War and Peace
Page 7
TABLOID:
… Such a weapon cannot, must not be loosed in unscrupulous hands. The last professional production of the infamous pair proves what distortions can be wrested from isolated and misunderstood events. In the hands of perpetrators of heretical isms, no property, no business deal, no personal life could be sacrosanct, no foreign policy could be …
TIMES:
… colonies stand with us firmly … liquidation of the Empire … white man’s burden …
LE MATIN:
… rightful place … restore proud France.
PRAVDA:
… democratic imperialist plot … our glorious scientists ready to announce…
NICHI-NICHI:
… incontrovertibly prove divine descent …
LA PRENSA:
… oil concessions … dollar diplomacy …
DETROIT JOURNAL:
… under our noses in a sinister fortress on East Warren … under close Federal supervision … perfection by our production-trained technicians a mighty aid to law-enforcement agencies … tirades against politicians and business common-sense carried too far … tomorrow revelations by …
L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO:
Council of Cardinals … announcement expected hourly …
JACKSON STAR-CLARION:
… proper handling will prove the fallacy of race equality …
Almost unanimously the press screamed; Pegler frothed, Winchell leered. We got the surface side of the situation from the press. But a military guard is composed of individuals, hotel rooms must be swept by maids, waiters must serve food, and a chain is as strong— We got what we think the truth from those who work for a living.
There are meetings on street corners and homes, two great veterans’ groups have arbitrarily fired their officials, seven governors have resigned, three senators and over a dozen representatives have retired with “ill health,” and the general temper is ugly. International travelers report the same of Europe, Asia is bubbling, and transport planes with motors running stud the airports of South America. A general whisper is that a Constitutional Amendment is being rammed through to forbid the use of any similar instrument by any individual, with the manufacture and leasing by the Federal government to law-enforcement agencies or financially responsible corporations suggested; it is whispered that motor caravans are forming throughout the country for a Washington march to demand a decision by the Court on the truth of our charges; it is generally suspected that all news disseminating services are under direct Federal — Army—control; wires are supposed to be sizzling with petitions and demands to Congress, which are seldom delivered.
One day the chambermaid said: “And the whole hotel might as well close up shop. The whole floor is blocked off, there’re MPs at every door, and they’re clearing out all the other guests as fast as they can be moved. The whole place wouldn’t be big enough to hold the letters and wires addressed to you, or the ones that are trying to get in to see you. Fat chance they have,” she added grimly. “The joint is lousy with brass.”
Mike glanced at me and I cleared my throat. “What’s your idea of the whole thing?”
Expertly she spanked and reversed a pillow. “I saw your last picture before they shut it down. I saw all your pictures. When I wasn’t working I listened to your trial. I heard you tell them off. I never got married because my boyfriend never came back from Burma. Ask him what he thinks,” and she jerked her head at the young private that was supposed to keep her from talking. “Ask him if he wants some bunch of stinkers to start him shooting at some other poor chump. See what he says, and then ask me if I want an atom bomb dropped down my neck just because some chiselers want more than they got.” She left suddenly, and the soldier left with her. Mike and I had a beer and went to bed. Next week the papers had headlines a mile high.
U. S. KEEPS MIRACLE RAY
CONSTITUTION AMENDMENT
AWAITS STATES OKAY
LAVIADA-LEFKO FREED
We were freed all right, Bronson and the president being responsible for that. But the president and Bronson don’t know, I’m sure, that we were rearrested immediately. We were told that we’ll be held in “protective custody” until enough states have ratified the proposed constitutional amendment. The Man Without a Country was in what you might call “protective custody,” too. We’ll likely be released the same way he was.
We’re allowed no newspapers, no radio, allowed no communication coming or going, and we’re given no reason, as if that were necessary. They’ll never, never let us go, and they’d be fools if they did. They think that if we can’t communicate, or if we can’t build another machine, our fangs are drawn, and when the excitement dies, we fall into oblivion, six feet of it. Well, we can’t build another machine. But communicate?
Look at it this way. A soldier is a soldier because he wants to serve his country. A soldier doesn’t want to die unless his country is at war. Even then death is only a last resort. And war isn’t necessary any more, not with our machinery. In the dark? Try to plan or plot in absolute darkness, which is what would be needed. Try to plot or carry on a war without putting things in writing. O.K. Now—
The Army has Mike’s machine. The Army has Mike. They call it military expediency, I suppose. Bosh! Anyone beyond the grade of moron can see that to keep that machine, to hide it, is to invite the world to attack, and attack in self-defense. If every nation, or if every man, had a machine, each would be equally open, or equally protected. But if only one nation, or only one man can see, the rest will not long be blind. Maybe we did this all wrong. God knows that we thought about it often. God knows we did our best to make an effort at keeping man out of his own trap.
There isn’t much time left. One of the soldiers guarding us will get this to you, I hope, in time.
A long time ago we gave you a key, and hoped we would never have to ask you to use it. But now is the time. That key fits a box at the Detroit Savings Bank. In that box are letters. Mail them, not all at once, or in the same place. They’ll go all over the world, to men we know, and have watched well: clever, honest, and capable of following the plans we’ve enclosed.
But you’ve got to hurry! One of these bright days someone is going to wonder if we’ve made more than one machine. We haven’t, of course. That would have been foolish. But if some smart young lieutenant gets hold of that machine long enough to start tracing back our movements they’ll find that safety deposit box, with the plans and letters ready to be scattered broadside. You can see the need for haste—if the rest of the world, or any particular nation, wants that machine bad enough, they’ll fight for it. And they will! They must! Later on, when the Army gets used to the machine and its capabilities, it will become obvious to everyone, as it already has to Mike and me, that, with every plan open to inspection as soon as it’s made, no nation or group of nations would have a chance in open warfare. So if there is to be an attack, it will have to be deadly, and fast, and sure. Please God that we haven’t shoved the world into a war we tried to make impossible. With all the atom bombs and rockets that have been made in the past few years—Joe, you’ve got to hurry!
GHQ TO 9TH ATTK GRP
Report report report report report report report report report report
CM DR 9TH ATTK GRP TO GHQ
BEGINS: No other manuscript found. Searched body of Lefko immediately upon landing. According to plan Building Three untouched. Survivors insist both were moved from Building Seven previous day defective plumbing. Body of Laviada identified definitely through fingerprints. Request further instructions, ends
GHQ TO CM DR 32ND SHIELDED RGT
BEGINS: Seal area Detroit Savings Bank. Advise immediately condition safety deposit boxes. Afford coming technical unit complete co-operation, ends
LT. COL. TEMP. ATT. 32ND SHIELDED RGT
BEGINS: Area Detroit Savings Bank vaporized direct hit. Radioactivity lethal. Impossible boxes or any contents survive. Repeat, direct hit. Request permission proceed Washington Area,
ends
GHQ. TO LT. COL. TEMP. ATT. 32ND SHIELDED RGT
BEGINS: Request denied. Sift ashes if necessary regardless cost. Repeat, regardless cost. ENDS
GHQ. TO ALL UNITS REPEAT ALL UNITS
BEGINS: Lack of enemy resistance explained misdirected atom rocket seventeen miles SSE Washington. Lone survivor completely destroyed special train claims all top officials left enemy capital two hours preceding attack. Notify local governments where found necessary and obvious cessation hostilities. Occupy present areas Plan Two. Further orders follow
ENDS.
Peace is a complicated concept. It includes both freedom from external aggression and domestic tranquility. At least the superficial appearance of the latter can be assured by a powerful government which simply will not tolerate crime—but most of us in this region of time and space consider peace without individual liberty meaningless.
Should individual liberty include the right to own weapons? Weapons, after all, can be used for either defense or aggression on either an individual or a national level—in wars of conquest, defense against such wars, or domestic violence.
The question has been hotly debated ever since people began to recognize that it could be a question. It has never been simple—and it could get a lot more complicated.
THE VILLAGE at night made a curiously timeless picture. Fara walked contentedly beside his wife along the street. The air was like wine; and he was thinking dimly of the artist who had come up from Imperial City, and made what the telestats called—he remembered the phrase vividly—“a symbolic painting reminiscent of a scene in the electrical age of seven thousand years ago.”
Fara believed that utterly. The street before him with its weedless, automatically tended gardens, its shops set well back among the flowers, its perpetual hard, grassy sidewalks, and its street lamps that glowed from every pore of their structure—this was a restful paradise where time had stood still.
And it was like being a part of life that the great artist’s picture of this quiet, peaceful scene before him was now in the collection of the empress herself. She had praised it, and naturally the thrice-blest artist had immediately and humbly begged her to accept it.
What a joy it must be to be able to offer personal homage to the glorious, the divine, the serenely gracious and lovely Innelda Isher, one thousand one hundred eightieth of her line.
As they walked, Fara half turned to his wife. In the dim light of the nearest street lamp, her kindly, still youthful face was almost lost in shadow. He murmured softly, instinctively muting his voice to harmonize with the pastel shades of night:
“She said—our empress said—that our little village of Glay seemed to her to have in it all the wholesomeness, the gentleness, that constitutes the finest qualities of her people. Wasn’t that a wonderful thought, Creel? She must be a marvelously understanding woman. I—”
He stopped. They had come to a side street, and there was something about a hundred and fifty feet along it that—
“Look!” Fara said hoarsely.
He pointed with rigid arm and finger at a sign that glowed in the night, a sign that read:
FINE WEAPONS
THE RIGHT TO BUY WEAPONS
IS THE RIGHT TO BE FREE
Fara had a strange, empty feeling as he stared at the blazing sign. He saw that other villagers were gathering. He said finally, huskily:
“I’ve heard of these shops. They’re places of infamy, against which the government of the empress will act one of these days. They’re built in hidden factories, and then transported whole to towns like ours and set up in gross defiance of property rights. That one wasn’t there an hour ago.”
Fara’s face hardened. His voice had a harsh edge in it, as he said:
“Creel, go home.”
Fara was surprised when Creel did not move off at once. All their married life, she had had a pleasing habit of obedience that had made cohabitation a wonderful thing.
He saw that she was looking at him wide-eyed, and that it was a timid alarm that held her there. She said:
“Fara, what do you intend to do? You’re not thinking of—”
“Go home!” Her fear brought out all the grim determination in his nature. “We’re not going to let such a monstrous thing desecrate our village. Think of it”—his voice shivered before the appalling thought—“this fine, old-fashioned community, which we had resolved always to keep exactly as the empress has it in her picture gallery, debauched now, ruined by this … this thing— But we won’t have it; that’s all there is to it.”
Creel’s voice came softly out of the half-darkness of the street corner, the timidity gone from it: “Don’t do anything rash, Fara. Remember it is not the first new building to come into Glay—since the picture was painted.”
Fara was silent. This was a quality of his wife of which he did not approve, this reminding him unnecessarily of unpleasant facts. He knew exactly what she meant. The gigantic, multitentacled corporation, Automatic Atomic Motor Repair Shops, Inc., had come in under the laws of the State with their flashy building, against the wishes of the village council—and had already taken half of Fara’s repair business.
“That’s different!” Fara growled finally. “In the first place people will discover in good time that these new automatic repairers do a poor job. In the second place it’s fair competition. But this weapon shop is a defiance of all the decencies that make life under the House of Isher such a joy. Look at the hypocritical sign: ‘The right to buy weapons—’ Aaaaahh!”
He broke off with: “Go home, Creel. We’ll see to it that they sell no weapons in this town.”
He watched the slender woman-shape move off into the shadows. She was halfway across the street when a thought occurred to Fara. He called:
“And if you see that son of ours hanging around some street comer, take him home. He’s got to learn to stop staying out so late at night.”
The shadowed figure of his wife did not turn: and after watching her for a moment moving along against the dim background of softly glowing street lights, Fara twisted on his heel, and walked swiftly toward the shop. The crowd was growing larger every minute, and the night pulsed with excited voices.
Beyond doubt, here was the biggest thing that had ever happened to the village of Glay.
The sign of the weapon shop was, he saw, a normal-illusion affair. No matter what his angle of view, he was always looking straight at it. When he paused finally in front of the great display window, the words had pressed back against the store front, and were staring unwinkingly down at him.
Fara sniffed once more at the meaning of the slogan, then forgot the simple thing. There was another sign in the window, which read:
THE FINEST ENERGY WEAPONS
IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE
A spark of interest struck fire inside Fara. He gazed at that brilliant display of guns, fascinated in spite of himself. The weapons were of every size, ranging from tiny little finger pistols to express rifles. They were made of every one of the light, hard, ornamental substances: glittering glassein, the colorful but opaque Ordine plastic, viridescent magnesitic beryllium. And others.
It was the very deadly extent of the destructive display that brought a chill to Fara. So many weapons for the little village of Glay, where not more than two people to his knowledge had guns, and those only for hunting. Why, the thing was absurd, fantastically mischievous, utterly threatening.
Somewhere behind Fara, a man said: “It’s right on Lan Harris’s lot. Good joke on that old scoundrel. Will he raise a row!”
There was a faint titter from several men, that made an odd patch of sound on the warm, fresh air. And Fara saw that the man had spoken the truth. The weapon shop had a forty-foot frontage. And it occupied the very center of the green, gardenlike lot of tight-fisted old Harris.
Fara frowned. The clever devils, the weapon-shop people, selecting the property of the most disliked man in town, coolly taking it over and giving everybody an agreeable
titillation. But the very cunning of it made it vital that the trick shouldn’t succeed.
He was still scowling anxiously when he saw the plump figure of Mel Dale, the mayor. Fara edged toward him hurriedly, touched his hat respectfully, and said: “Where’s Jor?”
“Here.” The village constable elbowed his way through a little bundle of men. “Any plans?” he said.
“There’s only one plan,” said Fara boldly. “Go in and arrest them.”
To Fara’s amazement, the two men looked at each other, then at the ground. It was the big constable who answered shortly:
“Door’s locked. And nobody answers our pounding. I was just going to suggest we let the matter ride until morning.”
“Nonsense!” His very astonishment made Fara impatient. “Get an ax and we’ll break the door down. Delay will only encourage such riffraff to resist. We don’t want their kind in our village for so much as a single night. Isn’t that so?”
There was a hasty nod of agreement from everybody in his immediate vicinity. Too hasty. Fara looked around puzzled at eyes that lowered before his level gaze. He thought: “They are all scared. And unwilling.” Before he could speak, Constable Jor said:
“I guess you haven’t heard about those doors or these shops. From all accounts, you can’t break into them.”