Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "I'd appreciate that," I said. "Would it be all right if I took these newspapers back to my room, now?"

  "Just dandy," she said. "Sorry to be boring you."

  "You're not," I told her earnestly. "Believe me, you're not."

  * * * * *

  The papers were interesting. Nowhere was it stated, but a glance at the front pages showed they were on opposite sides of the political fence. On my planet, we keep the editorial opinion in the editorial columns. Not so with these. The wire services were impartial and the accounts in both papers identical. That was as far as the similarities went. Reading the other accounts was like living in two worlds.

  An informed people will always be free. Well, perhaps these weren't typical.

  I was to see papers a lot worse than these before long.

  I was just starting the want ads when the knock came at the door. It was the maid, again; the jeweler was at the house.

  A small man, suave and dark, with the manners of a diplomat, fawning like a puppy.

  It was a perfect stone, he decided. He had, he was sure, a customer who would be interested. Would I accept eight thousand dollars for it?

  I said I would, and he left.

  We were in the living room, and Jean stood near the tall front windows. She had changed to a suit of some soft blue material.

  "As soon as I get the money," I said, "we're going out for some fun, aren't we? I owe you for a beef barbecue."

  "You don't owe me anything," she said. She didn't look at me.

  "You'll get over him," I said.

  "Him--?" She turned to look at me curiously.

  "That man you're in love with, that man you told me about last night."

  "Oh," she said. "Oh. I was drunk last night, Fred. I'm not in love."

  Silence. That attraction of hers pulling at me like some localized gravity, silence, and the beating of my heart. Silence, my hands trembling, my knees aching.

  "I'd like to see some fights," I said. "Would you like to?"

  She frowned. "Not particularly." She stared at me, shook her head, and looked away.

  "Well," I said, "I haven't finished the want ads."

  "Of course," she said. "Get right back to them, Freddy. You never know when you'll find a bargain."

  They weren't very interesting. I kept seeing her standing next to the window, looking unhappy, frustrated, somehow. I kept seeing the soft fabric of the suit clinging to her beautiful body and the proud grace of her posture.

  I went back to the house, and she was sitting on the davenport near the fireplace. She looked up without expression.

  I asked, "Is there a library around here?"

  She sighed, and rose. She said, "Follow me."

  She led me to a room whose four walls were lined with books. There was a wide glass door leading out from this to the patio.

  "Dad's old retreat," she said. "Everything from Aristotle to Zola. If there's something you don't see, don't hesitate to ask. We aim to please."

  She closed the door behind her.

  I didn't gorge; I only nibbled. But fed enough to realize this was a deep, rich culture; this planet had produced some first rate minds and exceptional talents. But still, with all this to choose from, the people seemed to prefer Milton Berle. And the people were in command.

  I was reading Ambrose Bierce when she came in. She looked at the book, and at me. "Lunch," she said quietly.

  I put the book down, and rose. "The unwelcome guest?"

  "I'd tell you, if you were."

  "Would you, honestly?"

  She didn't answer that. She smiled, and said, "There are some fights at Ocean Park, tonight."

  We saw those, and later, some amateur fights. Strange spectacles they were, men belaboring each other, but fascinating, too. The amateurs were less talented, but more friendly, leaving the ring arm in arm, if both were still conscious. The professionals displayed no such amicability.

  Why? I asked Jean. What was the difference between the amateurs and the professionals?

  "Money," she said, and looked at me strangely. "Didn't you really know that?"

  I lied with a nod. "I wanted you to see it, and to word it for yourself."

  "Look," she said with controlled irritation, "if I want any curbstone philosophy, I can read one of those corny columnists. I certainly don't have to sit in a screaming mob watching a couple of morons pound each other bloody to arrive at a stupid generality like that."

  "Let's get a hamburger," I said.

  She just stood there, on the sidewalk. "You--you--"

  People were turning to stare.

  "Farmer?" I suggested.

  "Oh," she said, "oh, oh--"

  "Or a cheeseburger," I added.

  There was a small crowd, now, openly watching. One man said, "Hey, this is better than them jerks inside. Slug him, lady."

  Jean started to laugh, and so did I, and then all of us were laughing, the whole crowd.

  We didn't go to a hamburger place. We went to a place where we could dance, too, and I had a small glass of wine, and wondered why we'd outgrown alcohol, on our planet.

  It was a night I will never forget. It was a night I learned how much she meant to me. There wasn't ever going to be anybody else for me, after that night.

  * * * * *

  We were married in Las Trenos at five-thirty the next morning.

  And still, I didn't tell her where I was from. When the time came, she could go back with me, but I couldn't risk sharing that secret with her. I didn't have the right to jeopardize my people by giving her information she might divulge unintentionally.

  The world was our playground, and my study hall American first. We drove east, taking our time, while I tried to get the temper of the people. I never overlooked a chance to talk to people; the papers were no substitute for that. And between the papers and the people, I found that only the hysterics were voluble, only the biased articulate. And yet, it was a country with a liberal and progressive tradition, a country that should have been informed beyond the average.

  Knowledge had been made too easy; the glib were in command.

  Fear, Jars had said, and it was becoming increasingly clear to me that he was closer to it than Deering. For Deering's viewpoint, I had a working model, I had Jean.

  In the canyon city, New York, high in our room at the Empire-Hudson, she said, "You're an awfully nosy guy, Dream Boat."

  "I like to talk to people," I said. "Haven't you been getting enough attention?"

  "As much as I can handle," she said. "And I'm enjoying every second of it. But it seems to be getting you down."

  "You or the people?" I asked, and mussed her hair.

  She didn't answer that. "Fred," she said, "do you remember that day at breakfast, long ago? Do you remember asking about Ambrose Bierce and Amelia Earhart?"

  "I guess I do."

  "Don't be evasive, Fred. You know you do."

  I pulled her close. "Is this going to be a questioning period? Is this one of those marriages?"

  "Now, Fred--" she said, against my shoulder. "Be serious, please, Fred. Please be serious--oh, you, Fred--"

  * * * * *

  We went to England. What's that phrase they have--"muddling through"? That's what they were doing. Proudly, with a minimum of complaint, with no thought of rebellion, with no rationalizing or projection, living as the submerged tenth lives in America, and seeming to think that--well, things could be worse.

  In Italy, it was the kids, the beggars and procurers and thieves and even murderers who were kids. In Spain we found much of the same. In France it was all the heat and no light, charges and counter-charges, lies and counter-lies, confusion and corruption.

  In Berlin, it was Russia. The cloud that darkens the world looms darkest in Berlin. The apathy that grips the world is epitomized in Berlin. A people with no sense of guilt and no reason for hope, nor stirring to the promise of a re-armed Germany. A bled and devastated people, shorn of their chief strength, their national pride.
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  Jean said, "I've seen enough. Haven't you, Fred? How much can you take?"

  "One more," I said. "Russia."

  "Don't be silly," she said. "How would we get into Russia?"

  "We wouldn't. But I would."

  "Look, baby, whither though goest, I--"

  "Up to here," I said. "Who's the big boss in this family?"

  "Now, Fred--"

  "Now, Jean--"

  "Get away from me. This time, it won't work. If you think that for one second you're going into that no man's land alone--and--"

  It took some talking, to convince her, it took some lies. She'd wait, she agreed finally, in Switzerland. In comfort for a change.

  It took two diamonds to get to the right man, and it took a formula from there. A formula that is learned in the first year of college chemistry on my planet, a formula for converting an element. A formula this planet couldn't have been more than a decade short of learning, anyway.

  The last man I saw in Berlin went along, for which I was grateful, though he didn't know that. I don't speak Russian, but he did.

  They were careful, they don't even trust themselves. I told Nilenoff the formula came from America, and there were more, but I needed money. I didn't tell him the fallacy in the formula; it had taken us three years to realize what it was.

  My trips were limited, directed, and avoided the seamier side. I saw the modern humming factories, and the mammoth farms. No unemployment, no waste, no "capitalistic blood sucking"--and the lowest standard of living in the industrialized world. A vast, bleak land peopled with stringless puppets, with walking cadavers.

  I remembered the faces of the crowds and the strangely mixed people in America, their obvious feelings, emotions and rivalries. There was nothing strange about these people of Russia--they were dead, spiritually dead.

  The country that could have been a cultural and industrial center of the world was a robot-land of nine million square miles, getting ready for war, getting ready to take over the dreams of Hitler and make them come true.

  I came out with a promise of ten thousand American dollars for every one of the future formulas I had assured them I could get to. I came out with the knowledge that I'd be a watched man from now on.

  In Switzerland, Jean said, "Well--?"

  "I'm ready to go home," I told her.

  "America, you mean?"

  "Where else?"

  "I've been alone," she said, "and thinking. I've gone back to Sunset and Pacific Coast Highway and traced it all forward from there. And I don't think America's your home."

  Very cool her voice, very tense her face. I smiled at her.

  She didn't smile in return. "Fred--we're married."

  "I'm glad," I said. "Aren't you?"

  "It's no time for the light touch." Tears in her eyes. "Fred, are you a--a Russian spy?"

  I shook my head.

  "But--"

  It was a clear night, and I went to the window. How it shone, in that clear air. Jean came over to stand next to me.

  I pointed, and said, "There's my home."

  "Venus," she said. "Fred, for heaven's sake--I'm serious!"

  "Some day," I said, "this planet will learn how to see through our manufactured fog. Some day they will develop the vision we developed a century ago. And--"

  "Damn it, Fred, be serious. If you'd know what I've gone through, alone here, thinking back on all the crazy things you've said and done. What have you told me about yourself, what do I know?"

  "Nothing," I said. "And what have I asked you about yourself? It's a matter of faith, Jean."

  "Faith? Running all over the country like fugitives, financed by those damned diamonds, nosing into this and into that, and then running off to Russia, all alone. With what you'd learned, Fred?"

  I shook my head, resentment stirring in me.

  "Remember when we met? In Santa Monica--right there, next to the beach. You didn't have a thing but the clothes on your back and a bagful of diamonds. Was it a sub that brought you that far, Fred?"

  "No," I said, "and you wouldn't believe me if I told you."

  "Try me, and see," she said. She was rigid, and near hysteria.

  "All right. I came there in a space sphere from Venus."

  She started to sob, a wild, lonely sound and I moved forward to take her in my arms.

  Her fingers clawed my face, her high heel smashed my instep. "Get out," she screamed, "get out, get out, get out--"

  I got out. I went to the first floor washroom and cleaned up my bloody face, and then went into the bar. This was one habit I'd picked up on the planet.

  When I came up to the suite, later, I didn't even check to see if she was in the washroom. I flopped down on the davenport and didn't know anything for the next twelve hours.

  She was gone, when I came to. She'd checked out before I'd come back to the room, the night before.

  I missed the plane she took from France. I missed her by a day in New York. I went back to the big house with the high pillars on Sunset Boulevard.

  And she wasn't there.

  She'd come back to it, I knew. I moved in, to wait. I wasn't going home without her; I wasn't even sure I was going home with her. I was involved, now, in this planet, almost as crazy as the rest of them.

  I sat. I did some drinking, but mostly I sat, going back over all our days, reading nothing, enjoying nothing, just remembering.

  The Korean business started and the headlines grew uglier, and the jackals screamed and the people grew more confused.

  One day, the maid told me I had a visitor. I was in the library and I told her to send him back.

  When he came in, he closed the door behind him. I'd never seen him, before, but he said, "We've been looking for three weeks."

  "We?"

  "Thirty of us," he said. "What happened? Jars sent me."

  "Oh," I said. "I can't come, now. I'm--married--"

  He smiled. "If you knew what a mess it's been. We've got men all over the planet. Does your wife--know?"

  "She thinks I'm crazy," I said. "Look, I--"

  "I'm not going to argue," he said. "Just make your report, and I'll pick it up, tonight."

  Five minutes after he was gone, I was packing. I knew he wasn't coming back for any report. He was coming back for me, and it didn't much matter to him if I wanted to come, or not. I was coming, or staying here--dead.

  What I didn't realize is that they wanted me to run, to get out where I could be taken with a minimum of interference.

  They got me the other side of Blythe, in the middle of nowhere. A clear night in the desert, and headlights coming up from behind and then the big, black car crowding me off the flat road, into the sand.... And darkness.

  * * * * *

  Deering sighed and shook his head. "Corruption, Werig? Was it the corruption, or the girl?"

  "I've made my report," I said. "Don't worry about them. They've got enough to worry about without worrying about us."

  "Another war, it looks like," Deering said. "It could be the last one, you know. What was the girl--your wife like, Fred? Was she pretty?"

  "Beautiful," I said.

  "And the people--fear, is it fear?"

  "I don't know. Their vice is fear, but they have some virtues."

  Deering's voice was quiet. "Jars wanted me to ask you--about your wife. Where is she? Is she coming with you? It was forbidden."

  "I don't know where she is, she's not coming with me, and I know it was forbidden. But where is Jars? He has been avoiding me, hasn't he? Why?"

  "He has been pleading for you, before the assembly." Deering rose, and went to the window, to look out. "Who will win this war that's shaping up among the huddlers, Fred?"

  "I don't know. I'm not sure I give a damn."

  Deering continued to look out the window. "The gray nation, the mixed nation, this America; they have some promise of the light, have they not?"

  "Some."

  "But this black nation, this nation of robots, there is no chance o
f of light there?"

  "Not under their present leaders. If they should win the war the planet would be set back five hundred years."

  Deering shook his head, and turned to face me sadly. "It would be worse than that. If they should win this war shaping up, there would be no planet for them to rule."

  I stared at him, not believing, still so bound up in my trip I couldn't believe his words. Love,--faith, fear, Jean--were running through my mind. And Jean...?

  Deering answered everything for me. "We can't take the chance," he said. "We will abolish the planet. The assembly so decided this morning."

  * * *

  Contents

  THE MIGHTY DEAD

  by William Campbell Gault

  On its surface the choice was an easy one--Doak Parker's career in Washington against a highly suspect country girl he had just met.

  Doak Parker was thinking of June, when the light flashed. He was thinking of the two months' campaign and the very probable probability of his knocking her off this week-end. It was going to be a conquest to rank among his best. It was going to be....

  The buzzer buzzed, the light flashed and the image of Ryder appeared on his small desk-screen. Ryder said, "Come in, Doak. A little job for the week-end."

  No, Doak thought, no, no, no! Not this week-end. Not this particular triumphant looming week-end. No! He said, "Be right there, Chief."

  Ryder was sitting behind his desk when Doak entered. Ryder was a man of about sixty, with a lined, weary face and a straggling mustache. He nodded at the chair across the desk from him.

  Ryder depressed a button on his desk and the screen beyond him began to glow. Ryder said, "An electronic transcript of a phone call I received this morning from former Senator Elmer Arnold. You know who he is, I guess, Doak."

  "Author of the Arnold Law?" Doak smiled. "Who doesn't?"

  Then the image of former Senator Arnold came on the screen. He didn't look any more than a hundred and ten years old, a withered and thin lipped man with a complexion like ashes. He began to talk.

  "Ryder, I guess you know I'm no scatterbrain and I guess you know I'm not one to cry wolf--but there's something damned funny going on in the old Fisher place on the Range Road. You better send a man down here, and I mean quick. You have him contact me."