by Simon Ings
Vomact stood more erect: “What is the secret duty of the scanner?”
“To keep secret our law, and to destroy the acquirers thereof.”
“How to destroy?”
“Twice to the Overload, back and Dead.”
“If habermans die, what the duty then?”
The scanners all compressed their lips for answer. (Silence was the code.) Martel, who—long familiar with the code—was a little bored with the proceedings, noticed that Chang was breathing too heavily; he reached over and adjusted Chang’s lung-control and received the thanks of Chang’s eyes. Vomact observed the interruption and glared at them both. Martel relaxed, trying to imitate the dead cold stillness of the others. It was so hard to do, when you were cranched.
“If others die, what the duty then?” asked Vomact.
“Scanners together inform the Instrumentality. Scanners together accept the punishment. Scanners together settle the case.”
“And if the punishment be severe?”
“Then no ships go.”
“And if scanners be not honored?”
“Then no ships go.”
“And if a scanner goes unpaid?”
“Then no ships go.”
“And if the Others and the Instrumentality are not in all ways at all times mindful of their proper obligation to the scanners?”
“Then no ships go.”
“And what, O Scanners, if no ships go?”
“The Earths fall apart. The Wild comes back in. The Old Machines and the Beasts return.”
“What is the first known duty of a scanner?”
“Not to sleep in the up-and-out.”
“What is the second duty of a scanner?”
“To keep forgotten the name of fear.”
“What is the third duty of a scanner?”
“To use the wire of Eustace Cranch only with care, only with moderation.” Several pair of eyes looked quickly at Martel before the mouthed chorus went on. “To cranch only at home, only among friends, only for the purpose of remembering, of relaxing, or of begetting.”
“What is the word of the scanner?”
“Faithful though surrounded by death.”
“What is the motto of the scanner?”
“Awake though surrounded by silence.”
“What is the work of the scanner?”
“Labor even in the heights of the up-and-out, loyalty even in the depths of the Earths.”
“How do you know a scanner?”
“We know ourselves. We are dead though we live. And we talk with the tablet and the nail.”
“What is this code?”
“This code is the friendly ancient wisdom of scanners, briefly put that we may be mindful and be cheered by our loyalty to one another.” At this point the formula should have run: “We complete the code. Is there work or word for the scanners?” But Vomact said, and he repeated:
“Top emergency. Top emergency.”
They gave him the sign, Present and ready!
He said, with every eye straining to follow his lips:
“Some of you know the work of Adam Stone?”
Martel saw lips move, saying: “The Red Asteroid. The Other who lives at the edge of Space.”
“Adam Stone has gone to the Instrumentality, claiming success for his work. He says that he has found how to screen out the pain of space. He says that the up-and-out can be made safe for ordinary men to work in, to stay awake in. He says that there need be no more scanners.”
Beltlights flashed on all over the room as scanners sought the right to speak. Vomact nodded to one of the older men. “Scanner Smith will speak.”
Smith stepped slowly up into the light, watching his own feet. He turned so that they could see his face. He spoke: “I say that this is a lie. I say that Stone is a liar. I say that the Instrumentality must not be deceived.”
He paused. Then, in answer to some question from the audience which most of the others did not see, he said: “I invoke the secret duty of the scanners.”
Smith raised his right hand for emergency attention:
“I say that Stone must die.”
*
Martel, still cranched, shuddered as he heard the boos, groans, shouts, squeaks, grunts and moans which came from the scanners who forgot noise in their excitement and strove to make their dead bodies talk to one another’s deaf ears. Beltlights flashed wildly all over the room. There was a rush for the rostrum and scanners milled around at the top, vying for attention until Parizianski—by sheer bulk—shoved the others aside and down, and turned to mouth at the group.
“Brother Scanners, I want your eyes.”
The people on the floor kept moving, with their numb bodies jostling one another. Finally Vomact stepped up in front of Parizianski, faced the others, and said: “Scanners, be scanners! Give him your eyes.”
Parizianski was not good at public speaking. His lips moved too fast. He waved his hands, which took the eyes of the others away from his lips. Nevertheless, Martel was able to follow most of the message:
“… can’t do this. Stone may have succeeded. If he has succeeded, it means the end of the scanners. It means the end of the habermans, too. None of us will have to fight in the up-and-out. We won’t have anybody else going under the wire for a few hours or days of being human. Everybody will be Other. Nobody will have to cranch, never again. Men can be men. The habermans can be killed decently and properly, the way men were killed in the old days, without anybody keeping them alive. They won’t have to work in the up-and-out! There will be no more great pain—think of it! No… more… great… pain! How do we know that Stone is a liar—” Lights began flashing directly into his eyes. (The rudest insult of scanner to scanner was this.)
Vomact again exercised authority. He stepped in front of Parizianski and said something which the others could not see. Parizianski stepped down from the rostrum. Vomact again spoke:
“I think that some of the scanners disagree with our brother Parizianski. I say that the use of the rostrum be suspended till we have had a chance for private discussion. In fifteen minutes I will call the meeting back to order.” Martel looked around for Vomact when the senior had rejoined the group on the floor. Finding the senior, Martel wrote swift script on his tablet, waiting for a chance to thrust the tablet before the senior’s eyes. He had written:
Am crnchd. Rspctfly requst prmissn lv now, stnd by fr orders.
Being cranched did strange things to Martel. Most meetings that he attended seemed formal, hearteningly ceremonial, lighting up the dark inward eternities of habermanhood. When he was not cranched, he noticed his body no more than a marble bust notices its marble pedestal. He had stood with them before. He had stood with them effortless hours, while the long-winded ritual broke through the terrible loneliness behind his eyes, and made him feel that the scanners, though a confraternity of the damned, were none the less forever honored by the professional requirements of their mutilation.
This time, it was different. Coming cranched, and in full possession of smell-sound-taste-feeling, he reacted more or less as a normal man would. He saw his friends and colleagues as a lot of cruelly driven ghosts, posturing out the meaningless ritual of their indefeasible damnation. What difference did anything make, once you were a haberman? Why all this talk about habermans and scanners? Habermans were criminals or heretics, and scanners were gentlemen-volunteers, but they were all in the same fix—except that scanners were deemed worthy of the short-time return of the cranching wire, while habermans were simply disconnected while the ships lay in port and were left suspended until they should be awakened, in some hour of emergency or trouble, to work out another spell of their damnation. It was a rare haberman that you saw on the street—someone of special merit or bravery, allowed to look at mankind from the terrible prison of his own mechanified body. And yet, what scanner ever pitied a haberman? What scanner ever honored a haberman except perfunctorily in the line of duty? What had the scanners as a guild and a class
ever done for the habermans, except to murder them with a twist of the wrist whenever a haberman, too long beside a scanner, picked up the tricks of the scanning trade and learned how to live at his own will, not the will the scanners imposed? What could the Others, the ordinary men, know of what went on inside the ships? The Others slept in their cylinders, mercifully unconscious until they woke up on whatever other Earth they had consigned themselves to. What could the Others know of the men who had to stay alive within the ship?
What could any Other know of the up-and-out? What Other could look at the biting acid beauty of the stars in open space? What could they tell of the great pain, which started quietly in the marrow, like an ache, and proceeded by the fatigue and nausea of each separate nerve cell, brain cell, touchpoint in the body, until life itself became a terrible aching hunger for silence and for death?
He was a scanner. All right, he was a scanner. He had been a scanner from the moment when, wholly normal, he had stood in the sunlight before a subchief of the Instrumentality, and had sworn:
“I pledge my honor and my life to mankind. I sacrifice myself willingly for the welfare of mankind. In accepting the perilous austere honor, I yield all my rights without exception to the honorable chiefs of the Instrumentality and to the honored Confraternity of Scanners.”
He had pledged.
He had gone into the haberman device.
He remembered his hell. He had not had such a bad one, even though it had seemed to last a hundred-million years, all of them without sleep. He had learned to feel with his eyes. He had learned to see despite the heavy eyeplates set back of his eyeballs to insulate his eyes from the rest of him. He had learned to watch his skin. He still remembered the time he had noticed dampness on his shirt, and had pulled out his scanning mirror only to discover that he had worn a hole in his side by leaning against a vibrating machine. (A thing like that could not happen to him now; he was too adept at reading his own instruments.) He remembered the way that he had gone up-and-out, and the way that the great pain beat into him, despite the fact that his touch, smell, feeling, and hearing were gone for all ordinary purposes. He remembered killing habermans, and keeping others alive, and standing for months beside the honorable scanner-pilot while neither of them slept. He remembered going ashore on Earth Four, and remembered that he had not enjoyed it, and had realized on that day that there was no reward.
Martel stood among the other scanners. He hated their awkwardness when they moved, their immobility when they stood still. He hated the queer assortment of smells which their bodies yielded unnoticed. He hated the grunts and groans and squawks which they emitted from their deafness. He hated them, and himself.
How could Luci stand him? He had kept his chestbox reading Danger for weeks while he courted her, carrying the cranch wire about with him most illegally, and going direct from one cranch to the other without worrying about the fact his indicators all crept up to the edge of Overload. He had wooed her without thinking of what would happen if she did say, “Yes.” She had.
“And they lived happily ever after.” In old books they did, but how could they, in life? He had had eighteen days under the wire in the whole of the past year! Yet she had loved him. She still loved him. He knew it. She fretted about him through the long months that he was in the up-and-out. She tried to make home mean something to him even when he was haberman, make food pretty when it could not be tasted, make herself lovable when she could not be kissed—or might as well not, since a haberman body meant no more than furniture. Luci was patient.
And now, Adam Stone! (He let his tablet fade: how could he leave, now?)
God bless Adam Stone!
Martel could not help feeling a little sorry for himself. No longer would the high keen call of duty carry him through two hundred or so years of the Others’ time, two million private eternities of his own. He could slouch and relax. He could forget high space, and let the up-and-out be tended by Others. He could cranch as much as he dared. He could be almost normal—almost—for one year or five years or no years. But at least he could stay with Luci. He could go with her into the Wild, where there were Beasts and Old Machines still roving the dark places. Perhaps he would die in the excitement of the hunt, throwing spears at an ancient manshonyagger as it leapt from its lair, or tossing hot spheres at the tribesmen of the Unforgiven who still roamed the Wild. There was still life to live, still a good normal death to die, not the moving of a needle out in the silence and agony of space!
He had been walking about restlessly. His ears were attuned to the sounds of normal speech, so that he did not feel like watching the mouthings of his brethren. Now they seemed to have come to a decision. Vomact was moving to the rostrum. Martel looked about for Chang, and went to stand beside him. Chang whispered: “You’re as restless as water in mid-air! What’s the matter? Decranching?”
They both scanned Martel, but the instruments held steady and showed no sign of the cranch giving out.
The great light flared in its call to attention. Again they formed ranks. Vomact thrust his lean old face into the glare, and spoke:
“Scanners and Brothers, I call for a vote.” He held himself in the stance which meant: I am the senior and take command.
A beltlight flashed in protest.
It was old Henderson. He moved to the rostrum, spoke to Vomact, and—with Vomact’s nod of approval—turned full-face to repeat his question:
“Who speaks for the scanners out in space?” No beltlight or hand answered.
Henderson and Vomact, face to face, conferred for a few moments. Then Henderson faced them again:
“I yield to the senior in command. But I do not yield to a meeting of the Confraternity. There are sixty-eight scanners, and only forty-seven present, of whom one is cranched and U.D. I have therefore proposed that the senior in command assume authority only over an emergency committee of the Confraternity, not over a meeting. Is that agreed and understood by the honorable scanners?”
Hands rose in assent.
Chang murmured in Martel’s ear, “Lot of difference that makes! Who can tell the difference between a meeting and a committee?” Martel agreed with the words, but was even more impressed with the way that Chang, while haberman, could control his own voice.
Vomact resumed chairmanship: “We now vote on the question of Adam Stone.”
“First, we can assume that he has not succeeded, and that his claims are lies. We know that from our practical experience as scanners. The pain of space is only part of scanning,” (But the essential part, the basis of it all, thought Martel) “and we can rest assured that Stone cannot solve the problem of space discipline.”
“That tripe again,” whispered Chang, unheard save by Martel.
“The space discipline of our confraternity has kept high space clean of war and dispute. Sixty-eight disciplined men control all high space. We are removed by our oath and our haberman status from all Earthly passions.
“Therefore, if Adam Stone has conquered the pain of space, so that Others can wreck our confraternity and bring to space the trouble and ruin which afflicts Earths, I say that Adam Stone is wrong. If Adam Stone succeeds, scanners live in vain!
“Secondly, if Adam Stone has not conquered the pain of space, he will cause great trouble in all the Earths. The Instrumentality and the subchiefs may not give us as many habermans as we need to operate the ships of mankind. There will be wild stories, and fewer recruits, and, worst of all, the discipline of the Confraternity may relax if this kind of nonsensical heresy is spread around.
“Therefore, if Adam Stone has succeeded, he threatens the ruin of the Confraternity and should die.
“I move the death of Adam Stone.”
And Vomact made the sign, The honorable scanners are pleased to vote. Martel grabbed wildly for his beltlight. Chang, guessing ahead, had his light out and ready; its bright beam, voting No, shone straight up at the ceiling. Martel got his light out and threw its beam upward in dissent. Then he looked around. Ou
t of the forty-seven present, he could see only five or six glittering.
Two more lights went on. Vomact stood as erect as a frozen corpse. Vomact’s eyes flashed as he stared back and forth over the group, looking for lights. Several more went on. Finally Vomact took the closing stance:
May it please the scanners to count the vote.
Three of the older men went up on the rostrum with Vomact. They looked over the room. (Martel thought: These damned ghosts are voting on the life of a real man, a live man! They have no right to do it. I’ll tell the Instrumentality! But he knew that he would not. He thought of Luci and what she might gain by the triumph of Adam Stone: the heart-breaking folly of the vote was then almost too much for Martel to bear.)
All three of the tellers held up their hands in unanimous agreement on the sign of the number: Fifteen against.
Vomact dismissed them with a bow of courtesy. He turned and again took the stance: I am the senior and take command.
Marveling at his own daring, Martel flashed his beltlight on. He knew that any one of the bystanders might reach over and twist his heartbox to Overload for such an act. He felt Chang’s hand reaching to catch him by the aircoat. But he eluded Chang’s grasp and ran, faster than a scanner should, to the platform. As he ran, he wondered what appeal to make. It was no use talking common sense. Not now. It had to be law.
He jumped up on the rostrum beside Vomact, and took the stance: Scanners, an Illegality!
He violated good custom while speaking, still in the stance: “A committee has no right to vote death by a majority vote. It takes two-thirds of a full meeting.”
He felt Vomact’s body lunge behind him, felt himself falling from the rostrum, hitting the floor, hurting his knees and his touch-aware hands. He was helped to his feet. He was scanned. Some scanner he scarcely knew took his instruments and toned him down.
