Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “As to the treaty necessary,” said the woman, “would you prefer it to be secret or published?”

  “Secret,” promptly replied the Jovian. “It’ll be more fun that way.”

  Up dashed a very young subattache from the Earth Embassy. “Excuse me,” he shrilled, his voice breaking. “But you have to come at once. It’s important as—as the very devil, sir, if you will excuse—” He found himself addressing empty air and an amused Jovian. The two Earth people had flown to their sand car. They had been awaiting the summons.

  THE ambassador was waiting for them, grim and white. He was no fool, this ambassador; his punishment for that was the dusty job on Mars instead of an office on Terra. He had just removed the earphone clamps, they saw; the diplomatic receiver set was on his desk.

  Without waiting for a question from them he said, “The good word is—ultimatum.”

  “God!” said Dr. Carewe, her old face quite white. “When?” snapped Weems, taking out pencil and paper. “Note delivered to Venus F.O.—that’s the note from Earth—and ten minutes or so later lynching of Venusians on the staff of the Earth Embassy by an outraged populace. Foolish defense by Earthmen attached to the Embassy. Several of them killed. Stronger note from Earth. Why didn’t Venus F.O. notify immediately and offer indemnification? Very strong reply from Venus F.O.—chip on the shoulder. Earth knocks off chip. That’s the last you saw at your party. Then ultimatum from Venus giving Earth twelve dicenes to apologize profoundly and offer an indemnity in good faith.”

  “And when is the time up?”

  “The twelve dicenes will come to an end”—the ambassador consulted his watch—“about forty-eight hours from now.”

  There was a long pause, broken at last by a muffled groan from the ambassador. “Damn it—oh, damn it!” he wailed. “Why do the idiots have to fight? There’s trade enough for everybody, isn’t there?”

  “And, of course,” said Weems, “Earth will never back down. Not in a million years. They’re built like that. And if they did back down, Venus would be sure of herself and force a war.”

  “Well,” said the woman quietly, “are you just going to sit here?”

  “Suggestions are in order,” said the young man unhappily.

  “You’ll have to work like hell to stave this off,” warned the woman.

  “Ready and willing, Doctor. Tell me what to do.”

  CONSIDERING that the art of diplomacy is, ultimately reduced, the system found most practical in actual use when stalling for time to rush ahead with military expansion, it is not very remarkable that the two roving delegates did what they did with such neatness. The system was there for them to use.

  Use it they did, to the fullest extent. They shot ethers through to most of the crowned heads of the inner planet; radioed Earth confidentially meanwhile to stand by for the answers from Venus; contacted the Martian Protocol Division regarding an alliance for trade purposes alone. They were so thoroughly efficient in their functioning that after ten hours of this the bureau chiefs back on Earth fell to their knees and prayed for a letup of this lunatic barrage of red tape that came, unasked-for and unanswerable, from a minor embassy on Mars.

  Venus was bally well baffled. At first they made some pretense of replying stiffly to the muted threats from the Embassy on Mars, then gave up and hung onto the ropes, trying to decode the weird messages. It must be code, they decided. How could a message like “Advise your F.O. investigate frog ponds for specious abnormalities” be anything but an uncrackable cipher? They set their experts to work. The experts decided that the message meant: “All Earthmen on Venus are advised to sabotage production machinery and destroy records.” But they were as wrong as they could be, for the message meant just what it said. Its value was on its face.

  The consulate and the staff were drafted by the Embassy to aid in the good work of confusion; the ambassador himself sat for ten hours writing out messages which bore absolutely no relation to each other or the world at large. And if you think that sounds easy—try it!

  Meanwhile the inseparables, Mr. Weems and Dr. Carewe, had been separated. The woman was gathering data from Martian libraries and Weems was paying social calls at the palace, interviewing secretaries without number. Meanwhile, authentic, distressing news releases kept rushing to him, causing him great pain. The first thing after the ultimatum he heard had called in all spacers except those related to navigation—fueling stations, etc. Venus retaliated in kind, and furthermore towed out the gigantic battle islands used to fuel fighting ships. Earth retaliated in kind, and furthermore began skirmishing war games around midway between Terra and Luna.

  By the time the ten hours of lunatic messages were elapsed, the two great fleets of Earth and Venus were face to face midway between the planets, waiting for orders from the home planets to fire when ready.

  “For the love of Heaven,” he pleaded with a secretary to the Karfiness, “they won’t even wait for the ultimatum to elapse. There’s going to be a space war in two hours if I don’t get to see Her Serene Tentaculosity!” The title he bestowed upon her was sheer whimsy; he wasn’t half as upset as he was supposed to be. It was all for effect. He rushed away, distraught, with the information that he couldn’t possibly see the Karfiness, and aware that the munitions interests of Mars would by now be rubbing their chelae with glee.

  He reached a phone and rang up the ambassador. “Okay,” he informed him. “Stop short!”

  The ambassador, badly overworked and upset, stopped short with the messages. Venus and Earth were baffled again, this time because there was nothing to be baffled by. The strange silence that had fallen on the F.O.s was alarming in its implications. The diplomatic mind had already adjusted itself to the abnormal condition; restoration of normality created almost unbearable strain. Messages rushed to the Embassy; the ambassador left them severely alone and went to bed. From that moment anybody who touched a transmitter would be held for treason, he informed his staff. It was as though the Mars Embassy had been blown out of the ground.

  “They are now,” brooded Weems, “ready for anything. Let us hope that Venus hasn’t lost her common sense along with her temper.”

  With that he set himself to the hardest job of all—waiting. He got a couple of hours of sleep, on the edge of a volcano, not knowing whether the lined-up Venus fleet would fire on the opposite Earth fleet before he woke. If it did, it would be all over before he really got started.

  EVEN WEEMS hadn’t imagined how well his plan was taking root. Back on Earth the whole F.O. had gone yellow, trembling at the gills lest they should actually have to fight. And it was perfectly obvious that they would, for when planetary integrity directs, no mere individual might stand in the way.

  There was a great dearth of news; there had been for the past few hours of the crisis. Since that God-awful business from the Mars Embassy stopped and the entire staff there had—presumably—been shot in the back while hard at work fabricating incredible dispatches, there was a mighty and sullen silence over the air, ether and subetheric channels of communication.

  On Venus things were pretty bad, too. A lot of Earthmen had been interned and the whole planet was sitting on edge waiting for something to happen. It did happen, with superb precision, after exactly seven hours of silence and inactivity.

  There was a frantic call from, of all Godforsaken places, Jupiter. Jupiter claimed that the whole business was a feint, and that the major part of the Earth fleet was even now descending on the Jovians to pillage and slay.

  The official broadcast—not a beam dispatch—from Jupiter stated this. Earth promptly denied everything, in a stiff-necked communique.

  Venus grinned out of the corner of her mouth. In an answering communique she stated that since Venus was invariably to be found on the side of the underdog, the Venus Grand Fleet would depart immediately for Jupiter to engage the enemy of her good friends, the Jovians.

  Earth, to demonstrate her good faith, withdrew her own fleet from anywhere near the neighborhood of
Jupiter, going clear around to the other side of the Sun for maneuvers.

  Lovers of peace drew great, relieved sighs. The face-to-face had been broken up. The ultimatum had been forgotten in Earth’s righteous stand that she had not invaded Jupiter nor intended to. This made Venus look and feel silly. This made the crisis collapse as though it had never been there at all.

  And just after the Venus fleet had reported to its own home F.O.—this was three hours after the ultimatum had elapsed without being noticed by anybody—there were several people in the Earth Embassy on Mars acting hilariously. There was a Jovian who gurgled over and over:

  “I didn’t know it would be this much fun! We’d have gotten into the game years ago if we’d known.”

  “And I,” said the ambassador, “have the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve given a pretty headache to the best code experts in the system. And all by the simple expedient of sending a code message that means just what it says.”

  “And I,” said Weems, upending a glass, “have aided the cause of peace between the planets. If I can get to the Karfiness and let her know that she’s being played for a sucker by the munitions people—”

  “Let it come later,” said Dr. Carewe. “I wish I could live another eighty years to read about it in the history books. But it really doesn’t matter, because they’ll say something like this:

  “ ‘Toward the end of this year there arose a crisis between Earth and Venus, seemingly over matters of trade. It actually reached a point of ultimatums and reprisals. Fortunately the brilliant, calm and efficient work of the Hon. Secretary of Recession, Jowett Osgood, saved the day. He contracted a defensive alliance with Jupiter, the combined might of the Earth-Jovian fleet crushing any idea of victory that may have been the goal of the Venusians.’ ”

  Dr. Carewe laughed loudly and raucously as she refilled her glass.

  The Core

  Vistas unthinkable—speed beyond all imagining—Sphere Nine bears its complement of a new type of being, Homo Superior, to the dead center of eternity—the core! An unforgettable novelet by the author of “Sir Mallory’s Magnitude” and “Fire Power.”

  CHAPTER I

  VISTAS unthinkable—speed beyond all imagining—Sphere Nine followed its course.

  Unrelieved blackness alternated dazzling star-dusters; from rim to rim of the universe stretched the thin line that marked the hero’s way.

  Heroism died, they say, when the “superiors” opened up the last few stubborn cubic centimeters of brain cells; it died when the last of the “ordinaries” died with a curse on his lips. Well, so perhaps it was. But this is a story of the days when superiors were new and a little odd, when they were the exception to homo sapiens.

  On Sphere Nine there were four superiors and a dozen ordinaries. Will Archer, executive officer, was a superior of the third generation, big-browed, golden-eyed. Mamie Tung was an experiment, the psychologist, court of last appeal in all emotional disputes. From what records we have it appears that Mamie Tung was of average height, slender to emaciation.

  Star Macduff, the calculating officer, had three strong superior strains and as many of ordinary. But it was necessary that he be of the complement, for there wasn’t another man in the solar system who could touch him for math. Yancey Mears, white female superior, was the clericalist and tabulator, serving as many as needed her, at the same time doing her own work of photographing and mapping the unfamiliar stars.

  The ordinaries surrendered their names on entering Sphere Nine; they were known as Ratings One—Twelve.

  VERY gravely Will Archer cocked his cap and leaned back.

  “Rating Seven, what have you to say for yourself?”

  The knotty-muscled man wrung his hands nervously, stammered something unintelligible.

  Archer blinked for Mamie Tung.

  The golden-skinned woman slipped through the pipe, sized up the situation in one practiced glance.

  “What’s your number, handsome?”

  That was the way the psychologist worked; flattery, humor, and an easy job of fact-finding at first. And the man would gain confidence from the very sound of his number as she spoke it. You can’t find anything out from a man paralyzed with terror.

  “Seven, madame.”

  “Quite a builder, aren’t you, Seven?”

  “I’m sorry, madame—I didn’t mean to let them loose—”

  “How many are there?”

  “Ten. We used to watch them fight—” A little metallic streak scrambled across the floor. Will Archer, in less than a split second, had hurled a filing-case at it. It buzzed, sparked and was still.

  It was indeed a greatly improved specimen of a tine, the strange, actually living mechanisms which had been developed back on Earth for amusements. The Terrestrial tines had something less than the intelligence of a dog, but could be trained for combat with fellow machines. Tinc-fights were all the rage.

  But what Rating Seven had done, Archer realized at once, had been to raise both the intelligence and the capacity of the tine to a point where it could easily become a first class menace. These mechanisms were independent, inventive, and capable of reproduction; all ten must be found and destroyed at once.

  Mamie Tung picked it up with a pair of insulated pliers.

  “Very good workmanship. Admirable. But now that they’re scattered all over the ship what are you going to do about it?” Ratting Seven cleared his throat noisily. “They only have two directives, madame. One’s interspecific fighting and the other’s avoiding cold. I was thinking that maybe I could make a kind of bigger one to hunt them down—”

  “No,” said Will Archer conclusively. “You’re pretty good, but I wouldn’t trust you not to make something that chewed up relays or Bohlmann metal. You may g°-”

  Mamie Tung flopped on a couch. “Glory! The things we have to do!”

  “Don’t get any qualms now. I’ll make some kind of magnet that’ll draw their visual elements. Then we can bat them to pieces. Blink Star, will you?”

  Mamie Tung extended a golden arm to signal the calculator in his quarters. She wrinkled her pugged nose curiously:

  “just how good is that Rating Seven?”

  “Very good indeed,” said Will Archer, turning the little machine over in his hands. “Fine workmanship. He knew when to stop, too. Could’ve stuck ears on it, given it lights—too bad.”

  “Seven goes?”

  “I’ll dispose of him in a few weeks. Make it look like an accident.”

  The Calculator slid through the tube, made a mock salute. He was surprisingly young.

  “Welcome, Star. Give me all relevant math for this tinc.”

  “Very neat. . . .haven’t seen one on the ship yet. They must be fast.”

  Mamie Tung yawned a little.

  “Will’s going to liquidate Rating Seven.”

  “Is that so? Necessarily, I suppose?” The psychologist smiled quietly and shrugged.

  “Aren’t you going to give him any leeway, Archer?”

  “I’d rather not. It won’t endanger the ship to lose him; keeping him on might. He’s maladjusted—that’s very plain. This business with the tines—he’s too bright. If you wish I’ll hold a vote.”

  The Calculator nodded. Mamie Tung blinked for Yancey Meats.

  “Report on Rating Seven, Mamie.” Rolling back her eyes a little, the Psychologist announced in a monotone:

  “Physical condition, adequate. Emotional adjustment, seemingly imperfect. Submitted to glandular atonic treatment on the 23rd inst, submitted to repeated treatment on the 87th inst. Reading shows little difference in emotional level. Attitude; morose and incompatible. Occasionally aggressive. Alternate periods of subnormal servility and abnormal independence. Corresponds to a certain preliminary stage of a type of manic-depressive. Psychologist recommends liquidation, as treatment would substitute an equally dangerous attitude of frustrated egotism.”

  “But can’t you reason with him?” burst out Star Macduff.

  “Stick
to your math,” said Yancey Meats as she entered. “I greet you, vanguard of mankind. Kill the midwit, I say.”

  “I agree with the Psychologist and the Clericalist,” said Will Archer, clearing his throat. “Star?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps—Madame Tung, do you think it would help if I spoke to him?”

  “No, Star—I don’t. The impact of your two personalities would be mutually exclusive. That’s something you can understand, seeing as its math.”

  “I don’t understand it yet, madame. Archer, does that man have to die?”

  Will Archer nodded to Yancey Mears. “Naturally, Star. We wouldn’t argue with you if you told us that you’d reached a certain resultant. As for the emotional side-well, we allow for the fact that you’re half human—” She stopped, her face red.

  “Bad slip, Yancey,” volunteered Mamie Tung. “Maybe you’d better have an atonic. I can operate on a femina superior as easily as a homo sap.”

  STAR MACDUFF had covered his face with both hands. He dropped them to stare desperately at the Clericalist, his eyes bewildered. Yancey Mears met his gaze levelly, said simply:

  “I’m sorry, Star.”

  The Computator’s shoulders quivered a little as he turned to the golden-skinned woman.

  “Madame Tung, maybe I’d better have an atonic. Perhaps if my glands weren’t—acting up—I wouldn’t forget every now and then that I’m one of the lower animals.”

  “No,” said the Psychologist. “You’re too important. I have no data available; I don’t know whether glandular activity correlates with math-mindedness.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Will Archer, “I order it.”

  “Thank you, Archer,” said Star Macduff. He stepped through the tube; the Psychologist followed him, a supple flash of golden skin.