The Science Fiction of Mark Clifton, page 13
“They’re what?” Barnes’ hand gripped the edge of the desk until the knuckles stood out in sharp white against the red flesh. “What are you talking about?”
“Barnes, listen!” Littlefield was urgent, frantic. “They slugged me. I was outside Cameron’s window listening. I heard him tell his wife. Then something hit me. When I came to, the house was dark, everybody was gone, and I was tied up. I worked loose, and got to an intercom phone so I could call you direct, like you—”
“Hold it!” Barnes shouted back into the intercom. “See any other guards? Check with the main gate?”
“No, I—”
“And you call yourself a Security man!” Barnes roared the words into the speaker grid.
“But you said not to—”
“Shut up!” Barnes commanded. “Get off the line!”
He flipped the switch and glared about the room. Tonight. That meant immediately. No telling how long that fool Littlefield had been knocked out, what had happened since.
“I’ll break him,” he mumbled to himself. “I’ll break him down so low—” He felt it was his duty to break Littlefield, not realizing his satisfaction in it came from revenge for Littlefield’s having been a witness to his own disgrace. He flipped the switch on again.
“Slater!” he instructed the speaker grid. The instrument sat silent. Barnes could wait no longer. He pressed the emergency key down and held it.
“No answer,” the robot responded.
“There has to be an answer,” he said desperately, as if he were talking to a human being.
“No answer,” the robot repeated.
“Pattern six,” Barnes commanded. “Open line.” That was the search pattern, the robot operator ringing all the places in the building where Slater might be. Barnes listened, as one by one people answered the call through the vast area.
“Not here.”
“Not here.”
“Not here.”
Barnes began pacing the room again, as the reports went on and on. What was he to do? They were going to steal the ship, might be trying it right now, and Slater wasn’t to be found. A phrase from the Security Handbook ran through his mind. “Security men must be able to act on their own discretion where formal chain of command breaks in an emergency.”
He stopped his pacing. Yes. Not finding Slater could be a bigger advantage. The record of all his attempts to find Slater would be on the tape. He began to hope the intercom could not find Slater. Missing at a time of great emergency. Slater not to be found. He began to pant in his eagerness. It would be checkmate. Slater wouldn’t dare fire him then. Don’t tell on me and I won’t tell on you.
At first, just the cancellation of errors. Then the implications began to grow on Barnes. Not for just now would he be protected, but in the future, too. All the things he’d wanted to do, and hadn’t dared. A parade of faces began to flow through his mind: The sullen eyes, the concealed sneer around the lips, the sudden stop of voices when he came upon a group of men. A little roughing up would change that. Change contempt to fear. And he could get away with it now. There’d always be that record hanging over Slater, to prevent him from stopping it.
There was a sudden change in the monotonous negatives coming from the intercom.
“Try Div Tech,” somebody said. Barnes felt a flare of frustration. He’d find out who that was. He’d—
But it would be on the tape. He felt his plans come crashing down around him, a physical weight.
“Try Div Tech,” he instructed the intercom needlessly. He waited. He listened for the Div Tech robot’s answering report. It came.
“Slater is in meeting. No one can be disturbed here.”
That, too, would be on the tape. He felt his hopes spring up again. But the record must be complete.
“Emergency,” he said dully, fearing the word might get him through.
“Repeat,” the mechanism answered. “No one can be disturbed.”
The flare of hope, triumph. Now it was all his. He’d tried everything. A checkback of tape records would show, when the investigation came.
Then the enormity of it hit him. In gathering the guards to stop the Cameron crowd something could go wrong. Maybe somebody would get hurt, killed. Did he want that responsibility? What went on over there at Div Tech? When they were questioning him later what instruments would be concealed in his chair or around the room, recording how he felt about things. The lie detector!
No! Slater had to be found! Had to take the rap!
“I’ll go to Div Tech in person,” he mumbled. It was a resolution of desperation. He had never been in the building. Only Big Shots ever got in. But Slater had to be found, to take the rap.
He rushed out of the office, down the hall to the elevator, fumed impatiently at the inactivity of standing still while it carried him to street level, and then out through the gate to the street. The lights so near to the plant made the street as bright as the daylight, and the pedestrians could see his uniform and gun holster clearly. For this once, he took no pleasure in the sudden set of their mouths and the wary expressions of their eyes.
He ran across the intersection, narrowly avoiding a pedestrian standing on the opposite curb. He ignored the trafficservo and the warning siren whine as he broke the red light’s electric beam. He knew a picture of himself had been taken in the act of jaywalking, and he would hear about it, but the emergency—the emergency!
He broke into a sprint, only partly conscious of the stares of the passersby—stupid weaklings who were never faced with momentous emergencies. A time such as this made up for all the accusations of sitting around and doing nothing.
Half a block away, the low outlines of Div Tech arose out of the night. At the corner of the building he slowed to a walk, and approached the inconspicuous door of the building. They were so sure of themselves, they didn’t bother to post Security guards, even at the entrance.
His feet were still slower as he approached the three low steps which led into the recess where the steel doors waited. He forced himself to walk up the steps, as if he belonged there, as if this weren’t the first time he had ever dared, as if the spasms of awe and indecision were not gnawing at his stomach.
His hand faltered as he reached out to touch the entrance button. He felt the eyes of the scanners on him, knew that his trial was being taped. Would he be censured or praised?
“No admittance!” a mechanical voice instructed him. That was all.
He turned away. Div Tech had refused him.
A surge of unreasoning anger. He wasn’t good enough to be admitted to Div Tech. There hadn’t even been an inquiry. It might be the most vital thing in the world! It was!
He would show them. He would accomplish the entire thing by himself. Without Slater, or Div Tech, or anybody. And so simply. All he had to do was instruct the guards at the entrance of the launching field not to admit the Cameron party. That was all.
He started to run, heading for the belt which would carry him to the launching field. As he ran he checked the gun in its holster, exulting in the feel of it against his palm, regretting that he might not get a chance to use it, that stopping the Cameron party would be a routine thing only. He hoped one of them would argue, start a scuffle, maybe. What was the good of carrying a gun if you couldn’t use it when you needed it?
He rushed through an entrance of the guard rail, and leaped upon the belt. It was too slow. It crept at a snail’s pace. He started running down it, adding its speed to his own.
“Stand still,” the command came mechanically. “It is dangerous to move while on the belt.” There would be another picture of him violating a safety code. He ran ahead, receiving repeated warnings as he passed two more check points. Then the belt slowed, and a barrier sprang up in front of him and behind him. He had forgotten that. Forgotten that when one didn’t obey them, the mechanisms could retaliate. A siren began to sound.
He vaulted over the guard rail and ran down the sidewalk again. He was almost there. Far up the street he heard a general police car pull around a corner, its siren giving him plenty of time to escape. No matter, he was there now. The huge pilings which framed the entrance gate loomed in front of him, and seated under the light inside the guardhouse, the Security man was on duty. The man heard the distant sirens coming closer, heard the running feet, and came over to the application counter.
“Hey you! Why . . . er . . . Mr. Barnes!” he stammered. “Excuse me Mr. Barnes, I’d never have shouted—”
“Never mind, never mind!” Barnes stormed at him. “Anyone go out to the ship tonight?”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir. The inspection party, sir—” He broke off as Barnes grabbed him and began shaking him.
“Where are they? Where are they, stupid?”
“Out at the ship, sir. They were official, sir.”
“How long ago?”
“Perhaps fifteen, twenty minutes. Wait a minute, I’ll check the tape.”
“Never mind, you fool! And I suppose you gave them station wagons.”
“Well, sir, I didn’t give them cars, no sir. I sent along drivers. They were official, sir. Had an authorization signed by—”
“I know, I know. Oh you stupid fool!”
“But it’ll be all right, sir. In fact, sir, here they come back now.”
Barnes squinted down the long road leading out to the distant gleam of the ship. He could barely make it out past the two returning cars, bathed in their own floodlights.
“It’s not possible,” he muttered to himself. “And they wouldn’t be coming back so soon from an inspection party anyway.”
“Something’s wrong,” he shouted. “Signal them to hurry.”
The two cars gave a sudden lurch of speed and pulled up to the gate within another minute. Before they had stopped, it was apparent they were empty, except for their drivers.
“Get this gate open!” Barnes shouted. “I’m going out to the ship.”
“Look!” the gateman shouted as loudly and pointed.
There was a flare of light around the huge ship. Slowly, ponderously, seeming to rest on its mushroom of flame for an eternity, the ship arose, inched upward, and then began to streak, faster and faster.
“Well, gentlemen, there they go.” The quiet voice of Langley cut across the silence in the room, the understating quality of it somehow relieving the drama, reducing it to routine. “They made it. On schedule.”
The eyes of the other men still followed the bright streak of the ship, the fading afterglow of incandescent air molecules. After a while, that, too, was gone. Only the stars blinked clear and cold, sharp in the desert air, bright through the huge quartz window of the upper floor of Div Tech.
The chief administrator of World Tech Control, visiting the Pacific Coast for this occasion, dropped the heavy curtain with a sigh—longing?—envy?—doubt?—and walked back to his chair in the corner of the room. Someone turned on the lights again, and the dozen men, assembled, looked at one another, self-consciously washing the dream from their expressions. It was Slater who voiced the doubts, a Slater whose face would hardly be recognized by his Security Hen, a Slater of quiet, profound wisdom, of deep compassion. He expressed the inevitable doubts which arose each time a ship of colonists went out into the void.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know if they were the right ones. I’d begun to doubt they’d go through with it. Seemed to me it took an extra amount of needling, irritating, annoying, pressuring them into doing it. I had to encourage some pretty nasty tensions in my men. and then at the last frustrate them.”
He thought of Barnes, knowing his patterns intimately, feeling as if they were his own, Barnes’ desperation when the old-fashioned disk scanner had slipped and revealed itself, slipped as he had planned it would when he carefully rigged it. He knew’, also, the subsequent moves of Barnes, as certainly as if he had observed them—the uncertainty, the scheming, the frustration, the purposeless activity, all of which would prevent Barnes from ever coming to a decision until it was too late for him to interfere. Slater shook his head sadly.
“I had to set up the events of tonight,” he said, “in order to give them that last minute desperation. Very nearly destroyed my man by doing it. I was afraid that if I didn’t push them into it, they’d back out at the last minute. I don’t know if they were the right ones. Even as late as this afternoon, they were still undecided. That’s why Cameron came over to see you, Langley. He still hoped they wouldn’t have to go. It was nip and tuck. If you d said the wrong thing—”
“Yes,” Langley said, “but it’s always nip and tuck. Put too much pressure on a man and you break him. Put not enough pressure on, and he adapts to it, makes the best of it, willing to pay that price to be let alone. In that sense, Cameron’s crowd was no different from the others. Just the right pressure to shake a man out of his inertia, and yet not break him, requires some pretty careful calculation at times.”
“But were still agreed,” the chief administrator said with a questioning note, “that we are following the right program. Aren’t we, gentlemen?”
At their slow and considered nods of agreement, he reviewed their program briefly.
“We recognized a long time ago that no one development of a civilization will find the solution. In all the past, each civilization of history has developed something, but never more than two or three things of significance. They pursued this particular path they chose until they became too specialized in it, then they died. Cameron was right, you know. Technology is not the solution, either. Not the whole solution.”
“But Cameron did overlook this,” Langley said, “that we are smart enough to realize we haven’t got the solution.”
“He’d never have got his crowd together and escaped, if he’d recognized that,” Slater commented. “He’d have waited, hoping the solution would be found some quick and easy way.”
“But suppose Cameron’s colony does survive and develop its own trend to a logical conclusion,” one of the men seated along the wall commented, “what will he contribute? It seemed to me he was too well balanced, too well adjusted. That his whole crowd was. You know, as well as I, that the great contributions to mankind, the great surges of history have come from the aberrated, the fanatic, not the rational.”
“Yes,” another individual agreed. “The reasoning and well-balanced individual plays his part later, after the blood and dust have settled. It is then that he rationalizes this aberration into an advancement for mankind, and integrates it into the lives of men generally. I don’t think Cameron was fanatic enough to contribute—”
“That’s the point, gentlemen,” the chief administrator said. “We can’t know where the final solution may come from.
“But consider this: We have said these aberrated surges have constituted human progress. Maybe they haven’t. Maybe they have kept man perpetually on the verge of self-destruction. We can’t know. If we knew, then we could postulate the solution here and now.
“We know this, or think we do: That the law of life is that the strong shall survive. In order to survive the vicissitudes of another planet or the larger satellites, the bad atmosphere, gravity conditions, who knows what forms of hostile life, a group has to be strong, daring, determined; as purposeful as the Pilgrim Fathers, and as desperately driven. Strong enough to escape Tech Control, gentlemen; to conspire against and believe they have outwitted Earth.
“Civilizations on Earth developed independently, and therefore followed divergent paths, as long as there was no community of the intersocial. But Earth has become all one community, and all concerned with technology to the virtual exclusion of anything else. If we openly and officially populated the planets, and later the stars, then those offshoots would carry the Earth trend along with them, communicating freely hack and forth.
“It has to be done the way we are doing it. Colonies of people whose disagreement with us makes them want to try something else. And the only way to keep them there, once they have made the break, is to make them afraid to return to Earth—afraid to run back to Mama when the going gets tough.
“Some of them may be balanced and sensible children, such as the Cameron colony; some are no doubt criminals; some of them . . . I can’t seem to get Ship No. 4 out of my mind, gentlemen. Stolen by that zany crowd of hopped up, hotrod szepcats. Just kids. What kind of a civilization will they produce?”
He sighed, and the men around the room slumped down in their chairs. Theirs was the burden of waiting. Langley put it into words.
“This is only the seventh group,” he said. “We must not be impatient. Perhaps the solution won’t come until it is our grandchildren, or theirs, who are sitting where we now do. Perhaps not until the seven hundredth, or the seven thousandth—”
“And that may still be too few,” the chief administrator agreed. “Many of the colonies won’t make it. A few years vegetating while their ship sustains them, and then too weak or too indolent to adapt. Others destroy themselves as we have done by internal conflicts. And this has occurred to us all: We might seed all the universe, and still never find the answer to that simple little perplexity—how can men live together?”
Langley looked at Slater. Slater arose to his feet.
“We may fail,” he answered, “but not because we didn’t try. Shall we begin, gentlemen, to decide which little seedling we will next mature and permit to escape us out to the stars?”
PROGRESS REPORT
with Alex Apostolides
Progress is relative; Senator O’Noonan’s idea of it was not particularly scientific. Which would be too bad, if he had the last word!
It seemed to Colonel Jennings that the air conditioning unit merely washed the hot air around him without lowering the temperature from that outside. He knew it was partly psychosomatic, compounded of the view of the silvery spire of the test ship through the heatwaves of the Nevada landscape and the knowledge that this was the day, the hour, and the minutes.
