Un-Man and Other Novellas

by Poul Anderson

  “Turn it off,” she said. “It’s too horrible.”

  “These are horrible times, Sofie.”

  “I thought they were getting better.” She shuddered. "I remember the tail-end of the Years of Hunger, and then the Years of Madness, and the Socialist Depression—people in rags, starving; you could see their bones—and a riot once, and the marching uniforms, and the great craters— No! The U.N.’s like a dam against all that hell. It can’t break!”

  Naysmith put the boat on automatic and comforted her. After all, anyone loyal to the U.N. deserved a little consideration.

  Especially in view of the suppressed fact that the Chinese charge was absolutely true.

  He dropped the woman off at her house, a small prefab in one of the colonies, and made vague promises about looking her up again. Then he opened the jets fully and streaked north toward Frisco Unit.

  THERE was a lot of traffic around the great building, and his autopilot was kept busy bringing him in. Naysmith slipped a mantle over his tunic and a conventional half-mask over his face, the latter less from politeness than as a disguise. He didn’t think he was being watched, but you were never sure. American Security was damnably efficient.

  If ever wheels turned within wheels, he thought sardonically, modem American politics did the spinning. The government was officially Labor and pro-U.N., and was gradually being taken over by its sociotynamicists, who were even more in favor of world federation. However, the conservatives of all stripes, from the mildly socialist Republicans to the extreme Americanists, had enough seats in Congress and enough power generally to exert a potent influence. Among other things, the conservative coalition had prevented the abrogation of the Department of Security, and Hessling, its chief, was known to have Americanist leanings. So there were at least a goodly number of S-men out after “foreign agents”—which included Un-men.

  Fourre had his own agents in American Security, of course. It was largely due to their efforts that the American Brothers had false IDs and that the whole tremendous fact of the Brotherhood had remained secret. But some day, thought Naysmith, the story would come out—and then the heavens would fall.

  So thin a knife edge, so deep an abyss of chaos and ruin— Society was mad, humanity was a race of insane, and the few who strove to build stability were working against shattering odds. Sofie was right. The U.N. is a dike, holding hack a sea of radioactive blood from the lands of men. And I, thought Naysmith wryly, seem to be the little boy ivith his finger in the dike.

  His boat landed on the downward ramp and rolled into the echoing vastness of the unit garage. He didn’t quite dare land on Prior’s flange. A mechanic tagged the vehicle, gave Naysmith a receipt, and guided him toward an elevator. It was an express, bearing him swiftly past the lower levels of shops, offices, service establishments, and places of education and entertainment, up to the residential stories. Naysmith stood in a crowd of humans, most of them masked, and waited for his stop. No one spoke to anyone else, the custom of privacy had become too ingrained. He was just as glad of that.

  On Prior’s level, the hundred and seventh, he stepped onto the slideway going east, transferred to a northbound strip at the second comer, and rode half a mile before he came to the alcove he wanted. He got off, the rubbery floor absorbing the very slight shock, and entered the recess. When he pressed the door button, the recorded voice said: “I am sorry, Mr. Prior is not at home. Do you wish to record a message?”

  “Shut up and let me in,” said Naysmith.

  The code sentence activated the door, which opened for him. He stepped into a simply furnished vestibule as the door chimed. Prior’s voice came over the intercom: “Naysmith?”

  “The same.”

  “Come on in, then. Living room.”

  Naysmith hung up his mask and mantle, slipped off his sandals, and went down the hall. The floor was warm and resilient under his bare feet, like living flesh. Beyond another door that swung aside was the living room, also furnished with a bachelor austerity. Prior was a lone wolf by nature, belonging to no clubs and not even lie loosest free-marriage group, His official job was semantic analyst for a large trading outfit; it gave him a lot of free time for his U.N. activities, plus a good excuse for traveling anywhere in the Solar System.

  Naysmith’s eyes flickered over the dark negroid face of his co-worker—Prior was not a Brother, though he knew of the band—and rested on the man who lay in the adjoining relaxer. “Are you here, chief?” He whistled. “Then it must be really big.”

  “Take off your clothes and get some sun-lamp,” invited Prior, waving his eternal cigaret at a relaxer. “I’ll try to scare up some Scotch for you.”

  “Why the devil does the Brotherhood always have to drink Scotch?” grumbled Etienne Fourre. “Your padded expense accounts eat up half my budget. Or drink it up, I should say.”

  He was squat and square and powerful, and at eighty was still more alive than most boys. Small black eyes glistened in a face that seemed carved from scarred and pitted brown rock; his voice was a bass rumble from the shaggy chest, its English hardly accented. Geriatrics could only account for some of the vitality that lay like a coiled spring in him, for the entire battery of diet, exercise, and chemistry has to be applied almost from birth to give maximum effect and his youth antedated the science. But he’U probably outlive us all, thought Naysmith.

  There was something of the fanatic about Etienne Fourre. He was a child of war whose most relentless battle had 'become one against war itself. As a young man he had been in the French Resistance of World War II. Later he had been high in the Western liaison with the European undergrounds of- World War III, entering the occupied and devastated lands himself on his dark missions. He had fought with the liberals against the neofascists in the Years of Hunger and with the gendarmerie against the atomists in the Years of Madness and with U.N. troops in the Near East where his spy system had been a major factor in suppressing the Great Jehad. He had accepted the head of the secret service division of the U.N. Inspectorate after the Conference of Rio revised the charter and had proceeded quietly to engineer the coup which overthrew the anti-U.N. government of Argentina. Later his men had put the finger on Kwang-ti’s faked revolution in the Republic of Mongolia, thus ending that conquest-from-within scheme; and he was ultimately the one responsible for the Chinese dictator’s assassination. The Brotherhood was his idea from the beginning, his child and his instrument.

  Such a man, thought Naysmith, would in earlier days have stood behind the stake and lash of an Inquisition, would have marched at Cromwell’s side and carried out the Irish massacres, would have helped set up world-wide Communism —a sternly religious man, for all his mordant atheism, a living sword which needed a war. Thank God he’s on our side! “All right, what’s the story?” asked the Un-man aloud. “How long since you were on a Service job?” countered Fourre.

  “About a year. Schumacher and I were investigating the Arbeitspartei in Germany. The other German Brothers were tied up in that Austrian business, you remember, and I speak the language well enough to pass for a Rhinelander when I’m in Prussia.”

  “Yes, I recall. You have been loafing long enough, my friend.” Fourre took the glass of wine offered him by Prior, sipped it, and grimaced. “Merde! Won’t these Californians ever give up trying?” Swinging back to Naysmith: “I am calling in the whole Brotherhood on this. I shall have to get back to Rio fast, the devil is running loose down there with those Chinese charges and I will be lucky to save our collective necks. But I have slipped up to North America to get you people organized and under way. I am pretty damn sure that the leadership of our great unknown enemy is down in Rio—probably with Besser, who is at least involved in it but has taken some very excellent precautions against assassination—and it would do no good to kill him only to have someone else take over. At any rate, the United States is still a most important focus of anti-U.N. activity, and Donner’s capture means a rapid deterioration of things here. Prior, who was Donner’
s contact man tells me that he was apparently closer to spying out the enemy headquarters for this continent than any other operative. Now that Donner is gone, Prior has recommended you to succeed in his assignment.”

  “Which was what?”

  “I will come to that. Donner was an engineer by training. You are a cybernetic analyst, hein?”

  “Yes, officially,” said Naysmith. “My degrees are in epistemology and communications theory, and my supposed job is basic-theoretical consultant. Troubleshooter in the realm of ideas.” He grinned. “When I get stuck, I can always refer the problem to Prior here.”

  “Ah, so. You are then necessarily something of a linguist too, eh? Good. Understand, I am not choosing you for your specialty, but rather for your un-specialty. You are too old to have had the benefit of Synthesis training. Some of the younger Brothers are getting it, of course—there is a lad in Mexico, Peter Christian, whose call numbers you had 'better get from Prior in case you need such help.

  "Meanwhile, an epistemologist or semanticist is the closest available thing to an integrating synthesist. By your knowledge of language, psychology, and the general sciences, you should be well equipped to fit together whatever information you can obtain and derive a large picture from them. I don’t know.” Fourre lit a cigar and puffed ferociously.

  "Well, I can start anytime. I’m on extended leave of absence from my nominal job already,” said Naysmith. “But what about this Donner? How far had he gotten, what hap-pened'to him, and so on?”

  “I’ll give you the background, because you’ll need it,” said Prior. “Martin Donner was officially adopted in Canada and, as I said, received a mechanical engineering degree there. About four years ago we had reason to think the enemy was learning that he wasn’t all he seemed, so we transferred him to the States, flanged up an American ID for him and so on. Recently he was put to work investigating the Americanists. His leads were simple: he got a job with Brain Tools, Inc., which is known to be lousy with Party members. He didn’t try to infiltrate the Party—we already have men in it, of course, though they haven’t gotten very high—but he did snoop around, gather data, and finally put the snatch on a certain man and pumped him full of truth drug.” Naysmith didn’t ask what had happened to the victim; the struggle was utterly ruthless, with all history at stake. “That gave him news about the midwestem headquarters of the conspiracy, so he went there. It was one of the big units in Illinois. He got himself an apartment and— disappeared. That was almost two weeks ago.” Prior shrugged. “He’s quite certainly dead by now. If they didn’t kill him themselves, he’ll have found a way to suicide.”

  “You can give me the dossier on what Donner learned and communicated to you?” asked Naysmith.

  "Yes, of course, though I don’t think it’ll help you much.” Prior looked moodily at his glass. “You’ll be pretty much on your own. I needn’t add that anything goes, from privacy violation to murder, but that with the Service in such bad odor right now you’d better not leave any evidence. Your first job, though, is to approach Donner’s family. You see, he was married.”

  “Oh?”

  “I don’t mean free-married, or group-married, or trial-married, or any other version," snapped Prior impatiendy. “I mean married. Old style. One kid.”

  “Hmmm—that’s not so good, is it?”

  “No. Un-men really have no business marrying that way, and most especially the Brothers don’t. However—You see the difficulties, don’t you? If Donner is still alive, somehow, and the gang traces his ID and grabs the wife and kid, they’ve got a hold on him that may make him spill all he knows. No sane man is infinitely loyal to a cause.”

  “Well, I suppose you provided Donner with a midwestem ID.”

  “Sure. Or rather, he used the one we already had set up— name, fingerprints, number, the data registered at Midwest Central. Praise Allah, we’ve got friends in the registry bureau I But Donner’s case is bad. In previous instances where we lost a Brother, we’ve been able to recover the corpse or were at least sure that it was safely destroyed. Now the enemy has one complete Brother body, ready for fingerprinting, retinals, bloodtyping, Bertillon measurements, autopsy, and everything else they can think of. We can expect them to check that set of physical data against every

  ID office in the country. And when they find the same identification under different names and numbers in each and every file—all hell is going to let out for noon.”

  “It will take time, of course,” said Fourre. “We have put in duplicate sets of non-Brother data too, as you know; that will give them extra work to do. Nor can they be sure which set corresponds to Donner’s real identity.”

  In spite of himself, Naysmith grinned again. “Real identity” was an incongruous term as applied to the Brotherhood. However—

  “Nevertheless,” went on Fourre, “there is going to be an investigation in every country on Earth and perhaps the Moon and planets. The Brotherhood is going to have to go underground, in this country at least. And just now when I have to be fighting for my service’s continued existence down in Rio!”

  They’re closing in. We always knew, deep in our brains, that this day would come, and now it is upon us.

  “Even assuming Donner is dead, which is more likely,” said Prior, “his widow would make a valuable captive for the gang. Probably she knows very little about her husband’s Service activities, but she undoubtedly has a vast amount of information buried in her subconscious—faces, snatches of overheard conversation, perhaps merely the exact dates Donner was absent on this or that mission. A skilled man could get it out of her, you know—thereby presenting the enemy detectives with any number of leads—some of which would go straight to our most cherished secrets.”

  “Haven’t you tried to spirit her away?” asked Naysmith. “She won’t spirit,” said Prior. “We sent an accredited agent to warn her she was in danger and advise her to come away with him. She refused flat. After all, how can she be sure our agent isn’t the creature of the enemy? Furthermore, she took some very intelligent precautions, such as consulting the local police, leaving notes in her bankbox to be opened if she disappears without warning, and so on, which have in effect made it impossibly difficult for us to remove her against her will. If nothing else, we couldn’t stand the publicity. All we’ve been able to do is put a couple of men to watching her—and one of these was picked up by the cops the other day and we had hell’s own time springing him.”

  “She’s got backbone,” said Naysmith.

  “Too much,” replied Prior. “Well, you know your first assignment. Get her to go off willingly with you, hide her and the kid away somewhere, and then go undergound yourself. After that, it’s more or less up to you, boy.”

  “But how’ll I persuade her to—”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” snapped Fourre.

  It was. Naysmith grimaced. “What kind of a skunk do you take me for?” he protested feebly. “Isn’t it enough that I do your murders and robberies for you?”

  BBIGHAM CITY, UTAH WAS NOT OFFICIALLY A COLONY, HAVING EXISTED LONG BEFORE THE, POSTWAR RESETTLEMENTS. BUT IT HAD ALWAYS BEEN A LOVELY TOWN, AND HAD CONVERTED ITSELF ALMOST ENTIRELY TO MODEM LAYOUT AND ARCHITECTURE. NAYSMITH HAD NOT BEEN THERE BEFORE, BUT HE FELT HIS HEART WARMING TO IT— the same as Donner, who is dead now.

  He opened all jets and screamed at his habitual speed low above the crumbling highway. Hills and orchards lay green about him under a high clear heaven, a great oasis lifted from the wastelands by the hands of men. They had come across many-miled emptiness, those men of another day, trudging dustily by their creaking, bumping, battered wagons on the way to the Promised Land. He, today, sat on plastic-foam cushions in a metal shell, howling at a thousand miles an hour till the echoes thundered, but was himself fleeing the persecutors.

  Local traffic control took over as he intersected the radio beam. He relaxed as much as possible, puffing a nervous cigaret while the autopilot brought him in. When the boat grounded in a side lane,
he slipped a full mask over his head and resumed, manually, driving.

  The houses nestled in their screens of lawn and trees, the low half-underground homes of small families. Men and women, some in laboring clothes, were about on the slideways, and there were more children in sight, small bright flashes of color laughing and shouting, than was common elsewhere. The Mormon influence, Naysmith supposed; free-marriage and the rest hadn’t ever been very fashionable in Utah. Most of the fruit-raising plantations were still privately owned small-holdings too, using cooperation to compete with the giant government-regulated agricultural combines. But there would nevertheless be a high proportion of men and women here who commuted to outside jobs by airbus—workers on the Pacific Colony project, for instance.

  He reviewed Prior’s file on Donner, passing the scanty items through his memory. The Brothers were always on call, but outside their own circle they were as jealous of their privacy as anyone else. It had, however, been plain that Jeanne Doriner worked at home as a mail-consultant semantic linguist—correcting manuscript of various kinds—and gave an unusual amount of personal attention to her husband and child.

  Naysmith felt inwardly cold.

  Here was the address. He brought the boat to a silent halt and started up the walk toward the house. Its severe modern lines and curves were softened by a great rush of morning glory, and it lay in the rustling shade of trees, and there was a broad garden behind it. That was undoubtedly Jeanne’s work; Donner would have hated gardening.

  Instinctively, Naysmith glanced about for Prior’s watchman. Nowhere in sight. But then, a good operative wouldn’t be. Perhaps that old man, white-bearded and patriarchal, on the slideway; or the delivery boy whipping down the street on his biwheel; or even the little girl skipping rope in the park across the way. She might not be what she seemed: the biological laboratories could do strange things, and Fourre had built up his own secret shops—