The Ardath Mayhar MEGAPACK®

by John Maclay

  He backed away. Dr. Tait came into view, also backing away. By unspoken consent, they took shelter behind a slab of rock atop which a pinkish fuzz was also turned toward their commanding officer. Jonathan didn’t know what to expect, but whatever it was he wanted to be out of the way when it happened.

  “I believe Robb has met his match,” the doctor whispered over the suit-to-suit radio. “Look at him!”

  Now Robb was quivering with rage, his feet leaving the ground as he literally bounced up and down. Something very tense and powerful filled the air, felt even through the protection of Jonathan’s suit.

  He was about to ask Tait if he felt it when Robb’s suit popped open and expelled the Commander upward. If there had been more air or more gravity he might have fallen to the ground again. As it was, he zoomed up under what was obviously great pressure and disappeared into the glare of the sun. The remnants of his suit lay crumpled beside the rock where the purple fuzz was now relaxing.

  Jonathan turned to stare at Dr. Tait. Through the face-plate, the doctor looked greenish-pale, the way he felt himself.

  Then, using courage he did not know he had, Jonathan rose and moved toward the purple fungus. “What did you do to him?” he asked. “Did you intend to kill him?”

  The fuzz stirred lazily. “Of course not. Life is rare and valuable. We have learned to concentrate our energies and force alien fungi to expel their spores prematurely, sending them on toward other worlds. In this way, they pose no threat to us while continuing their life cycles.”

  Jonathan almost explained what had really happened to Robb, but he realized that this thing would never understand. Spores and fungi were all it knew, and it dealt with its problems on those terms.

  Tait touched his shoulder with a bulky glove. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll list this as a world containing toxic materials that are too dangerous to deal with. I think that will be accurate, don’t you agree? Those bits of fluff could have exploded the dome, I suspect, as they did the Commander’s suit.”

  Jonathan nodded, and the two turned toward the distant dome. They would be ready to leave in three days, he knew from old experience. In the meanwhile, no one else would leave the shelter until time to take the shuttle up to the orbiting ship.

  He hoped the purple fuzz and its companions never met another human being. The doctor, he was sure, would make certain of that.

  THE POWER THAT PRESERVES

  Some years ago a columnist for the newspaper for which I worked wrote a piece about his visit to Las Vegas. He speculated that the entire city’s power needs could have been supplied by the intensity and persistence of one little old lady working a slot machine with incredible vigor. What a NEAT idea!

  I bounced into the Gamblecom gritting my teeth. I wore the set smile demanded of the Director, but it was an effort, as the doorbot’s eyes lit up (literally). The thing whisked my paperfile into its storage unit as it said, “Good morning, Sir or Madame” in a second-hand voice.

  I always ignored the thing, a cheapo model relegated to such minor stations as mine. Stepping up to the Dispenser, I held my palm on the Sensor. The fifty-unit gambling allowance rattled into the tray below, for even the Director of Gamblecom has to put in the obligatory minimum of twenty minutes of Powerplay, every cycle. Even though gambling seems a waste of time and money for one paid by the second, as I am, I must set a good example.

  As usual, my luck was terrible. I dropped one-unit pieces into the machine, pulled handles, worked treadmills, hearing the tiny pulses of power added to the big generators far below in the center of the planetoid. Around me, citizens were working treadmills and pulling handles with glittery-eyed fervor. Now and again there would be the jangle of coins pouring into machine trays. Those were greeted with whoops of triumph from the winners and cries of encouragement from fellow gamblers.

  As usual I lost, though a good quarter of the others there left with more than they had been given. I got back just enough to replace the fifty units I’d been given in the doorbot’s tray. Everyone got back that much. The machines were rigged for that. I dropped the handful back into the slot and watched the square brown coins slide into the storage compartment.

  The doorbot said, “Thank you, Sir or Madame,” and flipped my paperfile into my hand with pneumatic speed, almost before I could remove my fingers from the Sensor.

  Still bouncing and gritting, I reached the stair and made three effortless hops to reach the floor where my office lay in wait. I hoped that I wasn’t so old as to be inflexible in my habits, but the minimal gravity of the Colony played hob with both my internal organs and my disposition. The effortlessness of everything made me feel under-exercised, and the frustrations of dealing with the matters awaiting my attention made me feel ill.

  Sure enough, my computary clicked onto “voice” as I entered the office. It said, “Skidmore, William M., Director, Sir: Your office is tenanted by elderly ladies who want to play the gambling machines. Microfiles are available under keys K, J, and M. Your antacid is on the tray with your refreshment pitcher.”

  With another click, it switched off, though I knew its lines were still connected with terminals throughout Gamblecom, the Colony, and the subetheric system. Those connections stayed busy all the time, shuttling information, requests, and commands that kept the colony working.

  Once the door slid back into its slot, I heard the cackle of many shrill voices. Still smiling (teeth gritted even more tightly), I took a tablet from the refreshment tray and swallowed it. Then I said, “Ladies, please sit down and tell me what I may do for you.” As if I didn’t know.

  A tiny woman moved up to what would have been nose-to-nose, if her nose hadn’t come barely to the insignia on my tunic. Her smartly coiffed hair was goose-down white, her face deeply lined, but her eyes were black and sharp and young.

  “Young man, do you have any idea why this colony was placed here?” she asked. She cocked her head like a small bird, staring up at my face.

  “Of course, Ma’am.” I looked at her in bewilderment. “This is a geriatric colony, developed for the use of those who can no longer live comfortably with the normal gravity of their home worlds. But it is also a mining colony, offering R-and-R for the miners developing the potential of the asteroid cluster, which our orbit trails around Pliny II. I don’t understand your question.”

  She fixed me with a birdlike eye. “I didn’t think so. We are not basket cases, Director. Nor are we mental defectives. Most of us were active and useful before our loving relatives decided our hearts or our bones couldn’t survive normal planetary conditions. We are supposed to find useful years of living here that would be lost at home. We are supposed to live USEFUL lives.”

  I gulped and nodded.

  “This has now degenerated into a chrome-plated rest home. We are not allowed to exert ourselves at all, to do any sort of useful work. We are not even allowed to PLAY, unless you count Scrabble and knitting.

  “I know you will touch some buttons and show us films on the strain that gambling puts on the human heart. Not to mention all sorts of charts and graphs showing the difficulty of operating your Gamblecom machinery. We know all that. We want you to understand clearly that WE DON’T CARE. Life is a bore. We have no grandchildren to liven things up, at least not here. So what if we drop dead in the Gamblecom?” She glared at me. I closed my gaping mouth.

  She glanced around at the others, and they sighed and moved to the door. “Talk to the Medical Director,” she snapped.

  I nodded. The door slid shut, and I heaved a deep breath, looking longingly at the tube of happy pills on the tray beside the pitcher. Still, I had real problems to deal with, and euphoria just couldn’t do the job.

  The first communication flashed onto my monitor. Settling back, I read, ASTERMINECOM TO GAMBLECOMDIR: Compulsory gambling requirements cutting into work time of personnel. Suggest you find others to man machines, or urge Colon
y Director to find other sources of power.

  The second communication was no more encouraging. POWERPLEX TO GAMBLECOMDIR: Suggested supplementing of solar power units nonfeasible, due to distance from Pliny II, lack of qualified personnel and materials for constructing expanded reflectors.

  The third was the worst. COLDIR TO GAMBLECOM DIR: Power requirements to increase by one-third in next sixty cycles. Additional machines incoming, to be installed within next ten cycles. Suggest you increase minimum gambling requirements to forty minutes per day.

  I didn’t even read the fourth. As the happy pill took hold I sank back into the feather-puff chair and let a pleasant fog roll over me. A plague on them all, I thought, as dreams took over my mind.

  I did not dream my usual bevy of sleekly clad beauties holding trays of real fruit. Instead I found myself back on Earth. In Las Vegas, where I had trained, watching the slot machines. I groaned. I had too much of that where I was!

  I was near the machines, and as I listened to their clatter, I heard a tiny bell go ting! inside my head. Of the antique slot machines I watched, each was confronted by an elderly woman. The nearest was engaged in a monumental battle with a lady who might have weighed eighty pounds with a pocket full of lead.

  I went to stand behind her. Coins clinked, lights winked, the handle was pulled again and again. Her skinny arm seemed too frail to work the thing, but she stood there for an hour and ten minutes by my chronometer and never raised so much as a dew of perspiration. She gained a bit and lost a bit. I succumbed to nervous exhaustion at last and left, but she had not yet come to the end of her coins or her strength. This was no dream induced by happy pills. This was a memory dredged from long-past years.

  I drifted into sleep. When I awoke, I knew I had a solution to a number of problems, IF! It entailed one large, all but insurmountable problem named Anna Schwartzstein, the Medical Director. She was beautiful, hard-headed, and she intended to coddle those old people within an inch of their lives, even if it made them miserable.

  When I came out of the happy pill fog, I used the computary. MEMOS: ASTERMINECOM, POWERPLEX, COLDIR, FROM GAMBLECOMDIR: MEDDIR suggests consideration request of geriatric citizens for use of Gamblecom facilities.

  Such activity can free mining personnel from gamble duty, eliminate need for solar power augmentation, and increase power output as requested by COLDIR. Solution seems logical. Suggest implementation.

  I thumbed the privately coded override and made certain that in no way could the Medical Director gain access to that memo from any memory bank. Then I obtained a list of those who had visited me that morning and looked up their residence units.

  Elvira Vashon, spokeswoman of the group, lived with three of the others in a cluster suite not far from Anna Schwartzstein’s rooms. I found her at home, sitting with three others around a table and playing a game of markers. She looked up as I entered the room.

  “When you chimed, I thought it was one of the girls,” she said, looking surprised. “What can we do for you, Director?”

  I sank, as she indicated, onto a float, which adjusted at once to my longer leg-length. “I want you to help me to gain the M.D.’s approval for you to use the Gamblecom,” I said. “It won’t be easy. It is going to be personally painful for me, as you may well imagine.”

  They nodded. Everyone in the Colony knew of the relationship I had with Anna. It had endured for several years, and I now knew better than anyone the determination with which the lady held onto her opinions.

  “She will think that you’re all going to kill yourselves in short order. I happen to think you’re a much tougher bunch of cookies than she gives you credit for being. I’m no doctor, of course.” I sighed.

  “However, I think I’ve come up with a really sneaky plan. It will take several of you to help me with my plot, and I’ll lay my job on the line, but I am so bored I’m almost ready to jump off this colony anyway.

  “They’re making demands on me that cannot be met, using just the physically able members of the colony. You can make the difference between a viable, self-sustaining colony and another parasite clinging to the supply system. I’ve worked compulsory Gambling Complexes all over this sector, and I never before have had such interdepartmental confusion and lack of cooperation.

  “Here is what I want you to do....”

  That night (night being an arbitrary division of semi-darkness for sleeping purposes), I led a strange group into Anna’s bedroom. I had, of course, access to her lock coding. We had no trouble at all in gaining entry.

  My determination failed me when I saw her. She lay asleep in her foampack, and I maintain that anyone who can manage to look sublimely beautiful when she’s asleep with her mouth open is a rare and precious asset to the universe. My cohort were not so sentimental.

  A squirt of sleep-gas insured that our victim would remain asleep as Elvira, Lucille, and Nadine bundled her into a warm coverall and soft boots. I lifted her to my shoulder and led the way to the nearest lift to the surface of the planetoid.

  The Observation bubble had been built and supplied according to specs for an outpost of this nature. There being nothing to observe, it was seldom used. I had spent a cycle or two there, looking into the depths of the sparsely populated sky, simply in order to get away from the close-knit, all-knowing population of the colony. Others had done the same. But since we had settled down to routine, nobody ever came there any more.

  It was a perfect place in which to effect a bit of behavior modification. My three fellow conspirators had spent the past day in smuggling up to the bubble the non-regulation items they would need. When we arrived, they were prepared for a long siege.

  Lettie, the fourth occupant of their cluster, had been rehearsed in her part to cover up their absence. They had decided upon a really intricate series of high-stakes markers games as their excuse for non-appearance in the common room of the geriatric quarter.

  Once they were settled into the bubble, they assured me that they understood they were to treat Anna with all the tender concern with which she treated them. She was to have no opportunity to do any sort of work or to indulge in anything that was of consuming interest to her.

  Elvira smiled and touched my elbow. “Dr. Skidmore, we’d never harm the girl. She really means us well; she just doesn’t realize that old age isn’t imbecility. Go along and hold down the fort. Leave her education to us.”

  I went down the cushion chute and skulked through the corridors to Anna’s office. Though it adjoined her living rooms, it had a different locking system. I had a bit of difficulty in recalling the intricate codes to open it, but I succeeded at last. I went in, making certain that the seals were in place once I was inside.

  Anna’s office looked like a fine place for a robot to work. A stainless steel robot. Not a single non-reg item sat on her desk. No photograph of parents or loved ones (not even of me!) adorned the top of her paperfile container. Her computary was a soulless thing that would never have dreamed of providing antacid with its morning greeting. The office had no touch to make it human, and the computary had no voice-differentiation mode. That was all to the good. Ä human voice was a human voice, with no distinctions to the thing.

  I dictated, “MEMO MEDDIR TO ALL PLEXES: Engaged vitally important project concerning geriatric patients. Will not be available six cycles. Should extreme emergency arise, direct through GAMBLECOMDIR until further notice.” Then I fed into her computary a closed-loop problem that would keep it busy and inaccessible until our game was played out.

  And that was that. If I had been a spy from one of the antique novels, I could have disrupted the entire colony as simply as that.

  Six cycles passes very slowly when you are waiting. Though my work was as overwhelming and frustrating as ever, I could not stretch it to fill a day. Three nights a week, as specified by Anna, I went to her apartment and spent the night...sleeplessly.

 
I missed her frantically. More than once I kicked myself for hatching up such an insane plot.

  When I returned, at last, to the bubble, I found my three henchwomen attired in the spacesuits allotted to the bubble and bouncing with great abandon across the surface of the planetoid. Anna, attached to her chair with the soft restraints she favored for confining those elders who insisted on unsuitable activities, sat staring out the reinforced plasti-glas window. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She looked beautiful that way too.

  I had her free almost before she knew that I was there. She turned to me. For the first time since I had known her, she put her head onto my shoulder and cried.

  When I was able to make out the muffled words, mixed with hiccups and sobs, she was saying, “and I was cruel to them, all the time. You know, Will, that I really did intend to help them. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  I had tried, more than once, but I charitably did not mention it. Instead I mopped her eyes with a dispoz and said, “Well, Sweeting. now you do know. Will you let the poor old darlings gamble and play hopscotch and break their bones, if they feel like it? Will you let them run the machines that make the power that keeps us all alive? That will keep them alive much longer than all your coddlings and medications? They need to feel useful. You, of all people, should realize that to immobilize a compulsive achiever is to kill him...or her.”

  She nodded, subdued for the first (and probably last) time in her life. “I see, now, what they’ve been trying to tell me. It took living the life I prescribed for them to make it come clear. I’ll....”—she choked on the words, then grinned with the unexpected humor that has kept me with her for so long—“…emancipate them!”

  These days there is plenty of power. Miners have no more compulsory gambling time, which means that now many of them WANT to gamble. There is a waiting list for every machine in my Plex. I haven’t dropped a coin into a slot for a long time, but I do go to watch.