Notions: Unlimited

by Robert Sheckley

  “Yes. Anthropology.”

  “Good. Smoke?” The general lighted Micheals’ cigarette. “I’d like you to stay around here in an advisory capacity. You were one of the first to see this leech. I’d appreciate your observations on—” he smiled—”the enemy.”

  “I’d be glad to,” Micheals said. “However, I think this is more in the line of a physicist or a biochemist.”

  “I don’t want this place cluttered up with scientists,” General O’Donnell said, frowning at the tip of his cigarette. “Don’t get me wrong. I have the greatest appreciation for science. I am, if I do say so, a scientific soldier. I’m always interested in the latest weapons. You can’t fight any kind of a war any more without science.”

  O’Donnell’s sunburned face grew firm. “But I can’t have a team of longhairs poking around this thing for the next month, holding me up. My job is to destroy it, by any means in my power, and at once. I am going to do just that.”

  “I don’t think you’ll find it that easy,” Micheals said.

  “That’s what I want you for,” O’Donnell said. “Tell me why and I’ll figure out a way of doing it.”

  “Well, as far as I can figure out, the leech is an organic mass-energy converter, and a frighteningly efficient one. I would guess that it has a double cycle. First, it converts mass into energy, then back into mass for its body. Second, energy is converted directly into the body mass. How this takes place, I do not know. The leech is not protoplasmic. It may not even be cellular—”

  “So we need something big against it,” O’Donnell interrupted. “Well, that’s all right. I’ve got some big stuff here.”

  “I don’t think you understand me,” Micheals said. “Perhaps I’m not phrasing this very well. The leech eats energy. It can consume the strength of any energy weapon you use against it.”

  “What happens,” O’Donnell asked, “if it keeps on eating?”

  “I have no idea what its growth-limits are,” Micheals said. “Its growth may be limited only by its food source.”

  “You mean it could continue to grow probably forever?”

  “It could possibly grow as long as it had something to feed on.”

  “This is really a challenge,” O’Donnell said. “That leech can’t be totally impervious to force.”

  “It seems to be. I suggest you get some physicists in here. Some biologists also. Have them figure out a way of nullifying it.”

  The general put out his cigarette. “Professor, I cannot wait while scientists wrangle. There is an axiom of mine which I am going to tell you.” He paused impressively. “Nothing is impervious to force. Muster enough force and anything will give. Anything.

  “Professor,” the general continued, in a friendlier tone, “you shouldn’t sell short the science you represent. We have, massed under North Hill, the greatest accumulation of energy and radioactive weapons ever assembled in one spot. Do you think your leech can stand the full force of them?”

  “I suppose it’s possible to overload the thing,” Micheals said doubtfully. He realized now why the general wanted him around. He supplied the trappings of science, without the authority to override O’Donnell.

  “Come with me,” General O’Donnell said cheerfully, getting up and holding back a flap of the tent. “We’re going to crack that leech in half.”

  After a long wait, rich food started to come again, piped into one side of it. First there was only a little, and then more and more. Radiations, vibrations, explosions, solids, liquids—an amazing variety of edibles. It accepted them all. But the food was coming too slowly for the starving cells, for new cells were constantly adding their demands to the rest.

  The ever-hungry body screamed for more food, faster!

  Now that it had reached a fairly efficient size, it was fully awake. It puzzled over the energy-impressions around it, locating the source of the new food massed in one spot.

  Effortlessly it pushed itself into the air, flew a little way and dropped on the food. Its super-efficient cells eagerly gulped the rich radioactive substances. But it did not ignore the lesser potentials of metal and clumps of carbohydrates.

  “The damned fools,” General O’Donnell said. “Why did they have to panic? You’d think they’d never been trained.” He paced the ground outside his tent, now in a new location three miles back.

  The leech had grown to two miles in diameter. Three farming communities had been evacuated.

  Micheals, standing beside the general, was still stupefied by the memory. The leech had accepted the massed power of the weapons for a while, and then its entire bulk had lifted in the air. The sun had been blotted out as it flew leisurely over North Hill, and dropped. There should have been time for evacuation, but the frightened soldiers had been blind with fear.

  Sixty-seven men were lost in Operation Leech, and General O’Donnell asked permission to use atomic bombs. Washington sent a group of scientists to investigate the situation.

  “Haven’t those experts decided yet?” O’Donnell asked, halting angrily in front of the tent. “They’ve been talking long enough.”

  “It’s a hard decision,” Micheals said. Since he wasn’t an official member of the investigating team, he had given his information and left. “The physicists consider it a biological matter, and the biologists seem to think the chemists should have the answer. No one’s an expert on this, because it’s never happened before. We just don’t have the data.”

  “It’s a military problem,” O’Donnell said harshly. “I’m not interested in what the thing is—I want to know what can destroy it. They’d better give me permission to use the bomb.”

  Micheals had made his own calculations on that. It was impossible to say for sure, but taking a flying guess at the leech’s mass-energy absorption rate, figuring in its size and apparent capacity for growth, an atomic bomb might overload it if used soon enough.

  He estimated three days as the limit of usefulness. The leech was growing at a geometric rate. It could cover the United States in a few months.

  “For a week I’ve been asking for permission to use the bomb,” O’Donnell grumbled. “And I’ll get it, but not until after those jackasses end their damned talking.” He stopped pacing and turned to Micheals. “I am going to destroy the leech. I am going to smash it, if that’s the last thing I do. It’s more than a matter of security now. It’s personal pride.”

  That attitude might make great generals, Micheals thought, but it wasn’t the way to consider this problem. It was anthropomorphic of O’Donnell to see the leech as an enemy. Even the identification, “leech,” was a humanizing factor. O’Donnell was dealing with it as he would any physical obstacle, as though the leech were the simple equivalent of a large army.

  But the leech was not human, not even of this planet, perhaps. It should be dealt with in its own terms.

  “Here come the bright boys now,” O’Donnell said.

  From a nearby tent a group of weary men emerged, led by Allenson, a government biologist.

  “Well,” the general asked, “have you figured out what it is?”

  “Just a minute, I’ll hack off a sample,” Allenson said, glaring through red-rimmed eyes.

  “Have you figured out some scientific way of killing it?”

  “Oh, that wasn’t too difficult,” Moriarty, an atomic physicist, said wryly. “Wrap it in a perfect vacuum. That’ll do the trick. Or blow it off the Earth with antigravity.”

  “But failing that,” Allenson said, “we suggest you use your atomic bombs, and use them fast.”

  “Is that the opinion of your entire group?” O’Donnell asked, his eyes glittering.

  “Yes.”

  The general hurried away. Micheals joined the scientists.

  “He should have called us in at the very first,” Allenson complained. “There’s no time to consider anything but force now.”

  “Have you come to any conclusions about the nature of the leech?” Micheals asked.

  “Only gene
ral ones,” Moriarty said, “and they’re about the same as yours. The leech is probably extraterrestrial in origin. It seems to have been in a spore-stage until it landed on Earth.” He paused to light a pipe. “Incidentally, we should be damned glad it didn’t drop in an ocean. We’d have had the Earth eaten out from under us before we knew what we were looking for.”

  They walked in silence for a few minutes.

  “As you mentioned, it’s a perfect converter—it can transform mass into energy, and any energy into mass.” Moriarty grinned. “Naturally that’s impossible and I have figures to prove it.”

  “I’m going to get a drink,” Allenson said. “Anyone coming?”

  “Best idea of the week,” Micheals said. “I wonder how long it’ll take O’Donnell to get permission to use the bomb.”

  “If I know politics,” Moriarty said, “too long.”

  The findings of the government scientists were checked by other government scientists. That took a few days. Then Washington wanted to know if there wasn’t some alternative to exploding an atomic bomb in the middle of New York State. It took a little time to convince them of the necessity. After that, people had to be evacuated, which took more time.

  Then orders were made out, and five atomic bombs were checked out of a cache. A patrol rocket was assigned, given orders, and put under General O’Donnell’s command. This took a day more.

  Finally, the stubby scout rocket was winging its way over New York. From the air, the grayish-black spot was easy to find. Like a festered wound, it stretched between Lake Placid and Elizabethtown, covering Keene and Keene Valley, and lapping at the edges of Jay.

  The first bomb was released.

  It had been a long wait after the first rich food. The greater radiation of day was followed by the lesser energy of night many times, as the leech ate away the Earth beneath it, absorbed the air around it, and grew. Then one day—

  An amazing burst of energy!

  Everything was food for the leech, but there was always the possibility of choking. The energy poured over it, drenched it, battered it, and the leech grew frantically, trying to contain the titanic dose. Still small, it quickly reached its overload limit. The strained cells, filled to satiation, were given more and more food. The strangling body built new cells at lightning speed. And—

  It held. The energy was controlled, stimulating further growth. More cells took over the load, sucking in the food.

  The next doses were wonderfully palatable, easily handled. The leech overflowed its bounds, growing, eating, and growing.

  That was a taste of real food! The leech was as near ecstasy as it had ever been. It waited hopefully for more, but no more came.

  It went back to feeding on the Earth. The energy, used to produce more cells, was soon dissipated. Soon it was hungry again.

  It would always be hungry.

  O’Donnell retreated with his demoralized men. They camped ten miles from the leech’s southern edge, in the evacuated town of Schroon Lake. The leech was over sixty miles in diameter now and still growing fast. It lay sprawled over the Adirondack Mountains, completely blanketing everything from Saranac Lake to Port Henry, with one edge of it over Westport, in Lake Champlain.

  Everyone within two hundred miles of the leech was evacuated.

  General O’Donnell was given permission to use hydrogen bombs, contingent on the approval of his scientists.

  “What have the bright boys decided?” O’Donnell wanted to know.

  He and Micheals were in the living room of an evacuated Schroon Lake house. O’Donnell had made it his new command post.

  “Why are they hedging?” O’Donnell demanded impatiently. “The leech has to be blown up quick. What are they fooling around for?”

  “They’re afraid of a chain reaction,” Micheals told him. “A concentration of hydrogen bombs might set one up in the Earth’s crust or in the atmosphere. It might do any of half a dozen things.”

  “Perhaps they’d like me to order a bayonet attack,” O’Donnell said contemptuously.

  Micheals sighed and sat down in an armchair. He was convinced that the whole method was wrong. The government scientists were being rushed into a single line of inquiry. The pressure on them was so great that they didn’t have a chance to consider any other approach but force—and the leech thrived on that.

  Micheals was certain that there were times when fighting fire with fire was not applicable.

  Fire. Loki, god of fire. And of trickery. No, there was no answer there. But Micheals’ mind was in mythology now, retreating from the unbearable present.

  Allenson came in, followed by six other men.

  “Well,” Allenson said, “there’s a damned good chance of splitting the Earth wide open if you use the number of bombs our figures show you need.”

  “You have to take chances in war,” O’Donnell replied bluntly. “Shall I go ahead?”

  Micheals saw, suddenly, that O’Donnell didn’t care if he did crack the Earth. The red-faced general only knew that he was going to set off the greatest explosion ever produced by the hand of Man.

  “Not so fast,” Allenson said. “I’ll let the others speak for themselves.”

  The general contained himself with difficulty. “Remember,” he said, “according to your own figures, the leech is growing at the rate of twenty feet an hour.”

  “And speeding up,” Allenson added. “But this isn’t a decision to be made in haste.”

  Micheals found his mind wandering again, to the lightning bolts of Zeus. That was what they needed. Or the strength of Hercules.

  Or—

  He sat up suddenly. “Gentlemen, I believe I can offer you a possible alternative, although it’s a very dim one.”

  They stared at him.

  “Have you ever heard of Antaeus?” he asked.

  The more the leech ate, the faster it grew and the hungrier it became. Although its birth was forgotten, it did remember a long way back. It had eaten a planet in that ancient past. Grown tremendous, ravenous, it had made the journey to a nearby star and eaten that, replenishing the cells converted into energy for the trip. But then there was no more food, and the next star was an enormous distance away.

  It set out on the journey, but long before it reached the food, its energy ran out. Mass, converted back to energy to make the trip, was used up. It shrank.

  Finally, all the energy was gone. It was a spore, drifting aimlessly, in space.

  That was the first time. Or was it? It thought it could remember back to a distant, misty time when the Universe was evenly covered with stars. It had eaten through them, cutting away whole sections, growing, swelling. And the stars had swung off in terror, forming galaxies and constellations.

  Or was that a dream?

  Methodically, it fed on the Earth, wondering where the rich food was. And then it was back again, but this time above the leech.

  It waited, but the tantalizing food remained out of reach. It was able to sense how rich and pure the food was.

  Why didn’t it fall?

  For a long time the leech waited, but the food stayed out of reach. At last, it lifted and followed.

  The food retreated, up, up from the surface of the planet. The leech went after as quickly as its bulk would allow.

  The rich food fled out, into space, and the leech followed. Beyond, it could sense an even richer source.

  The hot, wonderful food of a sun!

  O’Donnell served champagne for the scientists in the control room. Official dinners would follow, but this was the victory celebration.

  “A toast,” the general said, standing. The men raised their glasses. The only man not drinking was a lieutenant, sitting in front of the control board that guided the drone spaceship.

  “To Micheals, for thinking of—what was it again, Micheals?”

  “Antaeus.” Micheals had been drinking champagne steadily, but he didn’t feel elated. Antaeus, born of Ge, the Earth, and Poseidon, the Sea. The invincible wrestler. Each ti
me Hercules threw him to the ground, he arose refreshed.

  Until Hercules held him in the air.

  Moriarty was muttering to himself, figuring with slide rule, pencil, and paper. Allenson was drinking, but he didn’t look too happy about it.

  “Come on, you birds of evil omen,” O’Donnell said, pouring more champagne. “Figure it out later. Right now, drink.” He turned to the operator. “How’s it going?”

  Micheals’ analogy had been applied to a spaceship. The ship, operated by remote control, was filled with pure radioactives. It hovered over the leech until, rising to the bait, it had followed. Antaeus had left his mother, the Earth, and was losing his strength in the air. The operator was allowing the spaceship to run fast enough to keep out of the leech’s grasp, but close enough to keep it coming.

  The spaceship and the leech were on a collision course with the

  Sun.

  “Fine, sir,” the operator said. “It’s inside the orbit of Mercury now.”

  “Men,” the general said, “I swore to destroy that thing. This isn’t exactly the way I wanted to do it. I figured on a more personal way. But the important thing is the destruction. You will all witness it. Destruction is at times a sacred mission. This is such a time. Men, I feel wonderful.”

  “Turn the spaceship!” It was Moriarty who had spoken. His face was white. “Turn the damned thing!”

  He shoved his figures at them.

  They were easy to read. The growth-rate of the leech. The energy-consumption rate, estimated. Its speed in space, a constant. The energy it would receive from the Sun as it approached, an exponential curve. Its energy-absorption rate, figured in terms of growth, expressed as a hyped-up discontinuous progression.

  The result—

  “It’ll consume the Sun,” Moriarty said, very quietly.

  The control room turned into a bedlam. Six of them tried to explain it to O’Donnell at the same time. Then Moriarty tried, and finally Allenson.

  “Its rate of growth is so great and its speed so slow—and it will get so much energy—that the leech will be able to consume the Sun by the time it gets there. Or, at least, to live off it until it can consume it.”

  O’Donnell didn’t bother to understand. He turned to the operator.