altered, too.
-
Senator Quinn underestimated Mitchell. He saw his colleague as a big, bumbling, interfering man, and failed to realize that Mitchell inevitably got what he wanted, even when the results were only satisfaction or information. Mitchell, for all his carpet-bagging exterior, was extremely intelligent—and practical. The combination of those two abilities made him, perhaps, the one best fitted to investigate Mar Vista General.
Councilwoman Mary Gregson, however, did not underestimate the visitor. She had already seen Mitchell's psych and IQ charts, in the private files, and could not help feeling dubious about Ashworth's plan. She watched him now, a thin, dark, mild young man with a shy smile and intent eyes, as he stood beside her facing the transparent inner door.
He glanced at her. "Worried?"
"Yes."
"Can't be helped. We need you to explain the biogenetic angles to the senator. Here he comes." They turned toward the widening strip of daylight as the great metal gates slowly opened. Framed between them was Mitchell's burly figure, stooping forward a little as though he peered into the darkness that faced him.
Now the darkness lightened. Mitchell silently came forward. As the gates closed behind him, the inner door opened, and Ashworth sighed and touched the woman's hand.
"Now."
She said, in a quick whisper, "We'll be notified as soon as the stations are activated. Then—"
"Hello, senator," Ashworth said loudly, giving a half-salute. "Come in. This is Councilwoman Mary Gregson. I'm Samuel Ashworth."
Mitchell approached and shook hands. He kept his mouth tight. Ashworth said, "I don't know what you're expecting, but I think you're going to be surprised. I suppose you realize that you're the first outsider ever to enter Mar Vista General."
"I know that," Mitchell said. "That's why I'm here. Are you in charge, Councilman?"
"No. This is a democratic Council. Nobody's in charge. We're appointed to show you around. Ready?"
Mitchell brought out a small black gadget from his pocket and spoke into it. "I report every quarter hour," he said, snapping the tiny visor attachment open. "This is keyed to my voice, and it has a special combination as well. Yes, I'm ready." He put the device away.
