Armageddon, Inc

by Lloyd Biggle Jr

  Dr. Ramsey had wondered, when his fatal disease was diagnosed years

  before, whether he would live to see the end of the war. Now he knew he would not. When he received a summons from the War Office, he answered it mainly to find out what the idiots there could possibly want with a dying doctor. What he learned would have taxed his credulity severely if he'd had any left.

  Dennis Foat was a brilliant young man who worked for the misnamed

  Psychological Warfare Branch--it was the psychology of its own civilian

  population that the War Office was concerned with, not that of the enemy.

  Foat had devised a hand-held Electroencephalograph and gone about checking people's brain waves to see how they were holding up under the stress of continuous war. His little device recorded its findings, and these he

  collected and classified and--with the help of an enlarging projector--used as

  a basis for lectures to his fascinated superiors about civilian morale.

  His monumental discovery happened entirely by accident. Working through a shabby neighborhood, he came upon a disgusting scene that rarely occurred in Inland cities but was unfortunately common along the Outland border. A drunk was being evicted from a tavern. Foat had no record of a brain wave of an intoxicated person, so he pointed his instrument and began to record.

  At that moment the whining passage of a spy-plane could be heard. The

  drunk looked up, searched the sky from horizon to horizon, finally saw the

  plane. He muttered something. Only Foat, four feet away, was close enough he hear what he muttered.

  What he said was, "Crash, damn you."

  The plane crashed.

  Foat rightly deduced that he had made the discovery of a lifetime. He

  stuck with the drunk, whose name was Mill Rees, went on a monumental spree with him, and didn't let him out of his sight for a moment--not even long enough to report what he had found. Not until he had tumbled Rees into bed in a cheap hotel and been assured by stentorian snores that Rees was really asleep did he dare to contact his headquarters.

  He related what had happened and described the Electroencephalograph he had recorded. The drunk's brain waves at the moment he ordered the plane to crash had a frequency and amplitude Foat had never encountered. Surely they were unlike any other brain waves, and Foat was already referring to them as "Zeta Rhythm." Against all odds, he had actually encountered a mutant, the existence of which, until then, had been entirely theoretical.

  Foat's superiors approved of everything he had done, congratulated him,

  and gave him instructions for the next day. Unfortunately, the instructions

  were impossible to carry out. Mill Rees was an Outlander. The next day he

  several times announced his intention to return to the Outland. Each time

  Foat managed to divert him. Foat kept trying to steer him into situations

  where he would be tempted to make use of his mutant powers again, but Rees failed to take the bait. That night, after Rees was safely in bed, Foat met his superiors, had a direction signal implanted under the skin of his left arm so his headquarters would always know where he was even when he couldn't report, and was issued a new set of instructions.

  "I need help," Foat announced.

  They had already sent for Doctor Frederick Ramsey. The old doctor had

  two major disadvantages. He had retired years before, and he was dying. He cultivated his garden, his only exercise, as well as he was able, and the

  garden's scarecrow looked less cadaverous than Ramsey did. His neighbors had their own private joke about servants getting the two of them mixed up and leaving the doctor out to frighten the birds.

  But Ramsey had one overwhelming advantage: He was the only person the military had access to who knew anything at all about mutants. Years before, when he had been the War Office's Chief Medical Officer, he had written a paper about the possibility that the continuing stress of a war that had gone on for generations might accelerate human evolution to the extent of producing an occasional individual with remarkably distorted powers. He described what those powers might me and what they could accomplish. The first civilian population that produced mutants would win the war--that much was certain.

  As far as Ramsey was concerned, his mutant paper was only an exercise, a tongue-in-cheek speculation to see how his staid superiors would react. He had all but forgotten it himself, but a mutant who could make a spy-plane

  crash merely by telling it to do so (and sending an onslaught of Zeta Rhythm

  brain waves in its direction) was no longer a tongue-in-cheek speculation.

  Foat had detected no such activity in Rees since then; obviously Rees

  could turn the Zeta waves on and off at will. The first problem was to

  persuade him to turn them on whenever they might be useful. The second was to find other mutants, if there were any, and organize all of them into a well-trained and disciplined unit that could bring this endless war to an end

  before the Easts found out what was going on and began to search for their own mutants.

  Obviously Ramsey was the one man who knew all about mutants--after all, he had written a paper about them--so they sent for him. Despite the fact that he was dying, he came. As a doctor, he had known death all of his

  professional career, and nothing would have been sillier, in his opinion, than

  to sit at home waiting for it. He had always told his dying patients: Keep

  active; don't surrender; make death come after you. If the government had

  some trivial task for him to perform, he would do it.

  At the same time, the summons perplexed him. The War Office certainly

  knew he had been dying for a long, long time from a little-known cancer of his bone marrow. It should have written him off years before.

  ******

  General Marc Bargh, the Director of Psychological Warfare, was a lank,

  mournful-looking individual who wore his stars as though they pained him. He greeted Ramsey with a curt announcement. "You wrote the mutant report."

  "Good heavens!" Ramsey exclaimed. "Don't tell me someone has actually

  read it!"

  "A lot of people have read it and discussed it during the past couple of

  days," Bargh said. "We have a small detachment that is using it as a

  textbook. Your basic premise that the continued stress of an unending war

  could produce mutations in the stressed population, has always made sense.

  For a long time, though, it seemed futile to try to do anything about it.

  Then something happened that changed everyone's mind."

  Ramsey sat back comfortably, drink in hand, and prepared himself to be

  amused. Five minutes later, drink still untasted, he had been totally

  astonished by the account of Dennis Foat's discovery of a mutant.

  He mused slowly, "It isn't surprising that there is one, as my paper

  demonstrated. The astonishing thing is that you managed to find him. What

  was the fate of the spy-plane?"

  "We sent the Easts an official diplomatic protest for their endangering

  our citizen's lives with unsafe equipment. They apologized and asked for the

  plane back so they can determine what went wrong with it. Eventually we'll

  give them the pieces, but right now we're studying them ourselves. We want to make certain the drunk really made the plane crash and not some simultaneous mechanical failure."

  "That would be just too staggering a coincidence. May I see the

  Electroencephalograph Foat recorded?"

  "Of course."

  A convoluted line appeared on the wall screen. Ramsey scrutinized it.

  "Doesn't look like any Electroencephalograph I remember. If I found a patient with a brain wave like that, I'd suspect some new kind of epilepsy."

  "Everyone who knows anything about brain waves says
it's an entirely new kind of rhythm," Bargh said. "Foat calls it 'Zeta Rhythm.'"

  "And Foat is sticking with the drunk?"

  "He certainly is. We implanted a signal in him, equipped him as best we

  could, and assigned a support team to keep as close to him as possible.

  Problem was, the mutant, whose name is Mill Rees, is an Outlander, and he

  insisted on going back to Outland. Foat went with him, of course, but they

  went no further than a slum area across the border. The support team is

  waiting close by, but on this side of the border."

  "Has the mutant performed again?"

  "Not that I know of. We equipped Foat as well as we could on the spur of

  the moment, but we hadn't proper communications equipment available. He is limited to two messages. One, which sounds every hour, says, 'This is where I've got to.' The other says, 'Emergency, help needed at once.' That will bring in the support team. But all he's done so far is give us his position,

  so we have no idea how he is making out. We've got to have this mutant's full cooperation."

  "If he has enormously evolved mental powers, he also may be light years

  ahead of us in intelligence and wisdom. He may even have a remarkably

  developed moral sense. Or he may be none of those things--a depraved

  superpower no one knows how to control. Has it occurred to you that Rees may not want anything to do with your silly war? Further, if he can stop an

  airplane's engines, he should be able to stop other things. Maybe he could

  stop all the human hearts within a certain radius. You're playing with

  something that could make nuclear weapons seem innocuous."

  General Bargh laughed grimly. "Intelligence? Wisdom? Moral sense? The

  fellow is a drunk. He's an alcoholic in the tenth and probably last degree.

  He's drinking himself to death. But it is a delicate situation--we've given

  full consideration to that, which is why we want to send you rather than a

  regular military officer. A doctor has a much better understanding of people, and you've given more thought to mutants than anyone else has. Further, most of the human debris in that Outland slum Foat and Rees went to is dying. A doctor who is also dying will command respect. We'll dress you in appropriately shabby clothing and give you any backup you need, but first you'll have to go in alone and find out what the situation is. Do you have enough stamina for that?"

  "Oh, I can manage that," Ramsey said. "I'll be exhausted afterward if I

  have to walk very far, but I can manage."

  "Cultivate Rees's friendship," Bargh said. "See if you can get him to

  talk about his mutant powers. I don't have to tell you how critically

  important it is. If the Easts also find a mutant and are able to make use

  of him before we can make use of ours, the war is lost."

  "I'll do what I can," Ramsey said. "I've got nothing else to do except

  die. I may do that anyway, of course, so be prepared to replace me."

  An hour later he was on his way to the Outland slum.

  ******

  Now he sat in a room with the dead Dennis Foat and meditated what to do next. The War Office would want the mutant's body, of course, if it could be found. Doctors would perform an autopsy and try to discover the source of Rees's mutant power. Ramsey felt confident that they wouldn't succeed, and he knew a far better use for the body.

  Mill Rees was an Outlander. Melna Rees, of Fronville--wherever that was,

  but it probably was an Outland town or village--could be his wife or sister.

  Ramsey's first step would be to find Fronville, find Melna Rees, and determine her relationship with Mill Rees. Then he would offer to return Mill Rees's body to his family--embalmed, if they wanted it that way.

  It was critically important not to ask for something, or demand

  something, but to offer to give something. While doing this, he should be

  able to learn what he needed to know about Mill Rees and his family tree.

  Rees might be unique, a genetic freak in a sleepy village of peaceful farmers.

  Or there might be one or two other mutants--among Rees's siblings, for

  example. It depended on that family tree, and the only way to find out about that was to go there and ask questions about it.

  General Bargh's reaction would be to abduct the mutants, if necessary,

  and put them to work for the military. And how could anyone abduct a mutant whose powers were as potent as Rees's had been? He could stop the motor on the truck carrying him away. No one knew what else he could do.

  Ramsey had the queasy feeling that he was about to stick his fingers into

  a fused bomb of a type never before imagined. One false move could mean not only the end of him but of civilization as well. Since he was dying anyway, it didn't matter what happened to him, but he would have had to confess to a twitch of concern about civilization.

  "There's nothing quite like living on the edge of a precipice," Ramsey

  murmured.

  ******

  With the passage of time, and under the pressure of an unending war, the

  democratic, classless society had divided itself into two rigid classes.

  Oddly enough, considering the number of sociologists who had predicted

  otherwise, race had nothing to do with it. Neither had economics. The

  classes were based strictly on geography.

  The Ins occupied the major cities and their suburbs. They also

  controlled the network of motorways they used to reach their playgrounds in

  the mountains, at lakes, and on seashores. When driving these routes, or

  flying them, they sometimes caught glimpses of the Outs and their communities.

  It was not known whether the Outs tried to distinguish between spy planes and commercial airliners or what they thought when they glimpsed the strange vehicles of the Ins that flashed along the motorways.

  As far as Ramsey knew, glimpses were the only contact between the two

  classes. Even economic contacts were--almost--reduced to zero. Ins no longer bought agriculture produce from the Outs except in emergencies. Imports were so much cheaper. Outs no longer bought manufactured goods from the Ins. Imports were so much cheaper.

  The Outs had their own seaports, their own railway links. They sold

  much abroad, especially grain, and--an oddity--the enemy Easts were their best customers. They received in return materials like iron, steel, and kerosene. Otherwise, they grew, processed, and contrived almost everything they needed themselves. While the Ins were becoming more and more technologically oriented and specialized, the Outs were reversing history and achieving an agrarian, non-technical society. Whether they were also producing mutants was something that would have to be determined.

  ******

  The ambulance arrived--also the backup, a platoon of infantry--and a

  squad went with the ambulance to the dump Norm had mentioned, guided by two of the men who had taken Mill Rees's body there. In the meantime, Ramsey questioned a man who had seen the fight Foat and Rees had got into.

  "This Mill, he was drunk," the man said. "Nasty drunk. Someone spilled

  a little beer on his arm, and he hauled off and cold-cocked him.

  Unfortunately for Mill, the guy had a lot of friends present, and all of them

  jumped onto Mill. Denny was with Mill, and he tried to help him, and all he

  got for it was a beating. Too bad, Denny was a nice guy. Maybe Mill was,

  too, when he wasn't drunk, but I never saw him when he wasn't drunk. Denny was the only guy who could get along with him when he was drunk.

  "After the fight, we borrowed a couple of wheelbarrows and brought Denny and Mill back here. Denny was still breathing, so we put him to bed. Not much else we could do for him, none of us were doctors. Norm said Mill was d
ead, so we left him in the wheelbarrow and someone took him to the dump in the morning."