Mutants

by Robert Silverberg

  “You assume a lot. How do you know those hundreds or thousands of diverse types will work together? They’re less like each other than like humans, even. They could be played off against each other.”

  “Maybe. But that would be going back onto the old road of treachery and violence, the road to Hell. Conversely, if every not-quite-human is called a ‘mutant,’ like a separate class, he’ll think he is, and act accordingly against the lumped-together ‘humans.’ No, the only way to sanity—to survival-is to abandon class prejudice and race hate altogether, and work as individuals. We’re all … well, Earthlings, and subclassification is deadly. We all have to live together, and might as well make the best of it.”

  “Yeah… yeah, that’s right too.”

  “Anyway, I repeat that all such attempts would be useless. All Earth is infected with mutation. It will be for a long time. The purest human stock will still produce mutants.”

  “Y-yes, that’s true. Our best bet seems to be to find all such stock and withdraw it into the few safe areas left. It’ll mean a small human population, but a human one.”

  “I tell you, that’s impossible,” clipped Drummond. “There is no safe place. Not one.”

  Robinson stopped pacing and looked at him as at a physical antagonist. “That so?” he almost growled. “Why?”

  Drummond told him, adding incredulously, “Surely you knew that. Your physicists must have measured the amount of it. Your doctors, your engineers, that geneticist I dug up for you. You obviously got a lot of this biological information you’ve been slinging at me from him. They must all have told you the same thing.”

  Robinson shook his head stubbornly. “It can’t be. It’s not reasonable. The concentration wouldn’t be great enough.”

  “Why, you poor fool, you need only look around you. The plants, the animals—Haven’t there been any births in Taylor?”

  “No. This is still a man’s town, though women are trickling in and several babies are on the way—” Robinson’s face was suddenly twisted with desperation. “Elaine’s is due any time now. She’s in the hospital here. Don’t you see, our other kid died of the plague. This one’s all we have. We want him to grow up in a world free of want and fear, a world of peace and sanity where he can play and laugh and become a man, not a beast starving in a cave. You and I are on our way out. We’re the old generation, the one that wrecked the world. It’s up to us to build it again, and then retire from it to let our children have it. The future’s theirs. We’ve got to make it ready for them.”

  Sudden insight held Drummond motionless for long seconds. Understanding came, and pity, and an odd gentleness that changed his sunken, bony face. “Yes,” he murmured, “yes, I see. That’s why you’re working with all that’s in you to build a normal, healthy world. That’s why you nearly went crazy when this threat appeared. That … that’s why you can’t, just can’t comprehend—”

  He took the other man’s arm and guided him toward the door. “Come on/’ he said. “Let’s go see how your wife’s making out. Maybe we can get her some flowers on the way.”

  The silent cold bit at them as they went down the street. Snow crackled underfoot. It was already grimy with town smoke and dust, but overhead the sky was incredibly clean and blue. Breath smoked whitely from their mouths and nostrils. The sound of men at work rebuilding drifted faintly between the bulking mountains.

  “We couldn’t emigrate to another planet, could we?” asked Robinson, and answered himself: “No, we lack the organization and resources to settle them right now. We’ll have to make out on Earth. A few safe spots—there must be others besides this one—to house the true humans till the mutation period is over. Yes, we can do it.”

  “There are no safe places,” insisted Drummond. “Even if there were, the mutants would still outnumber us. Does your geneticist have any idea how this’ll come out, biologically speaking?”

  “He doesn’t know. His specialty is still largely unknown. He can make an intelligent guess, and that’s all.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, our problem is to learn to live with the mutants, to accept anyone as—Earthling—no matter how he looks, to quit thinking anything was ever settled by violence or connivance, to build a culture of individual sanity. Funny,” mused Drummond, “how the impractical virtues, tolerance and sympathy and generosity, have become the fundamental necessities of simple survival. I guess it was always true, but it took the death of half the world and the end of a biological era to make us see that simple little fact. The job’s terrific. We’ve got half a million years of brutality and greed, superstition and prejudice, to lick in a few generations. If we fail, mankind is done. But we’ve got to try.”

  They found some flowers, potted in a house, and Robinson bought them with the last of his tobacco. By the time he reached the hospital, he was sweating. The sweat froze on his face as he walked.

  The hospital was the town’s biggest building, and fairly well equipped. A nurse met them as they entered.

  “I was just going to send for you, General Robinson,” she said. “The baby’s on the way.”

  “How…is she?”

  “Fine, so far. Just wait here, please.”

  Drummond sank into a chair and with haggard eyes watched Robinson’s jerky pacing. The poor guy. Why is it expectant fathers are supposed to be so funny? It’s like laughing at a man on the rack. I know, Barbara, I know.

  “They have some anesthetics,” muttered the general. “They … Elaine never was very strong.”

  “She’ll be all right.” It’s afterward that worries me.

  “Yeah—Yeah—How long, though, how long?”

  “Depends. Take it easy.” With a wrench, Drummond made a sacrifice to a man he liked. He filled his pipe and handed it over. “Here, you need a smoke.”

  “Thanks.” Robinson puffed raggedly.

  The slow minutes passed, and Drummond wondered vaguely what he’d do when—it—happened. It didn’t have to happen. But the chances were all against such an easy solution. He was no psychologist. Best just to let things happen as they would.

  The waiting broke at last. A doctor came out, seeming an inscrutable high priest in his white garments. Robinson stood before him, motionless.

  “You’re a brave man,” said the doctor. His face, as he removed the mask, was stern and set. “You’ll need your courage.”

  “She—” It was hardly a human sound, the croak.

  “Your wife is doing well. But the baby—”

  A nurse brought out the little wailing form. It was a boy. But his limbs were rubbery tentacles terminating in boneless digits.

  Robinson looked, and something went out of him as he stood there. When he turned, his face was dead.

  “You’re lucky,” said Drummond, and meant it. He’d seen too many other mutants. “After all, if he can use those hands he’ll get along all right. He’ll even have an advantage in certain types of work. It isn’t a deformity, really. If there’s nothing else, you’ve got a good kid.”

  “If! You can’t tell with mutants.”

  “I know. But you’ve got guts, you and Elaine. You’ll see this through, together.” Briefly, Drummond felt an utter personal desolation. He went on, perhaps to cover that emptiness:

  “I see why you didn’t understand the problem. You wouldn’t. It was a psychological block, suppressing a fact you didn’t dare face. That boy is really the center of your life. You couldn’t think the truth about him, so your subconscious just refused to let you think rationally on that subject at all.

  “Now you know. Now you realize there’s no safe place, not on all the planet. The tremendous incidence of mutant births in the first generation could have told you that alone. Most such new characteristics are recessive, which means both parents have to have it for it to show in the zygote. But genetic changes are random, except for a tendency to fall into roughly similar patterns. Four-leaved clovers, for instance. Think how vast the total number of such changes must be, to produce so many correspondi
ng changes in a couple of years. Think how many, many recessives there must be, existing only in gene patterns till their mates show up. We’ll just have to take our chances of something really deadly accumulating. We’d never know till too late.”

  “The dust—”

  “Yeah. The radiodust. It’s colloidal, and uncountable other radiocolloids were formed when the bombs went off, and ordinary dirt gets into unstable isotopic forms near the craters. And there are radiogases too, probably. The poison is all over the world by now, spread by wind and air currents. Colloids can be suspended indefinitely in the atmosphere.

  “The concentration isn’t too high for life, though a physicist told me he’s measured it as being very near the safe limit and there’ll probably be a lot of cancer. But it’s everywhere. Every breath we draw, every crumb we eat and drop we drink, every clod we walk on, the dust is there. It’s in the stratosphere, clear on down to the surface, probably a good distance below. We could only escape by sealing ourselves in air-conditioned vaults and wearing spacesuits whenever we got out, and under present conditions that’s impossible.

  “Mutations were rare before, because a charged particle has to get pretty close to a gene and be moving fast before its electromagnetic effect causes physico-chemical changes, and then that particular chromosome has to enter into reproduction. Now the charged particles, and the gamma rays producing still more, are everywhere. Even at the comparatively low concentration, the odds favor a given organism having so many cells changed that at least one will give rise to a mutant. There’s even a good chance of like recessives meeting the first generation, as we’ve seen. Nobody’s safe, no place is free.”

  “The geneticist thinks some true humans will continue.”

  “A few, probably. After all, the radioactivity isn’t too concentrated, and it’s burning itself out. But it’ll take fifty or a hundred years for the process to drop to insignificance, and by then the pure stock will be way in the minority. And there’ll still be all those unmatched recessives, waiting to show up.”

  “You were right. We should never have created science. It brought the twilight of the race.”

  “I never said that. The race brought its own destruction, through misuse of science. Our culture was scientific anyway, in all except its psychological basis. It’s up to us to take that last and hardest step. If we do, the race may yet survive.”

  Drummond gave Robinson a push toward the inner door. “You’re exhausted, beat up, ready to quit. Go on in and see Elaine. Give her my regards. Then take a long rest before going back to work. I still think you’ve got a good kid.”

  Mechanically, the de facto President of the United States left the room. Hugh Drummond stared after him a moment, then went out into the street.

  It’s a Good Life

  Jerome Bixby

  Jerome Bixby is a slender, youthful-looking man who at various periods in his life has earned his living as a professional pianist, a magazine illustrator, an editor, and a Hollywood scriptwriter, among other things. However wide his range of talents, he seems destined to be remembered best for a single short story, the dark and sinister tale you are about to read, which depicts one of the most terrifying super-children any writer has ever created. In 1969 the Science Fiction Writers of America chose It’s a Good Life for the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, a volume intended to collect the greatest science-fiction stories of all time.

  At last report Bixby and his family were living in the San Bernardino Mountains of Southern California and planning to emigrate to Central America, where he hopes, he says, “to get a small business going, maybe import/export, and just relax.39

  Aunt Amy was out on the front porch, rocking back and forth in the highbacked chair and fanning herself, when Bill Soames rode his bicycle up the road and stopped in front of the house.

  Perspiring under the afternoon “sun,” Bill lifted the box of groceries out of the big basket over the front wheel of the bike, and came up the front walk.

  Little Anthony was sitting on the lawn, playing with a rat. He had caught the rat down in the basement—he had made it think that it smelled cheese, the most rich-smelling and crumbly-delicious cheese a rat had ever thought it smelled, and it had come out of its hole, and now Anthony had hold of it with his mind and was making it do tricks.

  When the rat saw Bill Soames coming, it tried to run, but Anthony thought at it, and it turned a flip-flop on the grass, and lay trembling, its eyes gleaming in small black terror.

  Bill Soames hurried past Anthony and reached the front steps, mumbling. He always mumbled when he came to the Fremont house, or passed by it, or even thought of it. Everybody did. They thought about silly things, things that didn’t mean very much, like two-and-two-is-four-and-twice-is-eight and so on; they tried to jumble up their thoughts and keep them skipping back and forth, so Anthony couldn’t read their minds. The mumbling helped. Because if Anthony got anything strong out of your thoughts, he might take a notion to do something about it—like curing your wife’s sick headaches or your kid’s mumps, or getting your old milk cow back on schedule, or fixing the privy. And while Anthony mightn’t actually mean any harm, he couldn’t be expected to have much notion of what was the right thing to do in such cases.

  That was if he liked you. He might try to help you, in his way. And that could be pretty horrible.

  If he didn’t like you … well, that could be worse.

  Bill Soames set the box of groceries on the porch railing, and stopped his mumbling long enough to say, “Everythin’ you wanted, Miss Amy.”

  “Oh, fine, William,” Amy Fremont said lightly. “My, ain’t it terrible hot today?”

  Bill Soames almost cringed. His eyes pleaded with her. He shook his head violently no, and then interrupted his mumbling again, though obviously he didn’t want to: “Oh, don’t say that, Miss Amy … it’s fine, just fine. A real good day!”

  Amy Fremont got up from the rocking chair, and came across the porch. She was a tall woman, thin, a smiling vacancy in her eyes. About a year ago, Anthony had gotten mad at her, because she’d told him he shouldn’t have turned the cat into a cat-rug, and although he had always obeyed her more than anyone else, which was hardly at all, this time he’d snapped at her. With his mind. And that had been the end of Amy Fremont’s bright eyes, and the end of Amy Fremont it’s a good life as everyone had known her. And that was when word got around in Peaksville (population: 46) that even the members of Anthony’s own family weren’t safe. After that, everyone was twice as careful.

  Someday Anthony might undo what he’d done to Aunt Amy. Anthony’s Mom and Pop hoped he would. When he was older, and maybe sorry. If it was possible, that is. Because Aunt Amy had changed a lot, and besides, now Anthony wouldn’t obey anyone.

  “Land alive, Wil!iam,,, Aunt Amy said, “you don’t have to mumble like that. Anthony wouldn’t hurt you. My goodness, Anthony likes you!” She raised her voice and called to Anthony, who had tired of the rat and was making it eat itself. “Don’t you, dear? Don’t you like Mr. Soames?”

  Anthony looked across the lawn at the grocery man—a bright, wet, purple gaze. He didn’t say anything. Bill Soames tried to smile at him. After a second Anthony returned his attention to the rat. It had already devoured its tail, or at least chewed it off—for Anthony had made it bite faster than it could swallow, and little pink and red furry pieces lay around it on the green grass. Now the rat was having trouble reaching its hindquarters.

  Mumbling silently, thinking of nothing in particular as hard as he could, Bill Soames went stiff legged down the walk, mounted his bicycle and pedaled off.

  “We’ll see you tonight, William,” Aunt Amy called after him.

  As Bill Soames pumped the pedals, he was wishing deep down that he could pump twice as fast, to get away from Anthony all the faster, and away from Aunt Amy, who sometimes just forgot how careful you had to be. And he shouldn’t have thought that. Because Anthony caught it. He caught the desire to get away from the Fremont hous
e as if it was something had, and his purple gaze blinked, and he snapped a small, sulky thought after Bill Soames—just a small one, because he was in a good mood today, and besides, he liked Bill Soames, or at least didn’t dislike him, at least today. Bill Soames wanted to go away—so, petulantly, Anthony helped him.

  Pedaling with superhuman speed—or rather, appearing to, because in reality the bicycle was pedaling him—Bill Soames vanished down the road in a cloud of dust, his thin, terrified wail drifting back across the summerlike heat.

  Anthony looked at the rat. It had devoured half its belly, and had died from pain. He thought it into a grave out deep in the cornfield—his father had once said, smiling, that he might as well do that with the things he killed—and went around the house, casting his odd shadow in the hot, brassy light from above.

  In the kitchen, Aunt Amy was unpacking the groceries. She put the Mason-jarred goods on the shelves, and the meat and milk in the icebox, and the beet sugar and coarse flour in big cans under the sink. She put the cardboard box in the corner, by the door, for Mr. Soames to pick up next time he came. It was stained and battered and torn and worn fuzzy, but it was one of the few left in Peaksville. In faded red letters it said Campbell’s Soup. The last cans of soup, or of anything else, had been eaten long ago, except for a small communal hoard which the villagers dipped into for special occasions—but the box lingered on, like a coffin, and when it and the other boxes were gone, the men would have to make some out of wood.