The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

by Isaac Asimov

  “—were made of plastic,” Matilda suggested. She did not understand a thing he was talking about, but she felt she should act bright.

  “No, no. Must you interrupt? The air hose and the water feed, those were plastic. Not the rest of the suit. The point is that half of us were destroyed before the rescue ship could come, and the remainder were near death. I owe my life to the mimicry of a flaak from Capella III. It assumed the properties of plastic and led the thiomots a merry chase across the frozen surface of D VII. You travel in the Deneb system now, and Interstellar Ordinance makes it mandatory to carry flaaks with you. Excellent idea, really excellent.”

  Almost at once, Matilda’s educational background should have told her that Haron Gorka was mouthing gibberish. But on the other hand she wanted to believe in him, and the result was that it took until now for her to realize it.

  “Stop making fun of me,” she said.

  “So, naturally, you’ll see flaaks all over that system—”

  “Stop!”

  “What’s that? Making fun of you?” Haron Gorka’s voice had been so eager as he spoke, high-pitched, almost like a child’s, and now he seemed disappointed. He smiled, but it was a sad smile, a smile of resignation, and he said, “Very well. I’m wrong again. You are the sixth, and you’re no better than the other five. Perhaps you are even more outspoken. When you see my wife, tell her to come back. Again, she is right and I am wrong…”

  Haron Gorka turned his back.

  Matilda could do nothing but leave the room, walk back through the house, go outside and get into her car. She noticed, not without surprise, that the other five cars were now gone. She was the last of Haron Gorka’s guests to depart.

  As she shifted into reverse and pulled out of the driveway, she saw the servant leaving, too. Far down the road, he was walking slowly. Then Haron Gorka had severed that relationship, too, and now he was all alone.

  As she drove back to town, the disappointment slowly melted away. There were, of course, two alternatives. Either Haron Gorka was an eccentric who enjoyed this sort of outlandish tomfoolery, or else he was plainly insane. She could still picture him ranting on aimlessly to no one in particular about places that had no existence outside his mind, his voice high-pitched and eager.

  It was not until she had passed the small library building that she remembered what she had promised the librarian. In her own way, the aging woman would be as disappointed as Matilda, but a promise was a promise, and Matilda turned the car in a wide U-turn and parked it outside the library.

  The woman sat at her desk as Matilda had remembered her: gray, broomstick figure, rigid. But now when she saw Matilda she perked up visibly.

  “Hello, my dear,” she said.

  “Hi.”

  “You’re back a bit sooner than I expected. But then, the other five have returned, too, and I imagine your story will be similar.”

  “I don’t know what they told you,” Matilda said. “But this is what happened to me.”

  She then related quickly everything that had happened, completely and in detail. She did this first because it was a promise and second because she knew it would make her feel better.

  “So,” she finished, “Haron Gorka is either extremely eccentric or insane. I’m sorry”

  “He’s neither,” the librarian contradicted. “Perhaps he is slightly eccentric by your standards, but really, my dear, he is neither.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did he leave a message for his wife?”

  “Why, yes. Yes, he did. But how did you know? Oh, I suppose he told the five.”

  “No. He didn’t. But you were the last, and I thought he would give you a message for his wife—”

  Matilda didn’t understand. She didn’t understand at all, but she told the little librarian what the message was. “He wanted her to return,” she said.

  The librarian nodded, a happy smile on her lips. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I am Mrs. Gorka.”

  The librarian stood up and came around the desk. She opened a drawer and took out her hat and perched it jauntily atop her gray hair. “You see, my dear, Haron expects too much. He expects entirely too much.”

  Matilda did not say a word. One madman a day would be quite enough for anybody, but here she found herself confronted by a second.

  “We’ve been tripping for centuries, visiting every habitable star system from our home near Canopus. But Haron is too demanding. He says I am a finicky traveler, that he could do much better alone, the accommodations have to be just right for me, and so forth. When he loses his temper, he tries to convince me that any number of females of the particular planet would be more than thrilled if they were given the opportunity just to listen to him.

  “But he’s wrong. It’s a hard life for a woman. Some day—five thousand, ten thousand years from now—I will convince him. And then we will settle down on Canopus XIV and cultivate torgas. That would be so nice—”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, if Haron wants me back, then I have to go. Have a care, my dear. If you marry, choose a homebody. I’ve had the experience, and you’ve seen my Haron for yourself.”

  And then the woman was gone. Numbly, Matilda walked to the doorway and watched her angular figure disappear down the road. Of all the crazy things.

  Deneb and Capella and Canopus, those were stars. Add a number, and you might have a planet revolving about each star. Of all the insane—

  They were mad, all right, and now Matilda wondered if, actually, they were husband and wife. It could readily be; maybe the madness was catching. Maybe if you thought too much about such things, such travels, you could get that way. Of course, Herman represented the other extreme, and Herman was even worse in his own way—but hereafter Matilda would seek the happy medium.

  And, above all else, she had had enough of her pen-pal columns. They were, she realized; for kids.

  * * * *

  She ate dinner in Cedar Falls and then went out to her car again, preparing for the journey back home. The sun had set and it was a clear night, and overhead the great broad sweep of the Milky Way was a pale rainbow bridge in the sky.

  Matilda paused. Off in the distance there was a glow on the horizon, and that was the direction of Haron Gorka’s place.

  The glow increased; soon it was a bright red pulse pounding on the horizon. It flickered. It flickered again, and finally it was gone.

  The stars were white and brilliant in the clear country air. That was why Matilda liked the country better than the city, particularly on a clear summer night when you could see the span of the Milky Way.

  But, abruptly, the stars and the Milky Way were paled by the brightest shooting star Matilda had ever seen. It flashed suddenly and remained in view for a full second, searing a bright orange path across the night sky.

  Matilda gasped and rushed into her car. She meshed the gears and pressed the accelerator to the floor, keeping it there all the way home.

  It was the first time she had ever seen a shooting star going up.

  THE ARBITER, by John Russell Fearn

  The year of 2046—and peace…

  The wreckage of past ages of barbarism had been cleared away. All over the Earth stood flawless cities. The peoples had nothing to complain of. They lived in a tempered, happy world of smoothly working machines and vast foolproof control panels. But in this there perhaps lay the seeds of danger.

  Selby Doyle, President of the Earth, voted into office by common consent, was a shrewd man. Slim, wiry, with gray hair swept back from an expansive brow, there was little to stamp him as extraordinary, unless it was the resolute tightness of his lips or the squareness of his chin. Here was a man who reasoned, decided, and then acted.

  He had accomplished all that he had set out to do and molded the world afresh. It gave him pleasure to sit as he was now, in the dim half light of the lowering night, his chair tilted back on its
hind legs, his gray eyes gazing on the lights of Major City as they sprang automatically into being at the scheduled times. The lower lights first, then the higher ones, as the tide of day ebbed from the deeper walks.

  Presently he glanced round as the warning light on his great desk proclaimed somebody’s approach. Instantly he was the chief magistrate—self-possessed, ready for his visitor. He closed the switches that filled the room with an intense yet restful brilliance.

  The automatic door opened. Doyle sat looking at the tall man who crossed the threshold. Vincent Carfax, chairman of the Committee for Public Welfare, inclined his bald head in greeting.

  “Your excellency!” he acknowledged, and stepped forward to shake hands.

  Doyle waved him to a chair. Carfax was an inhuman index of a man who carried endless statistics in his agile brain. Poker-faced, emaciated as a skeleton, it was his proud boast that he had never been known to smile.

  “You will overlook the lateness of the hour, Mr. President?” he asked at length in his precise voice.

  “I was about to leave,” Doyle answered. “However, only an important matter could bring you here, Carfax. What is it?”

  “Unrest.”

  “Unrest?” President Doyle raised his eyebrows. “Unrest in Major City? My dear fellow!”

  “Unrest!” Carfax insisted. “I have suspected it for a long time, but have refrained from bringing it to your notice until I was absolutely certain. Now I have conclusive evidence. Major City is resting on quicksand, your excellency.”

  Doyle pondered for a moment. “Tell me about it,” he invited.

  “The facts are plain,” Carfax answered slowly. “The reaction of perfect security after many years spent in wars and struggle is going directly against the adaptive strain Nature builds up. I have had the First in Biology check on that. The human body and mind, keyed to every emergency, had until recently something it could grapple with. Now there is nothing but perfection. The mind has of necessity to find a new form of excitation in order to maintain its equilibrium. Do I make it clear?”

  “I provided science for the people,” President Doyle said quietly. “Is not that exciting enough?”

  “Science, sir, is for the chosen few. Men such as you and I, and all the other master-brains who have brought this sublime state into being, are different. Call them geniuses if you will. At least they do not represent the masses. I have been forced to the unpleasant realization that very few minds are adapted to scientific study. Just as in the pre-Wars Era a man accepted the electric light for what it is without involving himself in the electronic processes embodied in it, so today there is that same aspect of laziness and torpor—and there, Mr. President, lie the seeds of unrest and mischief.”

  Doyle smiled. “It can be stopped. The Congress has the power.”

  “This goes deeper than you realize,” Carfax said, shaking his bald head, “It is not confined to Major City. It exists nearly everywhere. So much so I felt it my duty to warn you. If this unrest is, not quelled it means—back to war!”

  The Chief Executive was silent.

  “There is a. way,” Carfax said.

  “There is?”

  “It is becoming increasingly clear that the Last War did not entirely kill the belief in men’s minds that force of arms is the only sure way to Right. The element of unrest now present will grow rapidly. At the moment it takes the form of vicious words. It would like to build up a barrier against all things scientific and tear down the perfect structure we have created. But I say—if I may—that the close of the Last War really did end war for ever.”

  “Perhaps.” The President smiled gravely.

  “Listen,” Carfax resumed, tapping his finger emphatically on the desk. “We must forever outlaw war as a disease. Until now Man has not had sufficient power at his disposal—scientific power that is—to make his dreams come true. The earlier men tried it with pacts, treaties, and leagues of nations—and they all came to grief—because there was no science back of them.”

  “And now?”

  “Now, with tremendous scientific resources at our command, we can make a stand against this eternal enemy of progress, destroy it while it is still young.” Carfax hesitated briefly and looked apologetic. “What I am about to say, your Excellency, may make it appear I am teaching you your business. You will forgive that?”

  Doyle shrugged. “Only a fool refuses to learn. Continue.”

  “Many years ago men adopted the principle of arbitration,” Carfax resumed. “They were enlightened enough, in civil matters at least, to place any matter of dispute, particularly in instances of capital and labor, before a council usually composed of three experts. That council was vested with complete power to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ upon the point at issue. Thus matters were arbitrated. Endeavors were made, futilely enough, to devise an arbitration scheme between nations

  “The principle of arbitration relied on the good faith of nations to seek arbitration, but was lost in a welter of power politics, and overcome with greed, backed by terrific man power and armaments. Wars followed wars. Arbitration was ignored. But, sir, the idea was not lost. Why cannot a new arbiter arise? Not a man, not three men—but twelve! In olden times a jury was usually composed of twelve men and women. So in respect to that judicial tradition let it still be twelve. Twelve—to arbitrate!”

  President Doyle sighed a little. “An excellent idea, old friend. But what twelve men or women, however competent, would be accepted by the masses as sole judges?”

  “There comes the difference!” the Statistician said calmly. “I have been investigating on my own account. Ever since this unrest began I have pondered the idea of an Arbiter. I have interviewed at great length, twelve men and women—each one of them equipped with the finest brain in the world for their particular sphere. The twelve major sciences of present day civilization can each have a master at the head. Yes, I have talked with them. Each one of them has foreseen as we have the grim fate that awaits mankind if unrest is allowed to prevail. Now I have their assurance, once the word is made lawful by you, that each one of them is prepared to sacrifice their life for the particular science they control in order that the future of mankind may be assured.”

  Doyle sat bolt upright. “Sacrifice their life!” he cried. “What on earth do you mean, man? Why should they?”

  “Because there can be no other way to make a true Arbiter!”

  The President got to his feet, stood by the window with his hands clasped behind him. “Go on,” he said, lost in thought.

  “Twelve brains will be pooled for the common good,” Carfax explained. “Twelve brains will work in unison to provide a common answer, and a just one, for every conceivable difficulty in every walk of life. Twelve brains, functioning as one unit, will be the judge of humanity’s future actions and set discord at naught.”

  “Even brains die,” President Doyle pointed out, turning. “It is only putting off the vital issue for a short period. When the brains die the old trouble will be back. This is just—just a temporary panacea, making things comfortable for the present age. What of posterity, Carfax? This is the problem.”

  “The brains will never die!” the Statistician said, and at Doyle’s look of astonishment he was tempted to smile. But remembering his one boast he didn’t.

  “I said we could outlaw unrest and war forever, Mr. President. This is no hasty plan. I have conferred with Gascoyne, the First in Anatomy. He says the plan I have devised is feasible. Did it ever occur to you what a poor instrument the brain is for the interpretation of thought?”

  “Often. What of it?”

  “Gascoyne has asked himself that question long enough to find an answer. We of this age know science agrees that thought is everywhere, that it is expressed in greater or lesser degree according to the quality of the ‘receiver’ or brain interpreting it. According to Gascoyne a brain is basically an electronic machine—a radio receiver, if you wish it. In proportion to its quality it absorbs and uses the ideas
of all-pervading mind and expresses ideas clearly or badly through the medium of a physical body, which in itself is an expression of mind-force.”

  Doyle was clearly interested now. A faint, unaccustomed flush of pleasure stole into Carfax’s pallid cheeks.

  “Since, then, mind contains the quintessence of every known science,” he went on, “certain brains—or receivers—are better fitted than others, and can be completely duplicated in a mechanical, imperishable mould! Every convolution of a brain, every neuron, every synaptic resistance, can be imitated just as surely as in old days an impression could be taken of a man’s gums for the fitting of false dentures. It can be done just as surely as the artificial leg of today has false muscles.”

  President Doyle came back to the desk and stood waiting.

  “With your sanction,” Carfax finished slowly, “I propose to model twelve synthetic, imperishable brains on the exact convolutions and measurements belonging to these twelve scientists. It will be done in the fashion of taking a death-mask. The image of the face at death remains in the mask forever. In this case the mechanical brains will be modeled over the real ones, duplicating them in every detail. When this has been done, the mechanical equivalent will take over from the natural organ, probably with even better results because it will be devoid of the inevitable clogging of human construction. The real brain will shrivel and die afterwards, leaving the mechanical image.

  “Once the operation is complete these mechanical brains will be linked together, will go on gaining knowledge with a speed compatible with that of an ordinary brain if it were permitted to live for eternity. That is how the Arbiter will become indestructible and a paragon of justice for all mankind.”

  Doyle thought, then shook his head.

  “Even though I am the elected executive of all Earth, Carfax, I am still human. Twelve people to die—if I give the word—it is unthinkable!”