The Almost Complete Short Fiction

by Don Wilcox

  “But however the Broscoe family may have prospered and multiplied, our records show that nearly all the families of the present generation have exceeded the per-family quota.”

  At this point there was a slight disturbance in the rear of the auditorium. An anxious-looking young man entered and signalled to the doctor. The two went out together.

  “All the families,” the clerk amended. “Our population this week passed the two hundred mark. This concludes the report.” The captain opened the meeting for discussion, and the forum lasted fax into the night. The demand for me to assist the Council with some legislation was general. There was also hearty sentiment against the captain’s blacked-out heavens from young and old alike.

  This, I considered, was a good sign. The children craved the fun of watching the stars and planets; their elders desired to keep up their serious astronomical studies.

  “Nothing is so important to the welfare of this expedition,” I said to the Council on the following day, as we settled down to the job of thrashing out some legislation, “as to maintain our interests in the outside world. Population or no population, we must not become ingrown!”

  I talked of new responsibilities, new challenges in the form of contests and campaigns, new leisure-time activities. The discussion went on for days.

  “Back in my times—” I said for the hundredth time; but the captain laughed me down. My times and these times were as unlike as black and white, he declared.

  “But the principle is the same!” I shouted. “We had population troubles, too.”

  They smiled as I referred to twenty-first century relief families who were overrun with children. I cited the fact that some industrialists who paid heavy taxes had considered giving every relief family an automobile as a measure to save themselves money in the long run; for they had discovered that relief families with cars had fewer children than those without.

  “That’s no help,” Dickinson muttered. “You can’t have cars on a space ship.”

  “You can play bridge,” I retorted. “Bridge is an enemy of the birthrate too. Bridge, cars, movies, checkers—they all add up to the same thing. They lift you out of your animal natures” The Councilmen threw up their hands. They had bridged and checkered themselves to death.

  “Then try other things,” I persisted. “You could produce your own movies and plays—organize a little theater—create some new drama—”

  “What have we got to dramatize?” the captain replied sourly. “All the dramatic things happen on the earth.”

  This shocked me. Somehow it took all the starch out of this colossal adventure to hear the captain give up so easily.

  “All our drama is second hand,” he grumbled. “Our ship’s course is cut and dried. Our world is bounded by walls. The only dramatic things that happen here are births and deaths.”

  A doctor broke in on our conference and seized the captain by the hand.

  “Congratulations, Captain Dickinson, on the prize crop of the season! Your wife has just presented you with a fine set of triplets—three boys!”

  That broke up the meeting. Captain Dickinson was so busy for the rest of the week that he forgot all about his official obligations. The problem of population limitation faded from his mind.

  I wrote out my recommendations and gave them all the weight of my dictatorial authority. I stressed the need for more birth control forums, and recommended that the heavens be made visible for further studies in astronomy and mathematics.

  I was tempted to warn Captain Dickinson that the Flash away might incur some serious dramas of its own—poverty, disease and the like—unless he got back on the track of the Six-Hundred-Year Plan in a hurry. But Dickinson was preoccupied with some family washings when I took my leave of him, and he seemed to have as much drama on his hands as he cared for.

  I paid a final visit to each of the twenty-eight great-grandchildren of Louise, and returned to my ice.

  CHAPTER IV

  Revolt!

  My chief complaint against my merry-go-round freezer was that it didn’t give me any rest. One whirl into blackness, and the next thing I knew I popped out of the open lid again with not so much as a minute’s time to reorganize my thoughts.

  Well, here it was 2266—two hundred years since the take-off.

  A glance through the one-way glass told me it was daytime in the ballroom.

  As I turned the key in the lock I felt like a prize fighter on a vaudeville tour who, having just trounced the tough local strong man, steps back in the ring to take on his cousin.

  A touch of a headache caught me as I reflected that there should be four more returns after this one—if all went according to plan. Plan! That word was destined to be trampled underfoot!

  Oh, well (I took a deep optimistic breath) the Flashaway troubles would all be cleared up by now. Three generations would have passed. The population should be back to normal.

  I swung the door open, stepped through, locked it after me.

  For an instant I thought I had stepped in on a big movie “take”—a scene of a stricken multitude. The big ballroom was literally strewn with people—if creatures in such a deplorable state could be called people.

  There was no movie camera. This was the real thing.

  “Grimstone’s come!” a hoarse voice cried out.

  “Grimstone! Grimstone!” Others caught up the cry. Then—“Food! Give us food! We’re starving! For God’s sake—”

  The weird chorus gathered volume. I stood dazed, and for an instant I couldn’t realize that I was looking upon the population of the Flashaway.

  Men, women and children of all ages and all states of desperation joined in the clamor. Some of them stumbled to their feet and came toward me, waving their arms weakly. But most of them hadn’t the strength to rise.

  In that stunning moment an icy sweat came over me.

  “Food! Food! We’ve been waiting for you, Grimstone. We’ve been holding on—”

  The responsibility that was strapped to my shoulders suddenly weighed down like a locomotive. You see, I had originally taken my job more or less as a lark. That Six-Hundred-Year Plan had looked so air-tight. I, the Keeper of the Traditions, would have a snap.

  I had anticipated many a pleasant hour acquainting the oncoming generations with noble sentiments about George Washington; I had pictured myself filling the souls of my listeners by reciting the Gettysburg address and lecturing upon the mysteries of science.

  But now those pretty bubbles burst on the spot, nor did they ever re-form in the centuries to follow.

  And as they burst, my vision cleared. My job had nothing to do with theories or textbooks or speeches. My job was simply to get to Robinello—to get there with enough living, able-bodied, sane human beings to start a colony.

  Dull blue starlight sifted through the windows to highlight the big roomful of starved figures. The mass of pale blue faces stared at me. There were hundreds of them. Instinctively I shrank as the throng clustered around me, calling and pleading.

  “One at a time!” I cried. “First I’ve got to find out what this is all about. Who’s your spokesman?”

  They designated a handsomely built, if undernourished, young man. I inquired his name and learned that he was Bob Sperry, a descendant of the original Captain Sperry.

  “There are eight hundred of us now,” Sperry said.

  “Don’t tell me the food has run out!”

  “No, no t that—but six hundred of us are not entitled to regular meals.”

  “Why not?”

  Before the young spokesman could answer, the others burst out with an unintelligible clamor. Angry cries of “That damned Dickinson!” and “Guns!” and “They’ll shoot us!” were all I could distinguish.

  I quieted them and made Bob Sperry go on with his story. He calmly asserted that there was a very good reason that they shouldn’t be fed, all sentiment aside; namely, because they had been born outside the quota.

  Here I began to catch a gleam of l
ight.

  “By Captain Dickinson’s interpretation of the Plan,” Sperry explained, “there shouldn’t be more than two hundred of us altogether.”

  This Captain Dickinson, I learned, was a grandson of the one I had known.

  Sperry continued, “Since there are eight hundred, he and his brother—his brother being Food Superintendent—launched an emergency measure a few months ago to save food. They divided the population into the two hundred, who had a right to be bom, and the six hundred who had not.”

  So the six hundred starving persons before me were theoretically the excess population. The vigorous ancestry of the sixteen—no, seventeen—original couples, together with the excellent medical care that had reduced infant mortality and disease to the minimum, had wrecked the original plan completely.

  “What do you do for food? You must have some food!”

  “We live on charity.”

  The throng again broke in with hostile words. Young Sperry’s version was too gentle to do justice to their outraged stomachs. In fairness to the two hundred, however, Sperry explained that they shared whatever food they could spare with these, their less fortunate brothers, sisters and offspring.

  Uncertain what should or could be done, I gave the impatient crowd my promise to investigate at once. Bob Sperry and nine other men accompanied me.

  The minute we were out of hearing of the ballroom, I gasped: “Good heavens, men, how is it that you and your six hundred haven’t mobbed the storerooms long before this?”

  “Dickinson and his brother have got the drop on us.”

  “Drop? What kind of drop?”

  “Guns!”

  I couldn’t understand this. I had believed these new generations of the Flashaway to be relatively innocent of any knowledge of firearms.

  “What kind of guns?”

  “The same kind they use in our Earth-made movies—that make a loud noise and kill people by the hundreds.”

  “But there aren’t any guns aboard! That is—”

  I knew perfectly well that the only firearms the ship carried had been stored in my own refrigerator room, which no one could enter but myself. Before the voyage, one of the planning committee had jestingly suggested that if any serious trouble ever arose, I should be master of the situation by virtue of one hundred revolvers.

  “They made their own guns,” Sperry explained, “just like the ones in our movies and books.” Inquiring whether any persons had been shot, I learned that three of their number, attempting a raid on the storerooms, had been killed.

  “We heard three loud bangs, and found our men dead with bloody skulls.”

  Reaching the upper end of the central corridor, we arrived at the captain’s headquarters.

  The name of Captain Dickinson carried a bad flavor for me. A century before I had developed a distaste for a certain other Captain Dickinson, his grandfather. I resolved to swallow my prejudice. Then the door opened, and my resolve stuck in my throat. The former Captain Dickinson had merely annoyed me; but this one I hated on sight.

  “Well?” the captain roared at the eleven of us.

  Well-uniformed and neatly groomed, he filled the doorway with an impressive bulk. In his right hand he gripped a revolver.

  The gleam of that weapon had a magical effect upon the men. They shrank back respectfully. Then the captain’s cold eye lighted on me.

  “Who are you?”

  “Gregory Grimstone, Keeper of the Traditions.”

  The captain sent a quick glance toward his gun and repeated his “Well?”

  For a moment I was fascinated by that intricately shaped piece of metal in his grip.

  “Well!” I echoed. “If ‘well’ is the only reception you have to offer, I’ll proceed with my official business. Call your Food Superintendent.”

  “Why?”

  “Order him out! Have him feed the entire population without further delay!”

  “We can’t afford the food,” the captain growled.

  “We’ll talk that over later, but we won’t talk on empty stomachs. Order out your Food Superintendent!”

  “Crawl back in your hole!” Dickinson snarled.

  At that instant another bulky man stepped into view. He was almost the identical counterpart of the captain, but his uniform was that of the Food Superintendent. Showing his teeth with a sinister snarl, he took his place beside his brother. He too jerked his right hand up to flash a gleaming revolver.

  I caught one glimpse—and laughed in his face! I couldn’t help it.

  “You fellows are good!” I roared. “You’re damned good actors! If you’ve held off the starving six hundred with nothing but those two dumb imitations of revolvers, you deserve an Academy award!”

  The two Dickinson brothers went white.

  Back of me came low mutterings from ten starving men.

  “Imitations—dumb imitations—what the hell?”

  Sperry and his nine comrades plunged with one accord. For the next ten minutes the captain’s headquarters was simply a whirlpool of flying fists and hurtling bodies.

  I have mentioned that these ten men were weak from lack of food. That fact was all that saved the Dickinson brothers; for ten minutes of lively exercise was all the ten men could endure, in spite of the circumstances.

  But ten minutes left an impression. The Dickinsons were the worst beaten-up men I have ever seen, and I have seen some bad ones in my time. When the news echoed through the ship, no one questioned the ethics of ten starved men attacking two overfed ones.

  Needless to say, before two hours passed, every hungry man, woman and child ate to his gizzard’s content. And before another hour passed, some new officers were installed. The S.S. Flashaway’s trouble was far from solved; but for the present the whole eight hundred were one big family picnic. Hope was restored, and the rejoicing lasted through many thousand miles of space.

  There was considerable mystery about the guns. Surprisingly, the people had developed an awe of the movie guns as if they were instruments of magic.

  Upon investigating, I was convinced that the captain and his brother had simply capitalized on this superstition. They had a sound enough motive for wanting to save food. But once their gun bluff had been established, they had become uncompromising oppressors. And when the occasion arose that their guns were challenged, they had simply crushed the skulls of their three attackers and faked the noises of explosions.

  But now the firearms were dead. And so was the Dickinson regime.

  But the menacing problem of too many mouths to feed still clung to the S.S. Flashaway like a hungry ghost determined to ride the ship to death.

  Six full months passed before the needed reform was forged.

  During that time everyone was allowed full rations. The famine had already taken its toll in weakened bodies, and seventeen persons—most of them young children—died. The doctors, released from the Dickinson regime, worked like Trojans to bring the rest back to health.

  The reform measure that went into effect six months after my arrival consisted of outright sterilization.

  The compulsory rule was sterilization for everyone except those born “‘within the quota”—and that quota, let me add, was narrowed down one half from Captain Dickinson’s two hundred to the most eligible one hundred. The disqualified one hundred now joined the ranks of the six hundred.

  And that was not all. By their own agreement, every within-the-quota family, responsible for bearing the Flashaway’s future children, would undergo sterilization operations after the second child was born.

  The seven hundred out-of-quota citizens, let it be said, were only too glad to submit to the simple sterilization measures in exchange for a right to live their normal lives. Yes, they were to have three squares a day. With an assured population decline in prospect for the coming century, this generous measure of food would not give out. Our surveys of the existing food supplies showed that these seven hundred could safely live their four-score years and die with full stomachs.r />
  Looking back on the six months work, I was fairly well satisfied that the doctors and the Council and I had done the fair, if drastic, thing. If I had planted seeds for further trouble with the Dickinson tribe, I was little concerned about it at the time.

  My conscience was, in fact, clear—except for one small matter. I was guilty of one slight act of partiality.

  I incurred this guilt shortly before I returned to the ice. The doctors and I, looking down from the balcony into the ballroom, chanced to notice a young couple who were obviously very much in love.

  The young man was Bob Sperry, the handsome, clear-eyed descendant of the Flashaway’s first and finest captain, the lad who had been the spokesman when I first came upon the starving mob.

  The girl’s name—and how it had clung in my mind!—was Louise Broscoe. Refreshingly beautiful, she reminded me for all the world of my own Louise (mine and Bill Broscoe’s).

  “It’s a shame,” one of the doctors commented, “that fine young blood has to fall outside the quota. But rules are rules.”

  With a shrugg of the shoulders he had already dismissed the matter from his mind—until I handed him something I had scribbled on a piece of paper.

  “We’ll make this one exception,” I said perfunctorily. “If any question ever arises, this statement relieves you doctors of all responsibility. This is my own special request.”

  CHAPTER V

  Wedding Bells

  One hundred years later my rash act came back to haunt me—and how! Bob Sperry had married Louise Broscoe, and the births of their two children had raised the unholy cry of “Favoritism!”

  By the year 2366, Bob Sperry and Louise Broscoe were gone and almost forgotten. But the enmity against me, the Keeper of the Traditions who played favorites, had grown up into a monster of bitter hatred waiting to devour me.

  It didn’t take me long to discover this. My first contact after I emerged from the ice set the pace.

  “Go tell your parents,” I said to the gang of brats that were playing ball in the spacious ballroom, “that Grimstone has arrived.”