Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Everett B. Cole

  Somehow, the shift passed and he staggered to his room, slept, and went to work again. As the days passed, and grew into weeks, Varon gradually became acquainted with his fellow workers, but there was something still lacking. He had tried playing tungo, but it hadn’t worked out. At first the game was expensive, then profitable, then boring. When the time came that his Combinations worked out exactly as he wished, he was pleased, but the pleasure quickly turned to embarrassment. He stopped playing tungo, and turned his attention to other activities, but there was a constraint. As his paralysis faded and disappeared, he joined in some of the informal sports, but again, he was not fully interested. Too, he noted a certain resentment, and antagonism underlying tire sports. The losers smiled and congratulated the winners, and the winners praised the losers for their skill, but it was not wholly convincing.

  And then, there was the little clique, headed by Cenro, who seemed to take delight in pranks at the expense of the “nid.” More and more, he found himself drifting down town to the library.

  He dropped the small coin into the turnstile, walked into the lobby, and turned, disregarding the elevators—they were for independent citizens, anyway. He walked up the long stairs to the catalogue room. At first, through force of habit, he started toward the historical section, but then he changed his mind. Instead, lie decided, he’d try something else. He turned the huge leaves of the catalogue, scanning the title slots. Finally, he came to an interesting looking title. He pulled the card out, examining it. Under the title, “Other Worlds in Space,” was a short description of the book. It was listed as a fanciful account of the possibilities of life in the rest of the universe. The reading fee was twenty kel. He carried the card over to an attendant’s desk and laid it on the counter.

  The girl finished her comments to the other attendants, then crossed slowly over to him. She glanced disparagingly at the worker’s clothing, then picked up the card. Again, she looked at the man before her, wondering what a common workman would want with a book like that. Well, it was in the open stacks, she realized, so there was no reason for refusing it. She tapped out the code number for the book, dropped the card into the suspense box, and went back to her conversation.

  “So, I says to him, ‘Listen, you, if you think I’ll go out with just some common assembly hand—me, a clerical—you’re crazy.’ The nerve of the guy!”

  There was a murmur of assent, then a smallish man, dressed in the tight-lilting costume of the professional entertainer class walked up to the counter. The girls stepped on each other to take care of him. Back of the counter, a low hiss and a thump indicated the arrival of a group of books from the stacks. No one paid any attention.

  At last, the entertainer got his book. The girls drifted to other parts of the counter to take care of the waiting patrons, and one of them went over to the conveyer. Quickly, she glanced at the tags on the books, then brought them to the counter. One, she laid before Varon.

  “Twenty kel,” she told him.

  Harl shoved the coins forward on the counter. She looked at them, then dropped them into the slot, stamped the book card, and put it into the “in use” file. Varon walked upstairs to the reading room, showed the book to the girl at the gate, and chose a table.

  The book was a flight of fancy on the part of a prominent astronomer. He outlined the known facts about some of the major stars, went into the possibilities of interstellar travel, described his own conception of a spaceship and its controls, and went into detail on the possibilities of life under conditions other than those familiar to his readers. Varon found himself amusedly criticizing some of these possibilities. Of course, no race had ever developed without first using tools. That was a basic necessity. In their beginnings, all of the advanced races had been physically equipped to design and use some form of tool, but there were many of the elder races who had evolved—

  Suddenly, he realized what he was thinking.

  He raised his head, looking at the reading room from a different viewpoint. Then, he looked down at the book in his hands. An obstruction finally shattered, and his “memory returned like a stream flooding over the remains of a dam. He knew who he was. He knew where he came from. He

  remembered why he came, and how, and he could piece together that scene in Empress Miralu Street. Also, he recognized with a sickening sense of loss his intimate concern with that mysterious destruction of a village in Timlar, which had filled the news for several days. And he recognized his personal interest in the explosion and fire in Klewor Street.

  And he’d thought his troubles back in the hospital were bad.

  And he’d resented the unspoken attitude of his fellows at the Establishment, who seemed to feel that he was somehow alien.

  He was.

  It had started cycles ago, back on Kleira—

  The cassettes lying on the desk made an imposing array, but Klion Meinora looked at them unhappily.

  “I still don’t see what’s wrong with it,” he protested. “It’s a perfectly logical development, done from authentic records and sources.”

  “Yes,” admitted Donir Sa Klaron, “it’s logical, but is logic the only requirement in an Archaeological Synthesis?”

  Meinora squirmed. “No,” he said reluctantly, “it can only be applied to short sequences.” He looked back at the cassettes. “Then, variation must be taken into account, and new points of reference must be established, after which a further logical sequence may be deduced.”

  Klaron nodded, then waited.

  For a while, Meinora looked at him expectantly, then, “But I did use reference points,” he defended himself. “From personal observation?”

  “Well, no. No, I didn’t actually go out and set up my automatic observers too many times. I got most of my material from Exploratory Corps reports and from records and reconstructions in the Celstorian Collection. That’s legitimate, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” agreed the older man. “Of course it’s legitimate, and a good many students make up their theses that way, but I’d expected something more from you.” He leaned back for a moment, looking at his student. “You’re young, Klion. As an individual, you have lived but a short time, but your race is old. I have students from the younger races, too. Some of them are older than yourself, but they are also younger. From them, I expect certain things. So much, and no more.” He sighed. “Education is peculiar here on Kleira, my son. There are no gradations of achievement, you know.

  One doesn’t follow a prescribed course. He continues to study until he has gotten all he can. A few drop out, deciding they cannot understand. Sometimes, they return later, and finish.” Klaron looked out of the window at the wide vista of the planet. Then, he leaned forward.

  “What is the real purpose of Archaeological Synthesis, Klion?”

  “Why, it’s the study and analysis of primitive trends, coupled with known development, for the purpose of establishing rules and laws of historical sequence.”

  “Very good. But what follows?” Again, Klion moved uncomfortably. “Well,” he continued, “trends must be positively authenticated and traced. Derivatives and reconstructions should be kept to a minimum. Do you mean that my conclusions were colored by preconceived ideas?”

  “Well, there is always that possibility, but that wasn’t exactly what I was thinking of. I could accept this, but I think you could do better. You give hints of a serious objective here. What is it?”

  “I think that the social and ethical factors have been neglected in consideration of the transition from the Mechanical-Industrial era to the age of Empathy. The mechanics of the transition have been explored, but there is still something missing, and I think I can add something in the area of ethics. I used Kleira as a reference frame, since I’ve studied here for some lime, and there is quite a lot of authentic material on the last war of destruction.”

  “And your reference points for extrapolation?”

  “Well, there were Polymar’s observations. I took some data from Exploratory C
orps reports in Sector Seven. There was some excellent synthesis in the Celstorian Archives, and . . . well, I did some inductive reasoning myself. I took several derivatives and built up the path of greatest probability.”

  Klaron leaned back, spreading his hands on the desk. “Neither Polymar’s observations nor the Corps’ surveys were taken from exactly your point of view, were they?”

  Meinora shook his head. “No,” he stated decisively. “No, they were not. I had to—” He broke off, then leaned forward. “I see what you’re driving at,” he decided. “I should go out, set up my own observations on planets specifically picked by myself from survey. I should be my own source, then come in and make my reconstruction.”

  Klaron nodded slightly, then waited.

  “But, I can’t go out for cycle after cycle, living like a Spacer, seeing no one, making no social contacts.”

  “The Free Citizens seem to like that sort of life.”

  “But they’re different. They must like solitude. They repair their own equipment—even build a lot of it themselves. I don’t believe they need credits. Certainly, they never seem to have any.”

  “Space is big, and far from empty,” commented Klaron. “Everything necessary for life is out there, if you have a ship and a matter converter.”

  “True enough.” Klion thought for a moment. “I could work as well out there as on a planet, but I’d still want companionship, and some occasional diversion.”

  “Well, you could try getting acquainted with the Free Citizens. You’ll find they have a lot to offer.”

  “The Spacers?” Klion stared at his teacher. “But they seem to be such an unsocial lot. Sort of . . . oh, I don’t know . . . uncultured, I guess.” Klaron smiled gently. “Go on out there and see,” he advised. “That’s where you will find a good many members of the elder races.”

  Meinora looked at him incredulously. The teacher nodded gravely.

  “A good many,” he repeated. “And, if you get bored, or need credits, you can always try writing entertainment.” He touched one of the cassettes. “Your work has literary merit. Why not rework some of these sequences into stories?”

  For a time, Meinora looked at the Archaeologist, then he started putting his tape cassettes back in their cases.

  “I could do it, of course,” he agreed. He closed the case and turned, looking out at the horizon. “I’ll try it,” he decided. “Thanks for the advice.”

  “It’s quite all right.” Klaron touched a button on his desk, and a portion of the wall slid aside. “If you wish, you can bring your observations in when they’re completed. I’ll go over them with you.”

  “Thanks again.” Klion Meinora stepped out on the balcony, stood looking over the landscape far below, then touched his levitator control and stepped over the edge. He dropped a bit, then rose into the sky.

  For a few standard galactic cycles, his little ship darted busily over the galaxy. He gathered data—evaluated—synthesized. Then, he started rechecking, and another period of data-gathering commenced.

  He whistled contentedly as he checked a series of tapes. They were very satisfactory. Some extrapolation would be necessary, of course, and a little derivative work would be required, but this last observer group had cleared up a lot of the rough spots. Three distinct paths of development were now plainly indicated, and variants from them would be almost certain to give a valid reconstruction. He had a couple of observer groups paneled, and one more check should complete his field work. Then, a little correlation would give him something he could take back. He felt certain that Klaron would be pleased with his results this time.

  He glanced over at the control console. The tiny pilot light was beginning to glow red. As he rose and crossed the room, a buzzer warned that the ship was coming out of trans-light at destination. He sat down, setting up the viewscreens to look at the system he had planned to use as the site of his last observation before returning to Kleira.

  But it was the wrong system. He looked at the screen incredulously. Where a G3 sun should be, was a small FI. Instead of the expected nine planets, there were five. Obviously, something had gone wrong. He pulled the tape out of the course tracer, examining it, then he got out the Star Catalogue, and started comparison check. Ships didn’t just drift off course without a reason, and he knew that there would have been plenty of warnings in case of circuit failure. Step by step, he started rechecking his computations.

  It was a simple mistake. Anyone could have made the transposition, but that didn’t minimize the thing. In the fourth step, it was just an error of three units in the third and fourth significants, but in the fifth step, it was bigger. In the final course settings—Klion growled to himself in annoyance as he checked the probable coordinates, set them up on the index keyboard, and punched the Catalogue activator.

  The viewer was blank. Of course, there was a background of stars, but center was empty. The tabular explained matters.

  Out toward the periphery. Galactic Sector Twelve had not been completely explored. It was a comparatively new sector, partially occupied by the Hirandaan Empire, which controlled a small star duster and declined to treat with the Federation. Since the Mirandoans were merely anxious to maintain their own independence, were not inclined toward conquest of Federation planets, and had offered no violence to Federation citizens, established policy forbade any interference with them, and the outer periphery behind the Empire had yet to be visited by Federation explorers. The whole area of space was simply dismissed by the Catalogue as “Not Checked.”

  Meinora swung to the control Console again, and set the ship into a slow roll, bringing various stars to center screen. The spectrum analyzer picked up the faint light from each in turn, and the computer hummed softly as it accepted the offered information. Finally, the pilot walked over to the Computer, touched the “Conclusions” switch, and watched the tape come out. It was identical with the probable position computation. He punched the necessary keys and discovered that the boundaries of the Mirandoans did not include his position. He was in free, unexplored space, where no star had been noted, where no exploration cruiser had ever come. And there was a star. A little star, of course, with only five planets, but a star.

  As a Federation Citizen, he knew he should report the characteristics of the system and allow the Exploratory Corps to make the first contacts. Of course, there was no iron-bound law, but it was customary. He could, of course, ascertain the level of civilization, if any, and he could also request and secure priority on observer rights if his research would be furthered by observation of the newly discovered system, but he should not contact the civilization in any way, nor should the planet observers until the Corps had made their preliminary survey.

  He looked at the small system. Elis approach had been such that the nose of his ship was nearly at right angles to the ecliptic, and the small star with its satellites looked like a text illustration in the viewscreen. The selective magnification, which brought the planets to perceptible size, heightened the illusion. He increased the magnification, examining each of the planets in turn. Two of them presented the slightly woolly appearance which indicated atmosphere. The outlines of the others were hard and sharp. He fanned out his detectors to maximum sensitivity, but was unable to discover any trace of space travel. Finally, he approached the third planet from the sun, nosed into the atmosphere, and took checks. He quickly reversed course, and dashed out into space again. Nothing human could live in that stuff. Possibly a K’mardin observer might find something of interest, but he wanted no part of it.

  He approached the fourth planet. Its atmosphere tested satisfactorily, and he approached the surface, detectors and viewscreens set at high resolution. The planet resembled Kleira amazingly. It had the same general configuration—three major land masses, cut up into sub-continents by the seas. He approached one of the major continents, checking for signs of civilization, then he bent closer to his viewplate.

  This planet was just what he had dreamed of. The dev
elopment stage was perfect. They were well along in the mechanical age, but there was obvious evidence that the social structure was lagging. Each of the cities was divided between luxury and squalor. There was positive evidence of archaic structure still in use. Even in the modern parts of the cities, some of the buildings were well designed, clean, beautiful, while others were more like shacks. Still others had once been clean, even luxurious, but were now run down, dirty, and ramshackle. An exclamation of pleasure escaped the observer. This was the way he had pictured Kleira in the days just before the War of Destruction. Here was the perfect reference point. Even the inhabitants were so nearly identical with those of Kleira as to be completely indistinguishable.

  He reached to the communicator to call Sector Twelve, then slowly pulled his hand back as he remembered.

  This was an undiscovered planet. There were no data available. The Exploratory Officer wouldn’t simply grant routine permission to planet observers. He would set up his own patrol and make observations first. For two or three cycles, the Corps wouldn’t want any outside observers stumbling about underfoot. It might even lake longer than that. Of course, they would give him their observational results, but Meinora had definite ideas by now as to what he wanted, and the Corps didn’t make that kind of observation.

  They were interested in physical trends, in topography, climate, things biological. They did take ethnic and social notes, but these were side issues. They were very seldom concerned with the details, for instance, of a political coup, of an industrial conflict, or of the historical and ethical researches of the native scholars. They had little interest in the day-to-day life of the average native. But these were the things Meinora needed. He could see himself with not one, but several reference points. He sat back, watching the viewplate as it reflected the activities of a city.