Selected Stories of Alfred Bester

by Alfred Bester

  "Oddy," he said, "have you ever had the fantasy that some day you might wake up and discover you were a king?"

  Oddy blushed.

  "I see you have. You know, every man has entertained that dream. It's called the Mignon Complex. The usual pattern is: You learn your parents have only adopted you and that you are actually and rightfully the King of . . . of . . ."

  "Ruritania," said Hrrdnikkisch, who had made a study of Stone Age Fiction.

  "Yes, sir," Oddy muttered. "I've had that dream."

  "Well," Bellanby said quietly, "it's come true. You are a king."

  Oddy stared while they explained and explained and explained. First, as a college boy, he was wary and suspicious of a joke. Then, as an idolater, he was almost persuaded by the men he most admired. And finally, as a human animal, he was swept away by the exaltation of security. Not power, not glory, not wealth thrilled him, but security alone. Later he might come to enjoy the trimmings, but now he was released from fear. He need never worry again.

  "Yes," exclaimed Oddy. "Yes, yes, yes! I understand. I understand what you want me to do." He surged up excitedly from his chair and circled the illuminated walls, trembling with joy. Then he stopped and turned.

  "And I'm grateful," he said. "Grateful to all of you for what you've been trying to do. It would have been shameful if I'd been selfish ... or mean. . . . Trying to use this for myself. But you've shown me the way.

  It's to be used for good. Always!"

  Johansen nodded happily.

  "I'll always listen to you," Oddy went on. "I don't want to make any mistakes. Ever!" He paused and blushed again. "That dream about being a king ... I had that when I was a kid. But

  here at the school I've had something bigger. I used to wonder

  what would happen if I was the one man who could run the

  world. I used to dream about the kind, generous things I'd

  do __ "

  "Yes," said Bellanby. "We know, Oddy. We've all had that dream too. Every man does."

  "But it isn't a dream any more," Oddy laughed. "It's reality. I can do it. I can make it happen."

  "Start with the war," Migg said sourly.

  "Of course," said Oddy. "The war first; but then well go on from there, won't we? I'll make sure the war never starts, but then we'll do big things . . . great things! Just the five of us in private. Nobody'll know about us. We'll be ordinary people, but we'll make life wonderful for everybody. If I'm an angel. . . like you say . . . then I'll spread heaven around me as far as I can reach."

  "But start with the war," Migg repeated.

  "The war is the first disaster that must be averted, Oddy," Bellanby said. "If you don't want this disaster to happen, it will never happen."

  "And you want to prevent that tragedy, don't you?" said Johansen.

  "Yes," answered Oddy. "I do."

  On March 20, the war broke. The Comity of Nations and Der Realpolitik aus Terra mobilized and struck.

  While blow followed shattering counterblow, Oddy Gaul was commissioned subaltern in a line regiment, but gazetted to Intelligence on May 3. On June 24 he was appointed A.D.C. to the Joint Forces Council meeting in the ruins of what had been Australia. On July 11, he was brevetted to command of the wrecked Space Force, being jumped 1,789 grades over regular officers. On September 19 he assumed supreme command in the Battle of the Parsec and won the victory that ended the disastrous solar annihilation called the Six Month War.

  On September 23, Oddy Gaul made the astonishing Peace Offer that was accepted by the remnants of both Welfare States. It required the scrapping of antagonistic economic theories, and amounted to the virtual abandonment of all economic theory with an amalgamation of both States into a Solar Society. On January 1, Oddy Gaul, by unanimous acclaim, was elected Solon of the Solar Society in perpetuity.

  And today . . . still youthful, still vigorous, still handsome, still sincere, idealistic, charitable, kindly and sympathetic, he lives in the Solar Palace. He is unmarried but a mighty lover; uninhibited, but a charming host and devoted friend; democratic, but the feudal overlord of a bankrupt Family of Planets that suffers misgovernment, oppression, poverty, and confusion with a cheerful joy that sings nothing but Hosannahs to the glory of Oddy Gaul.

  In a last moment of clarity, Jesse Migg communicated his desolate summation of the situation to his friends in the Faculty Club. This was shortly before they made the trip to join Oddy in the palace as his confidential and valued advisors.

  "We were fools," Migg said bitterly. "We should have killed him. He isn't an angel. He's a monster. Civilization and culture . . . philosophy and ethics . . . those were only masks Oddy put on; masks that covered the primitive impulses of his subconscious mind."

  "You mean Oddy was not sincere?" Johansen asked heavily. "He wanted this wreckage . . . this ruin?"

  "Certainly he was sincere . . . consciously. He still is. He thinks he desires nothing but the most good for the most men. He's honest, kind and generous . . . but only consciously."

  "Ah! The Id!" said Hrrdnikkisch with an explosion of breath as though he had been punched in the stomach.

  "You understand, Signoid? I see you do. Gentlemen, we were imbeciles. We made the mistake of assuming that Oddy would have conscious control of his power. He does not. The control was and still is below the thinking, reasoning level. The control lies in Oddy's Id ... in that deep, unconscious reservoir of primordial selfishness that lies within every man."

  "Then he wanted the war," Bellanby said.

  "His Id wanted the war, Bellanby. It was the quickest route to what his Id desires ... to be Lord of the Universe and loved by the Universe . . . and his Id controls the Power. All of us have that selfish, egocentric Id within us, perpetually searching for satisfaction, timeless, immortal, knowing no logic, no values, no good and evil, no morality; and that is what controls the Power in Oddy. He will always win, not what he's been educated to desire but what his Id desires. It's the inescapable conflict that may be the doom of our system."

  "But we'll be there to advise him . . . counsel him . . . guide him," Bellanby protested. "He asked us to come."

  "And he'll listen to our advice like the good child that he is," Migg answered, "agreeing with us, trying to make a heaven for everybody while his Id will be making a hell for everybody. Oddy isn't unique. We all suffer from the same conflict . . . but Oddy has the Power."

  "What can we do?" Johansen groaned. "What can we do?"

  "I don't know," Migg bit his lip, then bobbed his head to Papa Johansen in what amounted to apology for him. "Johansen," he said, "you were right. There must be a God, if only because there must be an opposite to Oddy Gaul, who was most assuredly invented by the Devil."

  But that was Jesse Migg's last sane statement. Now, of course, he adores Gaul the Glorious, Gaul the Gauleiter, Gaul the God Eternal who has achieved the savage, selfish satisfaction for which all of us unconsciously yearn from birth, but which only Oddy Gaul has won.

  * * *

  Slaves of the Life Ray

  CHAPTER I

  Mystery Blight

  THERE was a crash in Ward C and an answering scream. Then followed a series of violent concussions, quick shouts, the sound of people staggering across the floor. The in a hospital gown dashed out, followed by disheveled orderlies.

  The fugitive patient raced down the corridor, bowling over the amazed desk nurse in his path. He paused long enough to wrench a fire-extinguisher from the wall, spin about and hurtle it in the faces of his pursuers. Then, using his bare fists, he smashed out the heavy panes of a window and dived through to the ground—and freedom —a floor below.

  Phones jangled wildly, call bells rang, and emergency lights blinked. Nurses leaped to their stations and interns poured out of the staff house, struggling into their jackets. At the great iron gates that bordered the hospital's grounds, guards looked about nervously, wondered what in blazes was going on.

  Near Emergency, across the way from the ambulance garages, s
omeone shouted once and then, a few seconds later, again, this time feebly. The hunting interns veered sharply in their tracks and caught sight of a tall slender figure flitting through the shrubbery. It was the escaping patient.

  An intern dashed out of Admissions and plunged into the brush. In another instant the crowd saw him spin around between the hot-houses a few yards behind the fleeing patient. As they broke into the clear, he left his feet in a flying tackle that brought both sliding to a halt along the gritty soil. Then the others came up and seized the furiously struggling patient. It needed four powerful orderlies to drag him off to Psychiatric.

  The intern brushed himself off, shook his head once, and limped painfully until he reached the Administration Offices. He pushed through, kicked open the inner door and seated himself with a sigh.

  The big man in tweeds at the important-looking desk looked up in astonishment and threw down his pen.

  “Now then, Lewis,” he said, “what the—”

  “Doctor Cole to you,” grinned the intern. He squirmed around in the leather chair and smiled amiably.

  “Oh worshipful Director, I am bearer of evil tidings. On second thought, Mr. Miller, I think you'd better call me Hero Cole.”

  “What's on your mind?” Miller snapped irritably. “I'm a busy man, Cole.”

  “Not too busy for what I have to say.”

  Miller looked up shrewdly at the young intern. “I know what you're going to say.”

  “So you've guessed it already, eh?” Cole said. “Yep, this makes the fifth in three days. And now there's something else.”

  “Something else?” Miller frowned, puzzled.

  “Something very much else.” Cole dug into his pocket and withdrew a sheaf of notes. “When five apparently harmless, patients go violently mad that's not so awful. But when you look at these admissions figures”— Cole tossed the notes across the desk—”and find that ninety per cent of the patients admitted at Queens County Hospital during the past week were suffering from malignant tumors and some peculiar cancer types, you begin to smell something rotten somewhere.”

  “It's unbelievable,” gasped Miller. He scanned the notes hurriedly and then looked up at Cole.

  “Unbelievable.”

  “It's worse,” answered Cole, his voice crisp. “I haven't got the reports yet, but wait until you see those diagnoses. Cancer! What's wrong with those patients just vaguely resembles cancer. I tell you, Chief, we're up against an epidemic of something that hasn't yet been seen inside the pages of a medical book!”

  “You're mad!” shouted the director. “A new disease? That's impossible.”

  “See for yourself,” answered Cole. He grabbed Miller's arm, pulled him to the door. “They've all been placed up in the South Wing. Come and take a look.”

  The two men walked quickly to the elevator and were whisked up to the Roentgenology Floor.

  Reaching the floor above, they walked slowly around the great, high-ceilinged room that was lined with beds. The sight that met their eyes was almost incredible. The patients lay restlessly, in no pain whatever. The charts showed normal temperature, normal pulse, normal blood counts, and thoroughly normal data for each. But nevertheless the patients were sick, for all had changed from thoroughly healthy specimens to misshapen, distorted caricatures of humanity.

  Some had suddenly sprouted miniature legs on one shoulder or developed extra fingers in the middle of the palms. Others were turning Cyclopean, one great eye bulging out in the middle of the forehead.

  There were patients with small spheres budding over the entire body that turned them into human mulberries.

  All were twisted and changed, as though Nature had suddenly decided to add extra lumps of clay to the human race, willy-nilly.

  “How long has this been going on?” whispered Miller. “Why hasn't there been word in the papers?”

  “Less than a week. These growths practically expand under your eyes. It's as though human flesh has suddenly taken on independent life of its own.”

  Cole lit a cigarette, puffed nervously.

  “About those patients who suddenly went mad,” he went on. “The first one died. Jumped from the fifth floor. Well, we had a post mortem.” Cole nodded at the glint in the other's eye. “You've guessed again, haven't you? Yes, it was tumor of the brain drove him mad. God! There's no telling what the infective source is. There's no telling who may be hit next—or where. These growths develop damnably fast. You or I may have the germ of horror growing within us this minute . . . to push out anywhere, even in the brain. And it's going to spread fast, too. From epidemic to endemic and from endemic to pandemic. Miller, we've got to do something to stop this before the city finds out!”

  But the city did find out. Slowly but inexorably, with the slow steady march of news that had all the relentlessness of Beethoven's Eroica Symphony.

  On Monday the Times ran an editorial directed against the slipshod methods of Queens County Hospital, where seventeen mad patients had run riot for three hours. And on one of the back pages was an obscure item about a two-headed snake that had been found in the Central Park Zoo.

  Tuesday papers announced a sudden onslaught of horrible murders, evidently the work of a new crime band, somewhat similar to the late Murder, Inc., ring. The newspapers also reported the statement of Professor Higgleston at Columbia University, who alleged he had seen a swarm of pterodactyls roosting in the eaves of the Museum of Art.

  But when Wednesday morning came around and half the city went to work to find that the other half was mysteriously absent, matters turned suddenly from the casual to the serious. The telephone company was forced to suspend service when hordes of key technicians failed to report. The morning newspapers were not on the stands. Half the shops were closed, half the police force off duty, half of all communications silenced. The city was half-stifled, choking with stagnation.

  Citizens returned home almost immediately to get to their radios and wait for some news that would give them a clue. At home they found themselves surrounded with a monstrous sickness whose only symptoms were the horrible distortions of its victims, distortions that they had laughed at only a few days before. The radios failed to explain much. Newscasters told their listeners what they already knew. Told them that half the city was stricken with a strange new blight that was turning man into a caricature of himself.

  In the Queens County Hospital there was no time to wait for bulletins over the air. Admissions had jumped so high there was no time nor reason to calculate it in terms of percentage.

  The staff worked indiscriminately. Nurses took over, orderlies took over, even probationers were suddenly elevated to R.N.s and pitched in to help stem the hopeless tide.

  Only Doctor Cole stood back just enough to try for a clear comprehensive view. Restlessly he roamed the wards and temporary sick rooms of the hospital, hunting, searching for some telltale clue that might give the stricken city the relief it needed so urgently.

  “It isn't cancer,” he muttered over and over, “at least not the cancer we've known. There's no sense diagnosing. But what's the infective agent? Bacteria? Protozoa? Virus? What the devil could it be?”

  HE ran down to Pathology and peered in. Alone in a welter of topsy-turvy apparatus sat Dr. Dunn.

  “Well?” asked Cole.

  Dunn shrugged wearily.

  “Nothing,” he said, “nothing at all. I've sectioned and used every stain known to the business. I've been working for hours.” He blinked bloodshot eyes. “And there's nothing. I'm afraid I can't hold out much longer. Maybe it's got me. What's the first symptom?”

  “That's the hell of it,” answered Cole. “There just isn't any symptom.”

  He patted Dunn on the shoulder and wandered out. Well, he hadn't expected quick results, anyway.

  Best thing would be to look for possible modes of infection. What could hit an entire city so fast? Water supply?

  He ran down to the staff house and changed to his street clothes. His car almost out of gas,
he stopped off at a station. When no one answered his persistent honking, he was forced to help himself from the tank. Then he turned north and drove swiftly toward the city. The road was deserted.

  The grass in the ditch, Cole noticed, was thicker than usual, heavy-stemmed and dotty like thick stalks of spaghetti. The whole countryside, for that matter, was slowly turning lumpy and grotesque.

  Trees sported humps and bulges on their boles. Bushes were discolored coral clumps.

  And then, to send a chill down his spine, Cole began to notice lumbering forms lurking far in the background. Creatures that had once been humans and animals, but now were savage-looking monsters.

  Cole pressed his foot down on the accelerator in quick fear and with his free hand felt hastily for the revolver in the side pocket of his car. It made him feel a little better when he had transferred it to his own jacket.

  The city streets were even more appalling than the suburbs. The deserted buildings with horrible forms lurking in the shadows ; normal-looking individuals every once in a long while scurrying as if for dear life's sake ; the heaps of smashed-up cars at odd corners that made progress a painful series of detours. It was almost an hour before Cole reached the Department of Water Supply.

  Only an old clerk was left in the office. He was an old white-haired man who sat easily in the superintendent's chair and greeted Cole with a toothless smile.

  “Too old for it, I am,” he said, “that plague likes 'em young and tender like you.”

  “Never mind that,” said Cole angrily. “I'm from Queens County Hospital. I want to know about the water supply.”

  “What?” asked the clerk. “You got to ask me. I'm the Department now.”

  “Know anything about infection of the city's water?”

  “There ain't been none. They checked all that before they got took sick.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yep.”

  What next? Cole turned uneasily and thought hard. Food? There might be some officials left at the Health Department. He ran through the ominous streets, looking behind constantly. At last he reached the new Health and Sanitation Building. Irony of ironies, he thought grimly, if they're all stricken. . He ran shouting through the long echoing corridors.