Collected Short Fiction, page 557
Ahead of him, young Ironsmith ran up the spray-drenched rocks to the little girl. He grinned at her, his face pink and shining from the wind and exercise, and murmured something to her, and gave her a stick of chewing gum. Forester thought they seemed too friendly, although he tried to suspend his harsh suspicion when the clerk turned back thoughtfully to help him up the last high step. Greeting him with a timid nod, little Jane Carter trustfully offered Ironsmith her small grimy hand, and led them toward an open archway in the base of the old tower.
“Oh, Mr. White,” she called eagerly. “Here they are.”
A huge man came stalking out of that dark doorway. He towered a whole head above Forester, and the fiery red of his flowing hair and magnificent beard gave him a kind of vagabond splendor. He moved with a graceful, feline sort of strength, yet the angular planes of his ruddy face looked unyieldingly stubborn.
“We knew you’d be along, Forester, Ironsmith.” His soft low voice was deep as the booming of the surf. “Glad you came, because we need you both very badly.” He nodded at the dark archway. “Come and meet my associates.”
Amiably, Ironsmith shook the big man’s offered hand, commenting like a delighted tourist on the bleak grandeur of the view. But Forester stepped back warily, his narrowed eyes looking for a Triplanet agent.
“Just a second!” The fabric and the cut of White’s threadbare, silver-colored cloak belonged to no familiar fashion, and his soft accent seemed too carefully accurate to be native. “First, I want to see your papers.”
“Sorry, Forester, but we’re traveling light.” The big man shook his flaming head. “I have no papers.”
“But you’ve got to have papers!” Forester’s nervous voice came too thin and high. “Anybody knows that. Every citizen is required to carry a passport from the Security Police. If you’re a foreigner—and I think you are—then you aren’t allowed off the spaceport without a visa.”
“I’m not a citizen.” White stood looking down at him with intent, expressionless, bright blue eyes. “But I didn’t arrive by ship.
“Then how—” Forester caught his breath, nodding abruptly at the child. “And how did she get into Starmont?”
The big man chuckled, and the little girl turned from Ironsmith to smile up at him with a shining adoration on her pinched face.
“Jane,” he murmured, “has a remarkable accomplishment.”
“See here, Mr. White!” A bewildered resentment sharpened Forester’s voice. “I don’t like all these sinister hints—or your theatrical method of luring us out here. I want to know exactly what you’re up to.”
“I only want to talk to you.” White drawled that disarming explanation. “You are fenced in with red tape. Jane broke it for me, in a way that made you come here. I assure you that we are not Triplanet spies—and I mean to send you safely back before Armstrong decides to open fire.”
Startled, Forester peered back toward the mainland. The gray official car was vague in the fog. He couldn’t see the two technicians waiting with their rocket launcher in the ditch beyond. Certainly he couldn’t see their names.
“I call myself a philosopher.” Beneath the lazy tone, Forester could hear a note of savage vehemence. “That’s only a tag, however.”
“Precisely what is your business?”
“I’m a soldier, really,” murmured White. “I’m trying to wage war against a vicious enemy of man. I arrived here quite alone, a few days ago, to gather another force for this final stand.”
He gestured at the old stone tower.
“Here’s my fortress. And my little army. Three men and a brilliant child. We have our weapons, even if you don’t see them. We’re training for a last bold assault—for only the utmost daring can hope to snatch the victory now.”
The big man glanced forebodingly up into the driving mist.
“Because we’ve met reverses,” he rumbled solemnly. “Our brave little force is not enough, and our weapons are inadequate. That’s where you come in.” His penetrating eyes came back to Forester. “Because we must have the help of one or two good rhodomagnetic engineers.”
Forester shuddered in icy dismay, for the whole science of rhodomagnetics was still top secret. Even Ironsmith, whose computing section had established so much of the theory, had never been told of the frightful applications. Trying to cover his consternation, he demanded harshly:
“By what authority?”
White’s slow smile stopped him.
“Facts are my authority,” the big man said. “The fact that I have met this enemy. That I know the danger. That I have a weapon—however still imperfect. That I have not surrendered—and never will!”
“Don’t talk riddles.” Forester blinked, annoyed. “Who is this enemy, so-called?”
“You will meet it soon,” White promised softly, “and you will call it so. It is nothing human, but ruthless and intelligent and almost invincible—because it comes in a guise of utmost benevolence. I’m going to tell you all about it, Forester. I’ve a sad warning for you. But first I want you to meet the rest of my little band.”
He gestured urgently at the black archway. Little Jane Carter took Ironsmith’s hand again, and the smiling clerk strolled with her into the darkness of the old tower. White stood aside, waiting for Forester to follow. Glancing up at him, Forester felt a tremor of awe. A queer philosopher, he thought, and a very singular soldier.
Uneasily aware that he had come too far to turn back now. Forester reluctantly entered. The chill wind came after him, and he thought the trap was closing. But the bait still fascinated him, that solemn-eyed child holding Ironsmith’s hand. The tower room was round and vaulted, dimly lit from narrow slits of windows. The damp stone walls, black with ancient smoke, were scarred with the names of earlier vandals.
Blinking against the gloom, Forester saw three men, squatting around a small open fire on the stone floor. One was stirring a battered pot, which reeked of garlic. Ironsmith sniffed appreciatively, and the three made room for him and the child to sit on driftwood blocks by the fire. She leaned to warm her hands and Ironsmith smiled genially at the three, but Forester paused in the doorway, incredulous, as White presented the bold little band. For he could see no weapons; the three were only ragged vagabonds, in need of soap and barbering.
The gaunt man stirring the pot was named Graystone. He rose stiffly, a gaunt and awkward scarecrow in rusty black. His angular face was stubbled and cadaverous, with dark sunken eyes and a large red nose.
“Graystone the Great.” Bowing with a solemn dignity, he amplified White’s introduction. “Formerly a noted stage magician and professional telepath. My act was quite successful until the machine-minded populace lost its interest in the rare treasures of the mind. We welcome your interest in our noble cause.”
Lucky Ford was a small man, bald as Forester, crouching close to the fire. His dark cheeks were seamed and wizened, and darker pouches sagged under his narrow shrewd eyes. Squinting up at Forester, he nodded silently.
“Ford,” White explained, “was a professional gambler.”
Forester stood watching, fascinated. Absently, still peering up, the little man was rolling dice against a stick of drying driftwood. Somehow, the dice always came sevens. He met Forester’s astonishment with a thin-lipped grin.
“Telekinesis.” His voice had a hard nasal twang. “Mr. White taught me the word, just now, but I could always roll the bones.” Dancing away from the driftwood, the dice made another seven. “The art is less profitable than you might think,” he added cynically. “Because every gambler has a little of the skill—and calls it luck. When you win, the suckers always think you cheated, and the law ain’t friendly. Mr. White got me out of a county jail.”
Ash Overstreet was a short heavy man, sitting on a rock in stolid immobilitiy. He looked sallow and unhealthy. His thick hair was prematurely white, and massive lenses magnified his dull, myopic eyes.
“A clairvoyant,” White said. “Extratemporal.”
“We used to call it just a nose for news, when I was a reporter.” Scarcely moving, Overstreet spoke in a hoarse whisper. “But I had a sharper perception than most. I got to seeing so much, before I learned control, that I had to dull my insight with drugs. Mr. White found me locked up in a narcotics ward.”
FORESTER shook his head uneasily. All such phenomena of the mind belonged to a disreputable borderland of science, where the truth had always been obscured by ignorant superstition and by the trickery of such cheap mountebanks as this Graystone. He wanted to stalk out scornfully, but something made him look around for the little girl in yellow. She was gone.
He blinked at the fire, shivering uncomfortably. The hungry-looking child had been here, he was certain, just a moment before, chattering to Ironsmith, but now her place was empty. Ironsmith was watching the doorway, with a calm, bright interest, and Forester turned that way in time to see her come running in again. Handing the clerk some small metal object, she sat down again by the fire.
“Please, Mr. Graystone.” She watched the simmering pot, with enormous eager eyes. “Please, can’t we eat?”
“You’ve already met Jane Carter,” White was drawling softly. “Her great accomplishment is teleportation.”
“Tele—” Forester gasped, wrestling with a sudden overwhelming surmise. “What?”
“I think you’ll have to agree that Jane’s pretty good.” The big man smiled down through the red beard, and she looked back, her eyes luminous with a mute admiration. “In fact, she has the richest psychophysical capacities that I’ve found on any of the planets where I’ve looked for resources to fight our common enemy.”
Forester shivered to the wind at his back.
“Jane was another misfit,” White went on. “In this age of machine worship, her young genius had been ignored and denied. Her only recognition had come from some petty criminal, who attempted to turn her talents to shoplifting. I took her out of a reform school.”
Her thin blue face smiled up at Forester.
She turned hopefully to watch the stew again, and Forester peered sharply about that smoke-darkened room, where a few driftwood timbers and little piles of straw made die only furniture.
“A curious fortress, I know.” That ruthless purpose burned again in White’s blue eyes. “But all our weapons are in our minds, and the hard pursuit of the enemy has left us no resources to waste on needless luxuries.”
Forester watched the little gambler roll another nervous seven. That must be some kind of trick, he thought, and the child’s appearance at Starmont another. He refused to take any serious stock in this para-physical stuff, but he tried to conceal that bleak mistrust as he swung back to White. He must stall, study these people, discover the motives and the methods of their strange chicanery.
“What enemy?” he demanded.
“I see you aren’t taking my warning very seriously.” White’s rumbling drawl became ominously intense. “But I think you will when you hear the news.” The big man took his arm, to lead him away from the fire. “Mason Horn is going to land tonight.”
Forester swallowed hard, unable to cover his shock. For Mark White, whether a desperate Interplanet agent or merely a clever private rogue, had no right to know even the name of Mason Horn.
VII
THE mission of Mason Horn was another high secret, as closely guarded as Project Thunderbolt itself. Two years ago, when the pen traces in the new search dome at Starmont first began to hint of neutrino bursts from some nearer and less friendly source than the supernova, that competent astronomer had been drafted from the observatory staff to find why the Triplanet fleets always selected Sector Vermilion for their space maneuvers. Hurriedly briefed in the dangerous art of interplanetary espionage and equipped as a legitimate salesman of medico-radiological supplies, lie had taken passage on a Triplanet trading vessel. No word of him had yet come back.
“Mason Horn!” Forester felt ill with shock. “Did he find—”
Caution choked him, but White’s great shaggy head had already nodded at Ash Overstreet. Turning slowly from the fire, the clairvoyant looked up with an expression of lax stupidity.
“Horn’s an able secret agent,” he rasped hoarsely. “In fact, though the man himself doesn’t suspect it, he has fairly well-developed extrasensory perceptions. He was able to penetrate an Interplanet space fort stationed out in the direction designated as Sector Vermilion, and he got away with some kind of military device. I don’t understand it, but he thinks of it as a mass-converter.”
Forester’s legs turned weak, and he sat down on a driftwood block.
“So that’s your bad news?”
“No.” White shook his flowing, fiery mane. “Our enemy is something vaster and more vicious than the Triplanet Powers.” Forester sat hunched and shuddering. “I’m afraid you don’t understand mass-conversion weapons,” he protested faintly. “They use all the energy in the detonated matter—while the fission process, in the best plutonium bombs, releases less than a tenth of one per cent. They make a different sort of war. One small missile can split the crust of a planet, boil the seas and sterilize the land, and poison everything with radioisotopes for a thousand years.” He stared at White. “What could be worse than that?”
“Our benevolent enemy is.”
“How could that be?”
“That’s what I brought you here to tell you.” Forester waited, perched uncomfortably on the damp timber, and White kicked aside a straw bed to stand over him impatiently. “It’s a simple, dreadful story. The beginning of it was ninety years ago, on a planet known as Wing IV, nearly two hundred light-years from here at the far side of the colonized section of the galaxy. The human villain of it was a scientist whose name translates as Warren Mansfield.”
“You pretend to know what happened there only ninety years ago?” Forester stiffened skeptically. “When even the light that left the star Wing at that time is not halfway to us yet?”
“I do.” White’s smile had a passing glint of malice. “The missiles of your secret project are not all that travels faster than tight!”
Forester gulped with cold dismay, listening silently.
“Ninety years ago,” the huge man rumbled, “the planet Wing IV had come to face the same technological crisis that this one does today—the same crisis that every culture meets, at a certain point in its technological evolution. The common solutions are death and slavery—violent ruin or slow decay. On Wing IV, however, Warren Mansfield created a third alternative.”
Forester looked up at him searchingly, waiting.
“Physical science had got out of hand there, as it has here. Mansfield had already discovered rhodomagnetism there—perhaps because the light of the Crater Supernova struck Wing IV a century before it reached here. He had seen his discovery misused as a weapon, as most physical discoveries have been. Foolishly, he tried to bottle up the technological devil he had freed.”
Forester began to wish he had called the police after all, for this man knew far too much to be free.
“Military mechanicals had already been evolved too far, you see, there on Wing IV,” White went on. “Mansfield used this new science to design android mechanicals of a new type—humanoids, he called them—intended to restrain men from war. The job took many years, but he was finally too successful. His rhodomagnetic mechanicals are a little too perfect.”
The big man paused, taut with an angry energy, but Forester sat too dazed to ask the frightened questions in his mind. He shivered again, as if the damp wind at his back had the chill of outer space.
“I knew Mansfield,” White resumed at last. “Later, and on a different planet. He was an old man, then, but still desperately fighting the benevolent monster he had made. A refugee from his own humanoids. For those efficient mechanicals were following him from planet to planet, spreading out across the human worlds to stamp out war—exactly as he had meant them to do.
“Mansfield couldn’t stop them.
“He found me a homeless child, wandering in a land that war had ruined. He rescued me from starvation and fear, and brought me up to join his crusade. I was with him for a good many years, while he was trying one weapon and another, but he always failed to stop the humanoids.”
A sad sternness hardened White’s bearded face.
“Growing old, defeated, Mansfield tried to make a physical scientist out of me, to carry on after him. He failed again. I had learned to hate the humanoids enough, but I lacked his scientific gift. He had been a physicist. I grew into something else.
“Living like a wild animal in the rubble of ruined cities, hunting and hunted while I was still a child, I had learned powers of the human mind that Mansfield could never recognize. Our philosophies came to differ. He had put his faith in machines—and made the humanoids. When he came to see his blunder, he tried to destroy them with more machines. He was bound to fail—because those mechanicals are as nearly perfect as any machine will ever be.
“I shared his hatred, but I saw the need of some better weapon than any machine. I put my trust in men—in the native human powers I had begun to learn. If men were to save themselves, I saw they must discover and use their own inborn capacities, rusty as they are from long neglect.
“So at last we separated. I’m sorry that our parting words were too bitter—I called Mansfield a machine-minded fool, and he said that my science of the mind would only end with another regimentation of mankind, worse than the rule of the humanoids. He went on to try his last weapon—he was attempting to ignite a chain reaction in the oceans and the rocks of Wing IV, with some kind of rhodomagnetic beam. I never saw him again, but I know he didn’t succeed.
“Because the humanoids are still running.
“I’m still fighting them, and these are my soldiers.” The huge man nodded indignantly at his ragged followers squatting by the fire. “Look at them—the most talented citizens of this planet. I found them in the gutter, the jail, the madhouse. But they are the last hope of man.”
