Off The Main Sequence

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Of course, the government was blamed for the lives that were lost and the papers were merciless in their criticism at the failure to anticipate and force an evacuation of all the major cities.

  If Manning anticipated trouble, why did he not ask for evacuation?

  Well, as I see it, for this reason:

  A big city will not be, never has been, evacuated in response to rational argument. London never was evacuated on any major scale and we failed utterly in our attempt to force the evacuation of Berlin. The people of New York City had considered the danger of air raids since 1940 and were long since hardened to the thought.

  But the fear of a nonexistent epidemic of plague caused the most nearly complete evacuation of a major city ever seen.

  And don’t forget what we did to Vladivostok and Irkutsk and Moscow — those were innocent people, too. War isn’t pretty.

  I said luck played a part. It was bad navigation that caused one of our ships to dust Ryazan instead of Moscow, but that mistake knocked out the laboratory and plant which produced the only supply of military radioactives in the Eurasian Union. Suppose the mistake had been the other way around — suppose that one of the E. U. ships in attacking Washington, D.C., by mistake had included Ridpath’s shop forty-five miles away in Maryland?

  Congress reconvened at the temporary capital in St. Louis, and the American Pacification Expedition started the job of pulling the fangs of the Eurasian Union. It was not a military occupation in the usual sense; there were two simple objectives: to search out and dust all aircraft, aircraft plants, and fields, and locate and dust radiation laboratories, uranium supplies, and bodes of carnotite and pitchblende. No attempt was made to interfere with, or to replace, civil government.

  We used a two-year dust, which gave a breathing spell in which to consolidate our position. Liberal rewards were offered to informers, a technique which worked remarkably well not only in the E. U., but most parts of the world.

  The “weasel," an instrument to smell out radiation based on the electroscope-discharge principle and refined by Ridpath’s staff, greatly facilitated the work locating uranium and uranium ores. A grid of weasels properly spaced over a suspect area, could locate any important mass of uranium almost as handily as a direction-finder can spot a radio station.

  But, notwithstanding the excellent work of General Bulfinch and the Pacification Expedition as a whole, was the original mistake of dusting Ryazan that made the job possible of accomplishment.

  Anyone interested in the details of the pacification work done in 1945-6 should see the “Proceedings the American Foundation for Social Research" for paper entitled A Study of the Execution of the American Peace Policy from February, 1945. The de facto solution of the problem of policing the world against war left the United States with the much greater problem of perfecting a policy that would insure that the deadly power of the dust would never fall into unfit hands.

  The problem is as easy to state as the problem of squaring the circle and almost as impossible of accomplishment. Both Manning and the President believed that the United States must of necessity kee[ the power for the time being, until some permanent institution could be developed fit to retain it. The hazard was this: Foreign policy is lodged jointly in the hands of the President and the Congress. We were fortunate at the time in having a good President and adequate Congress, but that was no guarantee for the future. We have had unfit Presidents and power-hungry Congresses — oh, yes! Read the history of the Mexican War.

  We were about to hand over to future governments of the United States the power to turn the entire globe into an empire, our empire. And it was the sober opinion of the President that our characteristic and beloved democratic culture would not stand up under the temptation. Imperialism degrades both oppressor and oppressed.

  The President was determined that our sudden power should be used for the absolute minimum of maintaining peace in the world — the simple purpose of outlawing war and nothing else. It must not be used to protect American investments abroad, to coerce trade agreements, for any purpose but the simple abolition of mass killing.

  There is no science of sociology. Perhaps there will be, some day, when a rigorous physics gives a finished science of colloidal chemistry and that leads in turn to a complete knowledge of biology, and from there to a definitive psychology. After that we may begin to know something about sociology and politics. Sometime around the year 5000 A. D., maybe — if the human race does not commit suicide before then.

  Until then, there is only horse sense and rule of thumb and observational knowledge of probabilities. Manning and the President played by ear.

  The treaties with Great Britain, Germany and the Eurasian Union, whereby we assumed the responsibility for world peace and at the same time guaranteed the contracting nations against our own misuse of power, were rushed through in the period of relief and goodwill that immediately followed the termination of the Four-Days War. We followed the precedents established by the Panama Canal treaties, the Suez Canal agreements, and the Philippine Independence policy.

  But the purpose underneath was to commit future governments of the United States to an irrevocable benevolent policy.

  The act to implement the treaties by creating the Commission of World Safety followed soon after, and Colonel Manning became Mr. Commissioner Manning. Commissioners had a life tenure and the intention was to create a body with the integrity, the permanence and freedom from outside pressure possessed by the Supreme Court of the United States. Since the treaties contemplated an eventual joint trust, commissioners need not be American citizens — and the oath they took was to preserve the peace of the world.

  There was trouble getting the clause past the Congress! Every other similar oath had been to the Constitution of the United States.

  Nevertheless the Commission was formed. It took charge of world aircraft, assumed jurisdiction over radioactives, natural and artificial, and commenced the long slow task of building up the Peace Patrol.

  Manning envisioned a corps of world policemen, an aristocracy which, through selection and indoctrination, could be trusted with unlimited power over the life of every man, every woman, every child on the fate of the globe. For the power would be unlimited; the precautions necessary to insure the unbeatable weapon from getting loose in the world again made it axiomatic that its custodians would wield power that is safe only in the hands of Deity. There would be no one to guard those selfsame guardians. Their own characters and the watch they kept on each other would be all that stood between the race and disaster. For the first time in history, supreme political power was to be exerted with no possibility of checks and balances from the outside. Manning took up the task of perfecting it with a dragging subconscious conviction that it was too much for human nature.

  The rest of the Commission was appointed slowly, the names being sent to the Senate after long joint consideration by the President and Manning. The director of the Red Cross, an obscure little professor of history from Switzerland, Dr. Igor Rimski who had developed the Karst-Obre technique independently and whom the A. P. F. had discovered in prison after the dusting of Moscow — those three were the only foreigners. The rest of the list is well known.

  Ridpath and his staff were of necessity the original technical crew of the Commission; United States Army and Navy pilots its first patrolmen. Not all of the pilots available were needed; their records were searched, their habits and associates investigated, their mental processes and emotional attitudes examined by the best psychological research methods available — which weren’t good enough. Their final acceptance for the Patrol depended on two personal interviews, one with Manning, one with the President.

  Manning told me that he depended more on the President’s feeling for character than he did on all the association and reaction tests the psychologists could think up. “It’s like the nose of a bloodhound," he said. “In his forty years of practical politics he has seen more phonies than you and I will ever see and e
ach one was trying to sell him something. He can tell one in the dark."

  The long-distance plan included the schools for the indoctrination of cadet patrolmen, schools that were to be open to youths of any race, color, or nationality, and from which they would go forth to guard the peace of every country but their own. To that country a man would never return during his service. They were to be a deliberately expatriated band of Janizaries, with an obligation only to the Commission and to the race, and welded together with a carefully nurtured esprit de corps.

  It stood a chance of working. Had Manning been allowed twenty years without interruption, the original plan might have worked.

  The President’s running mate for reelection was the result of a political compromise. The candidate for Vice President was a confirmed isolationist who had opposed the Peace Commission from the first, but it was he or a party split in a year when the opposition was strong. The President sneaked back in but with a greatly weakened Congress; only his power of veto twice prevented the repeal of the Peace Act. The Vice President did nothing to help him, although he did not publicly lead the insurrection. Manning revised his plans to complete the essential program by the end of 1952, there being no way to predict the temper of the next administration.

  We were both overworked and I was beginning to realize that my health was gone. The cause was not far to seek; a photographic film strapped next to my skin would cloud in twenty minutes. I was suffering from cumulative minimal radioactive poisoning. No well defined cancer that could be operated on, but a systemic deterioration of function and tissue. There was no help for it, and there was work to be done. I’ve always attributed it mainly to the week I spent sitting on those canisters before the raid on Berlin.

  February 17, 1951. I missed the televue flash about the plane crash that killed the President because I was lying down in my apartment. Manning, by that time, was requiring me to rest every afternoon after lunch, though I was still on duty. I first heard about it from my secretary when I returned to my office, and at once hurried into Manning’s office.

  There was a curious unreality to that meeting. It seemed to me that we had slipped back to that day when I returned from England, the day that Estelle Karst died. He looked up. “Hello, John," he said.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Don’t take it so hard, chief," was all I could think of to say.

  Forty-eight hours later came the message from the newly sworn-in President for Manning to report to him. I took it in to him, an official despatch which I decoded. Manning read it, face impassive.

  “Are you going, chief?" I asked.

  “Eh? Why, certainly."

  I went back into my office, and got my topcoat, gloves, and briefcase.

  Manning looked up when I came back in. “Never mind, John," he said. “You’re not going." I guess I must have looked stubborn, for he added, “You’re not to go because there is work to do here. Wait a minute." He went to his safe, twiddled the dials, opened it and removed a sealed envelope which he threw on the desk between us. “Here are your orders. Get busy."

  He went out as I was opening them. I read them through and got busy. There was little enough time.

  The new President received Manning standing and in the company of several of his bodyguards and intimates. Manning recognized the senator who had led the movement to use the Patrol to recover expropriated holdings in South America and Rhodesia, as well as the chairman of the committee on aviation with whom he had had several unsatisfactory conferences in an attempt to work out a modus operandi for reinstituting commercial airlines.

  “You’re prompt, I see," said the President. “Good." Manning bowed.

  “We might as well come straight to the point," the Chief Executive went on. “There are going to be some changes of policy in the administration. I want your resignation."

  “I am sorry to have to refuse, sir."

  “We’ll see about that. In the meantime, Colonel Manning, you are relieved from duty."

  “Mr. Commissioner Manning, if you please."

  The new President shrugged. “One or the other, as you please. You are relieved, either way."

  “I am sorry to disagree again. My appointment is for life."

  “That’s enough," was the answer. “This is the United States of America. There can be no higher authority. You are under arrest."

  I can visualize Manning staring steadily at him for a long moment, then answering slowly, “You are physically able to arrest me, I will concede, but I advise you to wait a few minutes." He stepped to the window. “Look up into the sky."

  Six bombers of the Peace Commission patrolled over the Capitol. “None of those pilots is American born," Manning added slowly. “If you confine me, none of us here in this room will live out the day."

  There were incidents thereafter, such as the unfortunate affair at Fort Benning three days later, and the outbreak in the wing of the Patrol based in Lisbon and its resultant wholesale dismissals, but for practical purposes, that was all there was to the coup d’etat. Manning was the undisputed military dictator of the world.

  Whether or not any man as universally hated as Manning can perfect the Patrol he envisioned, make it self-perpetuating and trustworthy, I don’t know and — because of that week of waiting in a buried English hangar — I won’t be here to find out. Manning’s heart disease makes the outcome even more uncertain — he may last another twenty years; he may keel over dead tomorrow — and there is no one to take his place. I’ve set this down partly to occupy the short time I have left and partly to show there is another side to any story, even world dominion.

  Not that I would like the outcome, either way. If there is anything to this survival-after-death business I am going to look up the man who invented the bow and arrow and take him apart with my bare hands For myself, I can’t be happy in a world where any man or group of men, has the power of death over you and me, our neighbors, every human, every animal, every living thing. I don’t like anyone to have that kind power.

  And neither does Manning.

  Universe

  Astounding Science Fiction, May 1941

  The Proxima Centauri Expedition, sponsored by the Jordan Foundation in 2119, was the first recorded attempt to reach the nearer stars of this galaxy. Whatever its unhappy fate we can only conjecture.

  — Quoted from The Romance of Modern Astrography, by Franklin Buck, published by Lux Transcriptions, Ltd., 3.50 cr.

  “There’s a mutie! Look out!"

  At the shouted warning, Hugh Hoyland ducked, with nothing to spare. An egg-sized iron missile clanged against the bulkhead just above his scalp with force that promised a fractured skull. The speed with which he crouched had lifted his feet from the floor plates. Before his body could settle slowly to the deck, he planted his feet against the bulkhead behind him and shoved. He went shooting down the passageway in a long, flat dive, his knife drawn and ready.

  He twisted in the air, checked himself with his feet against the opposite bulkhead at the turn in the passage from which the mutie had attacked him, and floated lightly to his feet. The other branch of the passage was empty. His two companions joined him, sliding awkwardly across the floor plates.

  “Is it gone?" demanded Alan Mahoney.

  “Yes," agreed Hoyland. “I caught a glimpse of it as it ducked down that hatch. A female, I think. Looked like it had four legs."

  “Two legs or four, we’ll never catch it now," commented the third man.

  “Who the Huff wants to catch it?" protested Mahoney.

  “I don’t."

  “Well, I do, for one," said Hoyland. “By Jordan, if its aim had been two inches better, I’d be ready for the Converter."

  “Can’t either one of you two speak three words without swearing?" the third man disapproved. “What if the Captain could hear you?" He touched his forehead reverently as he mentioned the Captain.

  “Oh, for Jordan’s sake," snapped Hoyland, “don’t be so stuffy, Mort Tyler. You’re not a scientis
t yet. I reckon I’m as devout as you are; there’s no grave sin in occasionally giving vent to your feelings. Even the scientists do it. I’ve heard 'em."

  Tyler opened his mouth as if to expostulate, then apparently thought better of it.

  Mahoney touched Hoyland on the arm. “Look, Hugh," he pleaded, “let’s get out of here. We’ve never been this high before. I’m jumpy — I want to get back down to where I can feel some weight on my feet."

  Hoyland looked longingly toward the hatch through which his assailant had disappeared while his hand rested on the grip of his knife, then be turned to Mahoney. “OK, kid," he agreed, “It’s along trip down anyhow."

  He turned and slithered back toward the hatch, whereby they had reached the level where they now were, the other two following him. Disregarding the ladder by which they had mounted, he stepped off into the opening and floated slowly down to the deck fifteen feet below, Tyler and Mahoney close behind him. Another hatch, staggered a few feet from the first, gave access to a still lower deck. Down, down, down, and still farther down they dropped, tens and dozens of decks, each silent, dimly lighted, mysterious. Each time they fell a little faster, landed a little harder. Mahoney protested at last, “Let’s walk the rest of the way, Hugh. That last jump hurt my feet."

  “All right. But it will take longer. How far have we got to go? Anybody keep count?"

  “We’ve got about seventy decks to go to reach farm country," answered Tyler.

  “How d’you know?" demanded Mahoney suspiciously.

  “I counted them, stupid. And as we came down I took one away for each deck."

  “You did not. Nobody but a scientist can do numbering like that. Just because you’re learning to read and write you think you know everything."

  Hoyland cut in before it could develop into a quarrel. “Shut up, Alan. Maybe he can do it. He’s clever about such things. Anyhow, it feels like about seventy decks — I’m heavy enough."

  “Maybe he’d like to count the blades on my knife."