Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  “Ike wasn’t up against Novotny,” Clough said heavily. “I can talk better while I’m eating, Larry. Want to buy me a lunch?”

  General Grote nodded. “Lieutenant, see what you can charm out of Colonel Bucknell for us to ear, will you? We’ll have it sent in here, of course, and the best girls she’s got to serve it.” Then, unusually, he stood up and looked appraisingly at Kramer.

  Have a nice flight,” he said.

  III

  Kramer’s blue fourragère won him cold handshakes but a seat at the first table in the Headquarters Officers Mess in Kiska. He didn’t have quite enough appetite to appreciate it.

  Approaching the island from the air had taken appetite away from him as the GOA autocontroller rocked the plane in a carefully calculated zigzag in its approach. They were, Kramer discovered, under direct visual observation from any chance-met bird from yute eyries across the Strait until they got below five hundred feet. Sometimes the yutes sent over a flight of birds to knock down a transport. Hence the zigzags.

  Captain Mabry, a dark, tall Georgian who had been designated to make the general’s aide feel at home, noticed Kramer wasn’t eating, pushed his own tray into the center strip and, as it sailed away, stood up. “Get it off the pad, shall we? Can’t keep the Old Man waiting.”

  The captain took Kramer through clanging corridors to an elevator and then up to the eyrie. It was only a room. From it the spy-bird missiles—rockets, they were really, but the services like to think of them as having a punch, even though the punch was only a television camera—were controlled. To it the birds returned the pictures their eyes saw.

  Brigadier Spiegelhauer shook Kramer’s hand. “Make yourself at home, lieutenant,” he boomed. He was short and almost skeletally thin, but his voice was enormous. “Everything satisfactory for the general, I hope?”

  “Why, yes, sir. I’m just looking around.”

  “Of course,” Spiegelhauer shouted. “Care to monitor a ride?”

  “Yes, sir.” Mabry was looking at him with amusement, Kramer saw. Confound him, what right did he have to think Kramer was scared—even if he was? Not a physical fear; he was not insane. But . . . scared.

  The service life of a spy-bird over yute territory was something under twenty minutes, by then the homing heads on the ground-to-air birds would have sniffed out its special fragrance and knocked it out. In that twenty-minute period it would see what it could see. Through its eyes the observers in the eyrie would learn just that much more about yute dispositions—so long as it remained in direct line-of-sight to the eyrie, so long as everything in its instrumentation worked, so long as yute jamming did not penetrate its microwave control.

  Captain Mabry took Kramer’s arm. “Take’er off the pad,” Mabry said negligently to the launch officer. He conducted Kramer to a pair of monitors and sat before them.

  On both eight-inch screens the officers saw a diamond-sharp scan of the inside of a silo plug. There was no sound. The plug lifted off its lip without a whisper, dividing into two semicircles of steel. A two-inch circle of sky showed. Then, abruptly, the circle widened; the lip irised out and disappeared; the gray surrounded the screen and blanked it out, and then it was bright blue, and a curl of cirro-cumulus in one quadrant of the screen.

  Metro had promised no cloud over the tactical area, but there was cloud there. Captain Mabry frowned and tapped a tune on the buttons before him; the cirro-cumulus disappeared and a line of gray-white appeared at an angle on the screen. “Horizon,” said Mabry. “Labble to make you seasick, lootenant.” He tapped some more and the image righted itself. A faint yellowish stain, not bright against the bright cloud, curved up before them and burst into spidery black smoke. “Oh, they are anxious? said Mabry, sounding nettled. “General, weather has busted it again. Cain’t see a thing.”

  Spiegelhauer bawled angrily, “I’m going to the weather station,” and stamped out. Kramer knew what he was angry about. It was not the waste of a bird; it was that he had been made to lose face before the general’s aide de camp. There would be a bad time for the Weather Officer because Kramer had been there that day.

  The telemetering crew turned off their instruments. The whining eighteen-inch reel that was flinging tape across a row of fifteen magnetic heads, recording the picture the spy-bird took, slowed and droned and stopped. Out of instinct and habit Kramer pulled out his rough diary and jotted down Brig. Spiegelhaue—Permits bad wea. sta, situation? But it was little enough to have learned on a flight to Kiska, and everything else seemed going well.

  Captain Mabry fetched over two mugs of hot cocoa. “Sorry,” he said. “Cain’t be helped, I guess.”

  Kramer put his notebook away and accepted the cocoa.

  “Beats U-2in’,” Mabry went on. “Course, you don’t get to see as much of the country.”

  Kramer could not help a small, involuntary tremor. For just a moment there, looking out of the sky-bird’s eyes, he had imagined himself actually in the air above yute territory and conceived the possibility of being shot down, parachuting, internment, the Blank Tanks, “Yankee! Why not be good fellow? You proud you murderer?”

  “No,” Kramer said, “you don’t get to see as much of the country.” But he had already seen all the yute country he ever wanted.

  Kramer got back in the elevator and descended rapidly, his mind full. Perhaps a psychopath, a hungry cat or a child would have noticed that the ride downward lasted a second or two less than the ride up. Kramer did not. If the sound echoing from the tunnel he walked out into was a bit more clangorous than the one he had entered from, he didn’t notice that either.

  Kramer’s mind was occupied with the thought that, all in all, he was pleased to find that he had approached this close to yute territory, and to yute Blank Tanks, without feeling particularly afraid. Even though he recognized that there was nothing to be afraid of, since, of course, the yutes could not get hold of him here.

  Then he observed that the door Mabry opened for him led to a chamber he knew he had never seen before.

  They were standing on an approach stage and below them forty-foot rockets extended downward into their pit. A gantry-bridge hung across space from the stage to the nearest rocket, which lay open, showing a clumsily padded compartment where there should have been a warhead or an instrument capsule.

  Kramer turned around and was not surprised to find that Mabry was pointing a gun at him. He had almost expected it. He started to speak. But there was someone else in the shadowed chamber, and the first he knew of that was when the sap struck him just behind the ear.

  It was all coming true: “Yankee! Why not be honest man? You like to murder babies?” Kramer only shook his head. He knew it did no good to answer. Three years before he had answered. He knew it also did no good to keep quiet; because he had done that, too. What he knew most of all was that nothing was going to do him any good because the yutes had him now, and who would have thought Mabry would have been the one to do him in?

  They did not beat him at this point, but then they did not need to. The nose capsule Mabry had thrust him into had never been designed for carrying passengers. With ingenuity Kramer could only guess at Mabry had contrived to fit it with parachutes and water-tight seals and Hares so the yute gunboat could find it in the water and pull out their captive alive. But he had taken 15 and 20-G accelerations, however briefly. He seemed to have no serious broken bones, but he was bruised all over. Secretly he found that almost amusing. In the preliminary softening up the yutes did not expect their captives to be in physical pain. By being in pain he was in some measure upsetting their schedule. It was not much of a victory but it was all he had.

  Phase Two was direct questioning: What was Ripsaw exactly? How many divisions? Where fixated? Why had Lieutenant general Grote spent so much time with Lieutenant general Clough? When Mary Elizabeth Grote, before her death, entertained the Vietnamese UNESCO delegate’s aunt in Sag Harbor, had she known her husband had just been passed over for promotion to brigadier? And was re
sentment over that the reason she had subsequently donated twenty-five dollars to a mission hospital in Laos? What were the Bering Straits rendezvous points for missile submarines supporting Ripsaw? Was the transfer of Lieutenant colonel Carolyn S. Bucknell from Message Center Battalion C.O. to Mess Officer a cover for some CIC complexity? What air support was planned for D plus one? D plus two? Did Major Somebody-or-other’s secret drinking account for the curious radio intercept in clear logged at 0834 on 6 October 1985? Or was “Omobray for my cadhay” the code designation for some nefarious scheme to be launched against the gallant, the ever-victorious forces of Neo-Utilitarianism?

  Kramer was alternately cast into despondency by the amount of knowledge his captors displayed and puzzled by the psychotic irrelevance of some of the questions they asked him. But most of all he was afraid. As the hours of Phase Two became days, he became more and more afraid—afraid of Phase Three—and so he was ready for Phase Three when the yutes were ready for him.

  Phase Three was physical. They beat the living be-hell out of First lieutenant John Kramer, and then they shouted at him and starved him and kicked him and threw him into bathtubs filled half with salt water and half with shaved ice. He was in constant pain. But he didn’t think much about the pain. What he thought about was what came next. For the bad thing about Phase Three was Phase Four.

  He remembered. First they would Jet him sleep. Then they would wake him up and feed him quickly, and bandage his worst bruises, and bandage his ears, with cotton tampons, and bandage his eyes, and bandage his mouth, so he couldn’t bite his tongue, and bandage his arms and legs, so he couldn’t move them or touch them together . . .

  And then the short superior-private who was kicking him while he thought all this stopped and talked briefly to a noncom. The two of them helped him to a mattress and left.

  Ten hours later he was back in the Blank Tanks.

  Sit back and listen. What do you hear?

  Perhaps you think you hear nothing. You are wrong. You discount the sound of a distant car’s tires, or the crackle of metal as steam expands the pipes. Listen more carefully to these sounds; others lie under them. From the kitchen there is a grunt and hum as the electric refrigerator switches itself on. You change position; your chair creaks, the leather of your shoes slip-slides with a faint sound. Listen more carefully still and hear the tiny roughness in the main bearing of the electric clock in the next room, or the almost inaudible hum of wind in a television antenna.

  In the Blank Tanks a man hears nothing at all.

  The pressure of the tampons in the ear does not allow stirrup to strike anvil; teeth cannot touch teeth, hands cannot clap, he cannot make a noise if he tries to, or hear it if he did.

  That is deafness. The Blank Tanks are more than deafness. In them a man is blind, even to the red fog that reaches through closed eyelids. There is nothing to smell. There is nothing to taste. There is nothing to feel except the swaddling cloths, and through time the nerve ends tire and stop registering this constant touch.

  Kramer was ready for the Blank Tank and did not at once panic. He remembered the tricks he had employed before. He swallowed his own sputum and it made a gratifying popping sound in his inner ear; he hummed until his throat was raw and gasped through flaring nostrils until he became dizzy. But each sound he was able to produce lasted only a moment. He might have dropped them like snowflakes onto wool. They were absorbed and they died.

  It was actually worse, he remembered tardily, to produce a sound because you could not help but listen for the echo and no echo came. So he stopped.

  In three years he must have acquired some additional resources, he thought. Of course. He had! He settled down to construct a crossword puzzle in his head. Let 1 Across be a tropical South American bird, hoatzin. Let 1 Down be a medieval diatonic series of tones, hexachord. Let 2 Down be the Asiatic wild ass, or onagin, which might make the first horizontal word under 1 Across be, let’s see, E—N—. . . well, why riot the ligature of couplets in verse writing, or enjambment. That would make 3 Down—He began to cry, because he could not remember 1 Across.

  Something was nagging at his mind, so he stopped crying and waited for it to take form, but it would not. He thought of General Grote, by now surely aware that his aide had been taken; he thought of the consternation that must be shuddering through all the tentacles of Ripsaw. It was not actually going to be so hard, he thought pathetically, because he didn’t actually have to hold out against the Blank Tanks, he only had to wait. After D day, or better, say, D plus 7, it wouldn’t much matter what he told them. Then the divisions would be across. Or nor across. Break-through or failure, it would be decided by then and he could talk.

  He began to count off Ripsaw’s division officers to himself, as he had so often seen the names on the morning reports. Catton of the XLIst Armored, with Colonels Bogart, Ripner and Bletterman. M’Cleargh of the Highland Sc Lowland, with Brigadiers Douglass and McCloud. Leventhal of the Vth Israeli, with Koehne, Meier and—he stopped, because it had occurred to him that he might be speaking aloud. He could not tell. All right. Think of something else.

  But what?

  There was nothing dangerous about sensory deprivation, he lied. It was only a rest. Nobody was hurting him. Looked at in the right way, it was a chance to do some solid thinking like you never got time for in real life—strike that. In outside life. For instance, what about freshing up on French irregular verbs? Start with avoir. Tu as, vous avez, nous avons.

  Voi avete, noi abbiamo, du habst . . . Du habst? How did that get in there? Well, how about poetry?

  It is an ancient Mariner, and he

  stops the next of kin.

  The guests are met, the feast is set,

  and sisters under the skin

  Are rag and bone and hank of hair,

  and beard and glittering eye

  Invite the sight of patient Night,

  etherized under the sky.

  I should have been a ragged claw;

  I should have said ‘I love you;’

  But—here the brown eyes lower

  fell—I hate to go above you.

  If Ripsaw fail and yutes prevail,

  what price Clough’s Quaker can-

  non?

  So Grote—

  Kramer stopped himself, barely in time. Were there throat mikes? Were the yutes listening in?

  He churned miserably in his cotton bonds, because, as near as he could guess, he had probably been in the Blank Tank for less than an hour. D day, he thought to himself, praying that it was only to himself, was still some six weeks away and a week beyond that was seven. Seven weeks, forty-nine days, eleven hundred and seventy-six hours, sixty-six thousand minutes plus. He had only to wait those minutes out. What about the diary? And then he could talk all he wanted. Talk, confess, broadcast, anything, what difference would it make then?

  He paused, trying to remember. That furtive thought had struggled briefly to the surface but he had lost it again. It would not come back.

  He tried to fall asleep. It should have been easy enough. His air was metered and the CO2 content held to a level that would make him torpid; his wastes catheterized away; water and glucose valved into his veins; he was all but in utero, and unborn babies slept, didn’t they? Did they? He would have to look in the diary, but it would have to wait until he could remember what thought it was that was struggling for recognition. And that was becoming harder with every second.

  Sensory deprivation in small doses is one thing; it even has its therapeutic uses, like shock. In large doses it produces a disorientation of psychotic proportions, a melancholia that is all but lethal; Kramer never knew when he went loopy.

  IV

  He never quite knew when he went sane again, either, except that one day the fog lifted for a moment and he asked a WAC corporal, “When did I get back to Utah.” The corporal had dealt with returning yute prisoners before. She said only: “It’s Fort Hamilton, sir. Brooklyn.”

  He was in a private
room, which was bad, but he wore a maroon bathrobe, which was good—at least it meant he was in a hospital instead of an Army stockade. (Unless the private room meant he was in the detention ward of the hospital.)

  Kramer wondered what he had done. There was no way to tell, at least not by searching his memory.

  Everything went into a blurry alternation of shouting relays of yutes and the silence of the Blank Tanks. He was nearly sure he had finally told the yutes everything they wanted to know. The question was, when? He would find out at the court-martial, he thought. Or he might have jotted it down, he thought crazily, in the diary.

  Jotted it down in the . . .?

  Diary!

  That was the thought that had struggled to come through to the surface!

  Kramer’s screams brought the corporal back in a hurry, and then two doctors who quickly prepared knockout needles. He fought against them all the way.

  “Poor old man.” said the WAC, watching him twitch and shudder in unconsciousness. (Kramer had just turned forty.) “Second dose of the Blank Tanks for him. wasn’t it? I’m not surprised he’s having nightmares.” She didn’t know that his nightmares were nor caused by the Blank Tanks themselves, bur by his sudden realization that his last stay in the Tanks was totally unnecessary It didn’t matter what he told die yutes, or when! They had had the diary all along, for it had been on him when Mabry thrust him in the rocket; and all Ripsaw’s secrets were in it!

  The next time the fog lifted for Kramer it was quick, like the turning on of a light, and he had distorted memories of dreams before it. He thought he had just dreamed that General Grote had been with him.

  He was alone in the same room, sun streaming in a window, voices outside. He felt pretty good, he thought tentatively, and had no time to think more than that because the door opened and a ward boy looked in, very astonished to find Kramer looking back at him.

  “Holy heaven,” he said. “Wait there!”