Collected Short Fiction, page 352
A strange elation lit Galt’s face.
“All the mental scars, that they got in the jungle of the Old World, are healed now. They are young again. They are infants. Only the primary reflexes, with which they were born, survive.”
“I see.” Cartwright nodded, sickly. “The ray destroyed their minds.”
“Not their minds—merely their memories. They can learn again. Far more swiftly, in fact, than they learned as actual infants. Because learning will not have to wait upon muscular and neural development.”
“And you did it with the ray?”
“With Pat’s tau-ray,” Galt told him. “It is a penetrating actinic radiation, whose effective frequencies are carefully synchronized to disrupt certain proteid molecules in the nerve tissue. One product of the break-down, formed in minute quantities, is a sub-vital, self-propagating virus.
“The ray is quite invisible. But a flash of it, against the retinal cones, or even against the nerve-endings in the skin, is enough. Within a few seconds, the virus has pervaded the entire nervous system.
“The effect is only a slight, temporary change in the myelin nerve-sheath. Slight, chemically speaking. But its effect, at the synaptic junction of the fibers, is to destroy all learned associations. The memory of the individual is blotted out.”
THE interior of the little Pioneer seemed to spin around Cartwright. He grasped the handrail, and tried to believe that all this was an insane, impossible dream. But he still saw the stricken thousands outside, wallowing in a dreadful dumb helplessness upon the pavements of Times Square.
“You have done this to—everybody?” he whispered. “Everywhere?”
“That was necessary.” Galt’s great shaggy head nodded solemnly. “None must escape, save our chosen ones in the citadel. That is vital to the Plan.”
An iron determination, in his deep weary voice, rang terrible to Cartwright.
“For not one trace of the Old World’s corruption must be left, to poison our new Utopia!”
Cartwright gulped twice, before he could speak.
“But this is murder, Galt!” His tight voice quivered. “Don’t you see—everything will stop. Transportation, manufacture, farming. Don’t you see what will happen?”
Galt’s dark face was bleak.
“I suspected that you would feel this way about it, Jay,” he said. “That is why I kept putting off any revelation of the Plan.”
“Well?” Cartwright gripped his arm. “Now that you’ve done this, just what is your magnificent Plan? You have reduced all the human race to gibbering helpless idiots.” He laughed bitterly. “What next?”
“Gibbering, perhaps,” said Galt. “Helpless. But not idiots. They are infants. Children, who may grow up to build a more splendid world than the old one could ever have been.
Cartwright shrugged impatiently.
“A world of babies—what is to keep them all from perishing of hunger, before they even learn how to eat?” His voice rang hard. “Remember, Galt, our own civilization has been—had been a hundred thousand years in the making. And you have wiped it out.”
“If the Old World had progressed no farther, in a hundred thousand years,” Galt said softly, “don’t you think there must have been something wrong with it?”
He straightened, until his dark head almost touched the dome of the Pioneer’s hull.
“Listen, Jay—the reason for our plan is the coming Holocaust. Men have just a little more than two centuries, before the Earth plunges into the nebula. That is the end-sunless something can be done.
“I don’t know how the Earth can be saved. I don’t know how any men can survive. Clearly, the only hope is in some splendid spurt of scientific progress. I can’t guess what the solution would be, but I believe that a great enough science could find a way to save the Earth.
“The Old World, as things were going, was obviously doomed to fail. It was economically sick. Wars were sapping its strength. It had no morale—and no care for the future. The final discovery of the nebula meant only another scare-head in the newspapers. That is why we planned a new beginning.”
“WELL?” said Cartwright. “Men don’t know enough to save themselves—so you make them forget the little they know. Now what do they do?”
“They build Utopia.”
A solemn strength moved Galt.
“You have seen only the Plan’s first step. The tau-ray leveled the old ramshackle building. Now we will help them build Utopia, upon a new foundation.”
“Help them?” Cartwright turned shuddering from another glance outside. “If we could—but how?”
“The minds of men are all swept clean,” Galt said. “But in our citadel on the Moon we have all the good and useful things the Old World had learned. We shall teach the Utopians what they should know, with the ideophore.”
“The ideophore?”
Staring, Cartwright felt a tremor of hope.
“Pat has designed a portable unit,” Galt told him. “We have made up a series of records for it, on steel ribbons, that contain the fundamentals that men must be taught. The foundations of Utopia.
“We must return, when the ideophore has done its work. We shall select individuals, here and there, all over the Earth, and educate them with the ideophore to be the leaders of the race. The guides toward Utopia.
“When the seeds of Utopia have been planted, we shall return to the citadel on the Moon. We shall sleep in the vaults there, for a generation. And then we shall come back to see the progress of our plant.
“And so, every generation, we shall visit the Earth—until the Holocaust comes. Perhaps to aid the new science of Utopia with some forgotten fact. Perhaps to spur men on with some new reminder of the doom to come.”
“So we are to be gods?” Cartwright laughed again, bitterly. “Eternal beings, dwelling apart in our scientific fastness on the Moon? Condescending to walk, now and then, among the poor struggling mortals below?”
“Who will soon,” Galt said, “become greater and wiser than we ever were—if the Plan succeeds. But don’t say that we are gods, Jay.” He shook his head. “Say, rather, that we are surgeons.”
He nodded, deliberately.
“Surgeons—that’s it. We have diagnosed the sickness of mankind. We saw that death was the prognosis. The thing that we are performing is a dangerous and painful but necessary operation. It offers the sole hope of survival.”
He gripped Cartwright’s arm.
“Now, Jay,” he said anxiously, “do you see? I hope you understand—because a great deal depends on you, Jay.”
Cartwright shook his yellow head.
“I see what you’re trying to do,” he said. “I think you were mad, to try it. Now there can be no turning back—but it still looks to me like burning down the house to kill the rats.”
“No.” Galt smiled, wearily. “But to build a temple in its place.” He took Cartwright’s hand, in a crushing grip. “Let me congratulate you, Jay. For you are to be the master builder.”
“What?”
Cartwright stared at him, puzzled. He saw the redness of Galt’s hollow eyes, the fatigue-etched lines in his face, the weary droop of his great shoulders.
“JAY,” Galt’s tired voice rumbled softly, “I’ve worked ten years to perfect the plan. Eighteen, sometimes twenty hours a day. I’m tired. And—well—” A shadow of pain crossed his dark face. “There’s a thing that I’ve got to forget. I’m going to step into the background, Jay. And you are to take my place.”
“Eh?”
Cartwright was bewildered, voiceless.
“I trust you, Jay.” Galt squeezed his hand again, released it. “Please forgive all the deceptions to which I was forced. And now—are we ready to take off for the Moon?”
“In half a minute.” Cartwright stared for a moment; something in Galt’s manner puzzled him. “I must inspect the geodes.”
He lifted the narrow hatch cover, climbed down into the machine-crammed space beneath the deck. He was stooping over a big power tube when the clang of the air-lock reached him. With a mute, protesting cry of comprehension, he stumbled back above.
Lyman Galt was already outside. Swaying wearily on the pavement, he looked back up through a port. His hollow face grinned, and he began a little tired gesture of farewell.
But the grin faded from his face. All the bitterness and fatigue and pain, that had dwelt there so long, went with it. There was left only a pleased baby-smile.
For a moment he stood there, smiling that smile of vacuous contentment. Then he tottered. His legs buckled. He made a clumsy aimless gesture, and sprawled helpless among the others on the pavement.
Jay Cartwright checked himself, at the valve. If he opened it, he too would fall. The Plan would fail. Galt, and all these sprawling millions, would perish miserably. The Plan was now the only hope. The Plan must go on.
Fighting a cold sickness of bewilderment and horror and despair, he started the booming geodes, and lifted the Pioneer back toward the fortress on the Moon.
CHAPTER IX
The Law of the Four
THE great tube of the tau-ray projector was still glowing with its painful violet, on the terrace of the white citadel. Captain Drumm was standing beside it—instantly recognizable, because he had decorated his white pressure-suit with stripes of gold-and-crimson braid. He waved a bulky arm.
Cartwright anchored the Pioneer against the entrance lock, opened the valves, and clambered wearily through into the fortress. He found Pat Wayland, waiting in the curving corridor.
“Lyman,” she called anxiously past him. “How is the ray working? “Lyman?” When no answer came, she turned anxiously to Cartwright. “Where is he, Jay?” Her voice quivered. “Has anything—”
She bit her full red lip. Her blue eyes turned dark. The smooth perfection of her face went pale. She shook her gleaming platinum head, with an abrupt frantic denial.
“He couldn’t—”
She confronted Cartwright, whispering:
“Speak, Jay. Tell me.”
Dully, Cartwright shook his yellow head.
“You know, Pat,” he said softly, “sometimes you’re human. Mostly, you’re just an adding machine, with a dash of paint and one of poison. But sometimes you really act like a human being.”
Frantically, her tense fingers dug into his arm.
“Tell me—what has happened to Lyman?”
“He loved you, Pat—you know how it was.” His voice was harsh, almost brutal. “And he got tired of loving you. I know exactly how he felt, because I fell for you myself. Well, he doesn’t love you any more.”
His laugh was a sharp, bitter sound. “Because he has forgotten,” he said. A white hand flew up to her throat. “You mean—he—”
She went voiceless, and Cartwright nodded grimly.
“Lyman walked out of the Pioneer, into your wonderful tau-ray. Now he is like the rest of them. He is a wallowing babbling idiot, who cannot stand or speak or feed himself. And he doesn’t love you any more.”
Tears glittered suddenly in her huge blue eyes.
“Don’t say that, Jay!” Agony was keen in her voice. “Don’t be cruel—”
“Cruel?” His voice rasped at her. “Who has been cruel? Galt can’t tell you now. But I can, Pat. Mart Worth can. Captain Drumm can.”
She pressed both hands hard against her quivering white face.
“Jay, you don’t understand.” Her voice was muffled, shaking. “You don’t know what has happened to me, to make me what I am.”
“I know what you did to Galt.”
“Please, Jay—please.” A sob. “I liked Lyman, tremendously. As I do Mart and Cap and you. But love is a book that I have closed, forever. It only hurts me, when you speak of it. So—please!”
Suddenly gentle, Cartwright touched her shining hair.
“I’m sorry, Pat,” he whispered. “Forgive me.”
“Of course, Jay. And don’t think that I’m not sorry.” Her pale face was stiff and bleak with pain. “But I just can’t help it.”
CARTWRIGHT jerked his yellow head.
“Anyhow, we’ve got a job to do—if we are going to do anything for Lyman and all those millions, back on the Earth.”
Slowly, the girl nodded her platinum head.
“Yes, we must go on,” she whispered. “For his sake, now. Come on in the kitchen. I’ll phone Mart and Cap to come, and fix them a bite to eat. The ray has only a few hours more to run.”
In the wide white kitchen, whose round windows looked out over the convex crater floor and the ringing mountain wall that loomed tremendous in the pale Earthshine, Cartwright told the others what had happened in Times Square.
Little Worth’s black brows raised to make a sharp V. His thin pale face was twisted with a bitterly sardonic amusement. His small eyes followed Pat Wayland, mockingly.
“Yes, Lyman was tired,” he said softly. “He wanted to forget.”
For a moment Cartwright thought that the girl was going to burst into tears. Then her platinum head tossed abruptly. The old dazzling smile lit her round doll-face.
“Isn’t it so?” Her cooing voice was honey-sweet. “We, all of us, have so much to forget.”
Then the two men turned to Cartwright.
“Lyman had told us, Jay,” said Captain Drumm, “that if anything happened to him, he wanted you to take his place as leader of the Four.” Cartwright’s yellow head bowed.
“He asked me to,” he said slowly.
“I don’t know why. Each one of you knows ten times more than I do, about how the Plan is to work.”
Soberly, for once without his satanic smile, Martin Worth said:
“I know, Jay. We have a new world to build. To do that, we need a man like Galt was—and like you are. A leader, with the common touch. All the rest of us are specialists, with the usual bias of experts.
“I would probably make a world of astronomers, sitting about and predicting cosmic cataclysms. Pat would make them psychologists, busy picking one another’s repressed egos to shreds. Drumm would turn them into a legion of rainbow-uniformed adventurers. We need you, Jay—a man like you—to lead us all toward the goal that Lyman mapped out.”
Pat nodded agreement, and Drumm took Cartwright’s hand.
“I’ll do my best,” Cartwright promised. “And now shall we load the Pioneer with the equipment we are going to need, and get ready to tackle our job?”
Another day was breaking over New York when the little geoflexor dropped back into Times’ Square again. Pat “Wayland and Worth and Drumm were busy about the portable ideophore, which had four helmets attached by flexible cables to its compact case.
“We’ll find Galt, first,” Cartwright told them. “Perhaps the educator will give him wits enough, at least, to save his life.”
“It would be fitting,” the girl agreed softly, “if we can make him one of the leaders who will guide mankind toward the Utopia that he planned.” The little ship touched the pavement.
“THIS is where I left him.” Cartwright was peering anxiously out, and a sudden apprehension choked him. “But he—he’s gone!”
He had left the stricken multitude sprawling, helpless as new-born infants. But now the most of them had already learned to move about—somehow. Dim figures were crawling and swaying unsteadily through the gray dawn.
“I thought they couldn’t move,” whispered Cartwright. “I left him—lying—”
“They will all learn very rapidly,” Pat Wayland said. “There is no impairment of nerves or muscles. All they need is a re-establishment of the neural patterns. The Plan depends on that.”
White-faced, she peered out.
“He must have wandered away.”
“We must find him,” whispered Cartwright. “Help him. This is—horrible.”
He stared at the unsteady figures moving in the increasing light. Some of them had already learned to eat. In front of a wrecked refreshment stand, he saw a little snarling group struggling clumsily over raw frankfurters and bits of bread.
He saw a man-thing in police blue snatch a gold watch, and bite it, and throw it disgustedly away. He watched a sailor stumble after a red-haired girl, and catch her, and kiss her clumsily.
“The basic reflexes,” Martin Worth said softly, “survive.”
“Lyman—” Pat Wayland was whispering. “We must find him.”
But Cartwright was shaking his head.
“We mustn’t take the time,” he said reluctantly. “We’ve got to work quickly—if we’re to keep these people from dying of starvation and a thousand clumsy accidents. No, we can help Galt best by simply going ahead with the Plan.”
He opened the valves, and helped carry the portable ideophore out upon the pavement.
“Just what is on the reels?” he asked Pat. He was trying to keep his mind off the strange fate of Galt. “What will the machine teach them?”
“Lyman spent years selecting the material,” she told him. “There is a modified, simplified English. An understanding of all the sciences, as complete as we could make it. The principles of art, music, morality, religion, law—of everything good that the Old World knew.
“Nor is that all. For there is a danger, you see, that Utopia will be corrupted by the remains of the Old World, that lie all about. And there is another danger, that the Utopians will go off on a tangent, and forget their great task of saving the Earth from the Holocaust.
“To meet those two dangers, the ideophore will impart feeling of respect and obedience for a special Law. They will revere us, as the Four. They will know us as human beings, like themselves—but human beings of mysterious power and authority, who must be obeyed. That will enable us to keep them to their great task, and to preserve them from contamination by the things of the Old World.
“It will be forbidden to enter any of the buildings of the Old World, or to use any of the old machines, or read any of the old books—except of course that we shall have to make certain temporary exceptions, at first, to assure them food and shelter and the means to make the new beginning.”
