Collected Short Fiction, page 521
Harmless? Claypool blinked at that, bitterly. That pleasant-faced and honest-seeming rogue had sabotaged Project Thunderbolt, and turned against mankind, and eloped with Ruth to join these vicious renegades. But the dull waves of pain were surging stronger, beneath his matted hair, and he felt too weak to protest.
“They left me free, soon after that operation,” old Sledge rambled happily on. “They even let me carry on my research. The physical sciences were still out of bounds, of course, because most of the equipment is pretty dangerous, even for mental adults. But there was paraphysics.
“Before, I had always been a skeptic—with that conscious denial of paraphysical phenomena which usually results from buried, destructive conflicts against the creative, unconscious paraphysical urge.
I even remember quarreling with White, about his fantastic plan to fight the humanoids with paraphysical weapons.
“But that same clean blade, removing those conflicts, had also liberated my repressed paraphysical powers. The telepathic function came first, and I was soon in contact with a group of philosophers here.”
“Philosophers?” Claypool rasped his savage challenge. “Or traitors?”
Smiling, the old man gestured through the white-pillared doorway, at the soft green land without, the clustered silver towers crowning gentle hills, and the blue, wind-glittering estuary.
“Does this look like a den of turncoats?” he asked softly. “No, Claypool, this is the Paraphysical Institute. A few adult and brilliant men formed it, nearly seventy years ago. The humanoids had released them from their physical cares and their preoccupations with physical science, and they turned their minds naturally to philosophy.
“The humanoids left them free to work, and even aided them—the Central is a deep reservoir of knowledge, and an infallible mathematician. They won a new understanding of man, life, and the universe. That new philosophy became the basis of a new psychology—an actual science of the mind.
“Those pioneer philosopher scientists were looking for truth, and they found it. They weren’t much interested in such spectacular stunts as telurgy—”
Claypool blinked, and the old man explained:
“That’s the term for mental transmutation of mass—the same art you used, unconsciously, to build your shelter. The paraphysical mind, you see, is linked to the paraphysical component of every atom—to the functions that mathematicians used to misname probability. Anything material can be changed to nearly anything else, by control of the exchange forces to reshape electron-identity patterns. All such tricks, to those philosophers, were merely incidental byproducts of truth.
“Yet such new devices of conscious control were useful, even to them. Scattered over many planets, they discovered one another by telepathy. Teleportation brought them together, to join their efforts. Clairvoyance soon warned them of the mounting danger to Wing IV, from such dangerous fanatics as you are—and I was, then.”
Sledge shook his white, flowing mane, regarding Claypool sadly.
“That was the origin of the Compact. Warned of those future dangers, the humanoids agreed to support the Institute, in return for the aid the philosophers could give them toward achieving the real purpose of the Prime Directive.”
Claypool heaved his shoulders a little higher against the crystal case, and reached gingerly to touch his throbbing, puffy knee. He set his teeth against a sob of pain, and his fevered eyes went back to that bright little cylinder of palladium, which was heavy with a planet’s fate.
Sledge must have seen the glance, for his own eyes swept that dim vast hall, with its cases of wooden spears and guided missiles, of blow-gun darts and biotoxin ampules, of flint points and radiotoxin disseminators.
“The museum is part of the Institute,” he commented. “A good many of the exhibits came from this very planet—tokens to keep us from forgetting the old enemy that is born again with every human being.
“For life hurts every man,” he said. “Those wounds must heal, before any man is a sound, adult. Some recover easily, most carry their scars forever, and a rankling, unfortunate few are never well again. The true goal of our new psychology has been to mend those injuries, safely and surely, without pain. I think Ironsmith’s grid can do that.”
Claypool had tried to listen.
But his knee was paining, and his head throbbed under the clot-stiffened hair, and he was ill with the old agony of his angry stomach slowly digesting itself. He hitched himself up against the case again, and peered wistfully toward the bright little detonator.
“You see, Claypool, the advent of the humanoids forced a very useful change in the direction of human progress. Technology had got out of step with mentality—the technicians were putting such deadly toys as Project Thunderbolt into the hands of mental savages.
“I made the humanoids, to put a period to that. The technicians—with the very best intentions—had wrecked the balance of civilization. It was breaking up, like an off-center flywheel. The humanoids simply forced the technicians to take a holiday, until the philosophers could restore a normal equilibrium.
“Such men as you and White never accomplished much at paraphysics, because you weren’t philosophers. You were motivated by hate—the very antithesis of the creative paraphysical force. You didn’t care about the basic truth, but only tricks that you could turn to weapons—and you didn’t even learn that paraphysical weapons are inherently impossible.
“Ironsmith, now, is the type of man who made the Institute.” That cragged face smiled gently. “I don’t imagine he won any great success, back at Starmont. Because your true philosopher is free of such dangerously destructive drives its excessive ambition. Probably you considered Ironsmith something of a bum.”
That point, at least, Claypool could grasp.
“Completely worthless.” He tried to grin through a haze of pain. “Except he was good at math.”
“But he found himself, when the humanoids came. They saw he had no harm in him, and they left him free. As soon as they learned of his interest in paraphysics, they put him in touch with the Institute—he used to play chess with me. when he was practicing telepathy. And he has turned out to be a brilliant paraphysical engineer, with this new grid.”
“So now he’s making nice, sate mechanicals out of all mankind!”
“Won’t you try to understand?” the old man begged. “Can’t you see that any society must discover and control and reclaim maladjusted individuals—before they destroy others or themselves? That’s the function of the grid.”
Claypool shook his head, because it hurt too much to think.
“I saw White, under the grid.” His whisper came laboriously, for even speech was painful, now. “A neat machine—smiling out of some cold hell. I don’t want to be another mechanical—run by those relays. I’d rather—”
His whisper failed, but his burning eyes clung to that bright detonator in the case beyond his reach. His blood-stiffened fingers itched to feel the cold weight and the ultimate, conclusive power of it.
“You still don’t understand,” old Sledge eluded softly. “Ironsmith’s grid is no independent monster, such as you seem to fancy. It’s merely another tool, like the humanoids, built to serve mankind.
“I think you’re physicist enough to see that the residual field of all those platinum relays would still be too weak to coerce one unwilling moron. The grid is only an efficient instrument, built to focus and apply the unconscious paraphysical energies of all mental adults, everywhere.
“The new grid is no mad mechanical brain, Claypool. It is only a convenient vehicle for the racial human mind. It is the instrument for a new level of intelligence. It can’t be evil or destructive, because its very nature is creative. It isn’t authoritarian, as you seem to fear, but democratic. Every mental adult will have an equal part in the unconscious direction of it.”
Old Sledge’s voice was booming now.
“This full emergence of the group-mind is a magnificent stride, Claypool, in the long evolution of intelligence in the universe. It follows the gradual birth of life from lifeless atoms, and the rise of the individual mind from life. Who can say where it will lead—to what new creation of the paraphysical component, which is present in every atom, and which is forever building atoms into higher syntheses, on higher levels of creative evolution!
“Man was sick, Claypool. He was very close to death—with his runaway physical technology killing him, like the runaway cells of an organic cancer. But the humanoids removed that cancer, efficiently I think, and now Iron smith’s grid will provide a new control, to assure a balanced growth and cure any unhealthy cells. That social cancer won’t come back.
“There’ll be no more wars, no more killing—
The old man broke off suddenly, then, and turned with an expectant smile. Painfully turning his head, Claypool saw Ironsmith striding briskly in between the tall silver columns.
“The potential’s finally up,” he murmured brightly. “Ruth stayed to watch the meters.”
Claypool stiffened. His pain-wearied brain hadn’t followed all the argument, but he knew the case was closed. He was condemned, and here came the cheery hangman. Ironsmith grinned pleasantly.
“Ready. Claypool?”
XXXI.
Sprawled against that crystal case, with the frightened, child beside him. Claypool didn’t try to answer. He lay watching that white cylinder he couldn’t reach, enduring the slow thudding in his blood-matted head and the light constriction of his knee and the gnawing fangs in his stomach, waiting for the power of the grid to blot out his conscious being.
Dawn’s whisper startled him. “Please—I can help you now!” And he felt her leave his side. He glimpsed her standing in that tall, transparent case, tiny beside the long bright missile from Project Thunderbolt, stooping to pick up the detonator from the display of labeled parts. Then she was back again, instantly, thrusting it into his hands.
He took the heavy little palladium cylinder. His blood-stiffened fingers moved with an automatic skill, stripping out the safety keys. He set his trembling thumb on the firing bar, and sobbed to the white-faced child:
“Thank you, Dawn now save yourself!”
He saw her black head nod, still proud with that crumpled scarlet ribbon. His shuddering thumb came down, in an act of blind rebellion against the black mechanicals and the grid, in a last savage stroke against Ironsmith’s pink-faced, intolerable rightness, against the very pain that racked him.
He tried desperately to push home the bright little palladium bar, that would convert all mass within forty yards—the rusty tank and the museum floor and his own sick flesh—into energy to crack the planet. The bar moved easily, and he felt the spring begin to yield.
Yet something stopped his thumb. He couldn’t understand it. He had scarcely listened, in his hopeless torment, to the old man’s ramblings. Still he hated Ironsmith, for spying on him, and wrecking Project Thunderbolt, and stealing Ruth away. He was beaten, and here was a way to die magnificently.
Yet something in him wouldn’t press that far.
“I can’t—” he breathed to Dawn. “Please put it back.”
Carefully, he slid the two safety keys back into place, and gave the useless cylinder back to the child. She took it, puzzled and hurt, and left his side again.
Stiffly he turned his head again, to peer up at old Sledge and Ironsmith. They stood where they had been. They were smiling at him, and they hadn’t tried to interfere. He hated the old man’s rawboned, kindly honesty, and ironsmith’s smiling, sunburned calm.
“Go ahead,” he muttered bitterly. “I’m ready now.”
And the strength fled out of him. His body slumped back against the shining crystal. His drawn, brown head dropped down on his arms, smearing the thin pajama sleeves with tears and sticky-blood. He lay there quivering stiffly to his sobs of failure and final self-defeat, waiting for the power of the grid.
Dawn replaced the detonator in the case with the other labeled bits of shiny metal. She had caught the savage force of his longing for the weapon, and she couldn’t understand why he hadn’t used it. Dismayed, she came back to where he lay.
“Please,” she choked, “couldn’t I do anything?”
Anxiously, she touched his bent shoulder, where clotting blood from the long gash in his thin-haired scalp had plastered the gray pajamas down to his flesh. But he ignored her voice and her touch. He lay with his bitter face buried, crushed and broken and alone.
She saw the grid take him.
A new tremor shook him, as if he fought it. Then his sobbing stopped. For a little time his sprawled body lay very still. The ragged cut in his brown scalp seemed to close itself, and the bleeding ceased.
Then he sat up, moving stiffly at first and then very quickly. He put both hands on his swollen knee, and carefully straightened it. Something made aloud snap, which startled and alarmed her. And then he rose.
That quick gliding movement showed no fatigue, nor any human awkwardness or pain. He was careful of the injured knee, but even the way he guarded that was lithely graceful—for he was like one of the black things, now. She knew that nothing hurt him any longer, not even his stomach, for he was smiling now.
Cold fingers caught the back of her neck, when she saw that smile. For the man Claypool, with all his fears and his tortured hopes, his kind impulses and his cruel conflicts, was gone from behind that stubbled, hollowed, dark-stained face.
He was smiling. But those haggard, distended eyes saw nothing. He didn’t know her, any longer. He didn’t know anything. That smile showed no human feeling. Beyond the tears and the beard and the. drying blood, it was terribly far and calm and empty. It was mechanical.
“No!” she moaned. “Oh—no, no, no!”
And she cowered back from the human thing that smiled. It didn’t see her with those dilated eyes, but it had no need to see. For it turned upon her, still protecting the hurt knee but moving with a machine’s sure precision, and it spoke to her.
“At your service, Dawn Hall,” Its voice still had something of Claypool’s, yet it had become a high, droning monotone. It was somehow melodious, and quite without feeling. “Do not be afraid.” it whined. “No harm will come to you, but you also require the care of the grid.”
She cowered back against the crystal case, away from that mechanized thing. But it ceased to move, like a stopped machine, with that cold, calm smile frozen on its blood-streaked face. Ironsmith came quickly up beside it, grinning disarmingly.
“Please let it help you, Dawn.” His voice seemed warm and kind. “Life, I know, has been unkind to you. Hunger has hurt your body, and all your wounds must have scarred your mind a little. I think you’ve done wonderfully well, compensating paraphysically for all your handicaps. But still you need the grid.”
Suddenly, then, she liked Ironsmith. She remembered the chewing gum he gave her once, and she thought his calm, sunburned face was very handsome, and she no longer felt afraid. She tried to smile at him, and tried to say:
“I’m ready, mister.”
But something choked her, so she couldn’t speak. Ironsmith waved at her cheerily, and then the silent power of the grid swept her into the warm and kindly dark of its healing oblivion.
XXXII.
Claypool found himself again, standing in his huge new room at Starmont. It seemed to him that only an instant had passed since he lay like a trapped and crippled animal on the floor of the war museum at the Institute, and he automatically took his weight from his hurt knee.
Startled, he looked around him. The village swains and maidens still danced in the high murals, smiling in their luminous joy. The vast cast window was now an amber screen, filling the room with mellow radiance. Beside him stood a humanoid.
The rich light filmed its slenderness with molten gold, and flamed on its yellow brand. It stood statuelike, an ideal shape of dark perfection. Its sightless, steel-eyed face was serenely kind, full of a sleepless solicitude. It was beautiful—and he shrank from it, stricken with his old terror.
“At your service, sir,” its silvery voice sang softly. “What do you require?”
“Get out!” he said hoarsely, “just leave me be.”
To his voiceless astonishment, it obeyed. It turned silently, with that golden light flowing on its nude sleekness, and glided away from him. It paused to touch a button by the door—he saw that the old invisible relays, that a man couldn’t work, must have been changed. The wide panel slid open for it, and closed behind it, and he was left alone.
He stood gaping after the departed machine—and discovered that he was standing on his crippled leg again. Strangely, it didn’t hurt. He bent to feel his knee, and found the swelling gone. The flesh was firm and well. He walked across the soft floor, experimentally, and his step was light and sure.
“Huh!” He caught his breath. “Did Ironsmith’s grid—?”
Then he remembered the long gash in his scalp, and he reached up to examine it. His fingers found no wound or scar, and the hair felt oddly thick. That slow, thudding pain, he realized, was gone from his head. In fact, he felt uncommonly well.
Curiously, he fingered his face. That caked stiffness of drying blood was gone, and the bristles of unshaven beard. He wanted a mirror, and his glance went automatically to a row of buttons beside that immense amber window. He selected one, not knowing why, and punched it.
The amber light went out. The window became a mirror. He goggled at a dark stranger. For the man in the mirror was taller and younger than he had been, not quite so skinny, lean and straight and fit. The deep furrows of worry were all smoothed away, as well as the petulant twist of the lips.
And those durable gray pajamas with the impregnable rhodomagnetic snaps were gone at last. The stranger in the mirror wore a neat blue suit, with a narrow conservative stripe and buttons that his own fingers could work. Claypool grinned with relief, and the tall stranger smiled back pleasantly.
