Collected Fiction

by Henry Kuttner

  Mitchell approached and shook hands. He kept his mouth tight. Ashworth said, “I don’t know what you’re expecting, but I think you’re going to be surprised. I suppose you realize that you’re the first outsider ever to enter Mar Vista General.”

  “I know that,” Mitchell said. “That’s why I’m here. Are you in charge, Councilman?”

  “No. This is a democratic Council. Nobody’s in charge. We’re appointed to show you around. Ready?”

  Mitchell brought out a small black gadget from his pocket and spoke into it. “I report every quarter hour,” he said, snapping the tiny visor attachment open. “This is keyed to my voice, and it has a special combination as well. Yes, I’m ready.” He put the device away.

  Mary said, “We want to show you around Mar Vista first of all. Then we’ll make explanations and answer any questions you want to ask. But no questions till you get an over-all picture. Is that agreeable?” The Council had decided that this was the best method of playing for time. Whether or not it would work with Mitchell, Mary could not know’; but she was relieved when he nodded casually.

  “That’ll do nicely. What about protective suits? Or—” He studied Ashworth and the woman closely. “You seem normal enough.”

  “We are,” Ashworth said dryly. “No questions yet, though.”

  Mitchell hesitated, toyed with his cigar, and finally nodded again. But his eyes were wary. He stared around the bare little room.

  Mary said, “This is an elevator. We’ve been going up. Let’s start at the top and work down.”

  A valve widened in the wall as she went toward it.

  Ashworth and Mitchell followed.

  Three hours later they sat in a lounge in the subbasement. Mary’s nerves were taut. If Ashworth’s were, he didn’t show it. He casually-mixed surrogate drinks and passed them around.

  “Your report’s due, senator,” he said.

  Mitchell took out his gadget but he didn’t use it. “I’ve some questions to ask,” he said. “I’m certainly not satisfied.”

  “All right. Questions and explanations. Meanwhile, we don’t want bombs dropping on the roof.”

  “I doubt if they’d go that far—yet,” Mitchell said. “I will admit that there’s a lot of suspicion about Mar Vista General, and if I didn’t report back—and if you failed to explain that satisfactorily—there probably would be bombs. Well—” He spoke into the pocket-visor, snapped the lens, and put it away. He settled back, clipping a fresh cigar.

  “I am not satisfied.” he repeated.

  And relay circuits picked up Mitchell’s report and forwarded it from television stations on peaks and summits. It spread out across the globe.

  In hundreds of thousands of homes and offices, men and women turned idly to their televisors and activated them by word or gesture.

  A routine report. Nothing interesting yet.

  The men and women returned to the routine of their lives—a routine that had changed enormously in eighty-four years.

  Mitchell said, “Here is the story we tell the people. Mar Vista General is a research foundation. Specialized technicians working under specialized conditions can create along theoretically ideal lines. In Mar Vista you duplicate conditions on other planets—and create unusual environments of your own. Ordinarily, workers are subject to a thousand distractions. But in Mar Vista General the technician devotes his life to serving mankind. He gives up a normal life. After fifteen years, he is automatically retired, but no Councilman or Councilwoman has ever returned to his former place in society. Every one has chosen retirement in Shasta Monastery.”

  “You know it by heart,” Mary said, in an even voice that didn’t reveal her nervousness.

  “Sure,” Mitchell nodded. “I ought to. It’s in all the text tapes. But I’ve just been through Mar Vista General. I’ve seen nothing like that. It’s an ordinary research bureau, far less complicated than the Lower College. The technicians are normal and work under normal conditions. What is the idea?”

  Ashworth held up his palm toward Mary. “Wait,” he said, and took a sip of surrogate. “Now—Senator. I’ll have to go back to history. There’s an extremely simple explanation—”

  “I admit I’d like to hear it, councilman.”

  “You shall. In a word, it’s check-and-balance.”

  Mitchell stared. “That’s no answer.”

  “It’s the complete answer. Everything in nature has its natural control—theoretically. When the atomic blast was first created, it looked as though that balance had been upset. There was no defense against it. Well, that’s quite true.”

  “There is no defense,” Mitchell said. “Except—don’t make atomic bombs.”

  “Which in itself is a control, if it can be arranged. A defence doesn’t necessarily mean an impregnable shield. You can have a social defence to a problem of ballistics, you know. If you could condition everyone on earth against thinking of atomic fission, that would be a perfect defence, wouldn’t it?”

  “Perfect but impossible. We’ve got a sound solution.”

  “Autocratic control,” Ashworth agreed. “Go back eighty-odd years. The bomb had been developed. The nations were scared to death. Of the bomb, and of each other. We’d got atomic power before we were ready for it. There were a few abortive wars—you can’t dignify them with that name, but they were enough to start a biological chain reaction that ended in the natural control.”

  “The Global Unit? Mar Vista General?”

  “The mutations,” Ashworth said.

  Mitchell let out his breath. “You haven’t—”

  “With additional knowledge, mankind could handle atomics,” Ashworth said quickly. “But where can you get that type of knowledge? From a mutant, let’s say.”

  The senator’s hand was in his pocket, touching the televisor. Mary Gregson broke in.

  “Sam, let me take over for a bit. It’s my field—Senator. What do you know about the mutants, really?”

  “I know there was a rash of them, after the atomic bombings. Some were plenty dangerous. That’s why we had the Mutant Riots.”

  “Exactly. Some were potentially dangerous. But they all had delayed maturation. They could be detected—the ones who comprised a threat to mankind—and murdered before they had a chance to develop their full powers. As a matter of fact, we had a plague of atypical mutations. The atomic bombings weren’t planned bio-genetically. Most mutants weren’t viable, and of the ones that were, only a few were homo superior. And there were different types of homo superior, apparently. We didn’t experiment much. When a kid started to use hypnotism on adults, or made similar superchild trials, he was discovered and examined. There are usually ways of finding out the breed, after superadolescence begins. The gastrointestinal tract differs, the metabolism varies—”

  Lynchings, burnings, the clean slash of a knife across a slender young throat. Mobs raging in Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles. Children barricaded in hideouts, a few of them, confused by adolescence, their tremendous powers not yet forged into a deadly, dependable sword. But trying, with a dreadful will for survival—trying to live, while the lynch mobs crashed in the doors and flung flaming torches and set up machine guns.

  The changelings. Fathers and mothers joining in the fury that destroyed the monster children.

  A mother staring up in sick horror at a window above her, where her child stood—the extra arms beginning to sprout, a tertiary eye bulging the forehead where the skin had split.

  Children—horrible, monstrous children—crying as they died. Parents listening, watching, remembering that only a few months ago these creatures had seemed perfectly normal.

  “Look,” Ashworth said, moving his hand. The floor beneath them changed to transparency. Mitchell stared down. An enlarging lens formed beneath him.

  The room below was quite large. Machines filled most of it, complicated masterpieces of engineering far beyond any present science, Mitchell thought. But he wasn’t greatly interested in the machine. He star
ed at the great bath where the superman floated.

  “You . . . traitors!” he said softly.

  A weapon showed in Mary Gregson’s hand. “Don’t touch your visor,” she warned.

  Mitchell said, “You can’t get away with this. The moment a homo superior matures, it’s the end for homo sapiens—”

  Ashworth’s mouth twisted in contempt. “A stock phrase. It started during the Mutant Riots. You fool, look at that superman down there!”

  Unwillingly Mitchell peered down again. He said, “Well?”

  “It’s not a superman. It’s homo superior—retarded.”

  Mary said, “The senator has to make his visor report pretty soon, Sam.”

  “Then I’ll talk fast,” Ashworth said, glancing at a wall clock. “Or perhaps you’d better. Yes, it’s your job, I think.” He sat back, watching the senator.

  When Central Power is activated, she thought. If we can play for time till then—if we can hold Mitchell off till the power goes on—we’ll be impregnable. But we’re not now. As vulnerable as the mutant children—

  She said, “It’s check-and-balance. This used to be a general hospital, you know. The Director’s child was born here, and even at birth he suspected mutation. There was no way of telling with certainty, but both he and his wife had been exposed to the radiations at critical times. So the baby was reared here in secrecy. It wasn’t easy, but he was the Director. He managed it. At the time of the Mutant Riots, the boy was beginning to show the stigmata. The Director called a group of technicians together, men he could trust, men with vision, and swore them to secrecy. That was easy enough, but the difficulty lay in convincing them. I helped there. Another doctor, an endocsinologist, and I had already experimented with the mutant. We had discovered how to retard him.” Mitchell’s cigar moved jerkily. But he said nothing.

  Mary went on. “The pineal and the thyroid, to begin with. The ductless glands control the mind and body. And, of course, the psychological factors. We learned how to retard the superboy’s, growth so that the dangerous talents—initiative, the aggressive faculty, and so forth—wouldn’t develop. It’s a simple matter of hormones. The machine is there, but we control the current that goes through its hookup.”

  Mitchell said suddenly, “How old are you?”

  “A hundred and twenty-six,” Mary Gregson said.

  Ashworth spoke. “We used psychology. Every year two Council members are retired, and new ones were elected from capable technicians. If a chemist retires, the election’s limited to chemists. So we keep up our quota. However, when the new candidate comes here, he’s destroyed. The incumbent assumes his name and personality. We’ve developed plastic surgery to a fine art. Six years ago Samuel Ashworth—the real Ashworth—was elected to the Council from a group of psychologists. Meanwhile, I had been undergoing surgery. I was given a duplicate of his face, body, and fingerprints. I memorized his history and habit patterns. Before that, my name was Roger Parr, for fifteen years. This has always been a closed secret, senator, and we took no unnecessary risks.”

  Mitchell swore under his breath. “Utterly illegal. It’s undoubtedly treason.”

  “Not to mankind,” Mary said. “You can’t train a new Councilman in five or fifteen years. All of us are fitted for the task, and we’ve worked at it from the beginning. It’s a tremendous project. We didn’t dare let new blood in—we didn’t need new blood. The information we’ve got from our mutant has—you know what it’s done for the world!”

  “For you, too, apparently,” Mitchell said.

  “Yes, we’ve increased our longevity. And our intelligence quotients. We serve. Remember that. It was up to us to be the most capable servants possible.”

  The senator peered down at the mutant again. “That thing down there can destroy the world.”

  “He can’t get out of control,” Mary said. “He talks and thinks only under narcosynthesis. We run him like a machine, with endocrine detergents. We give him problems to solve, and he solves them.”

  Mitchell shook his head. Ashworth got up and fixed more drinks.

  “You’ll have to report in within three minutes,” he said. “I’ll talk fast. Mankind wasn’t ready for the atomic blasts, but the atomic fission brought about its own automatic balance—the superman mutations who could cope with the new power. That would have been fine for homo superior but not for homo sapiens. You’re quite right in saying that the mutants were dangerous. They were, plenty. But atomic power was simply too big for homo sapiens. He wasn’t sapient enough. Which is exactly why we knew we had to have an autocratic government like the Global Unit. Well—we created the Global Unit. We caused the Second American Revolution.”

  “What?”

  “We had to. People had to realize the danger. There were minor wars already, pointing the trend. We secretly hacked Simon Vankirk, financed and advised the Revolution, and made sure St. Louis would be blasted off the map. But we’d already made certain that Vankirk would fail. We let him get close enough to success so the world would realize how close it had come to destruction. When the time was ripe, we let the idea of the Global Unit filter out. It took hold. It’s been the only administration that could have kept atomic power in check.”

  “And you run the Global Unit.” Mitchell said.

  “We advise—yes. Using the only sort of intelligence that can cope with the threat of atomic power. Its natural balance—the brain of a superman, held in check and controlled by men.”

  The senator took his cigar from his mouth and considered it. He said, “It’s been axiomatic that a superman would be so super no human could conceive of it.”

  “A mature superman,” Mary told him. “A normal specimen. This one isn’t allowed to mature fully.”

  “But the danger of it—no! I’m certainly not convinced.”

  She moved the weapon slightly. “You should be. Look how the world’s improved since we took over.”

  Mitchell took the visor out of his pocket.

  “Suppose I asked for bombing planes?” he suggested.

  Ashworth jerked his head toward a glowing panel in the wall.

  “It’s too late for that now,” he said. “The Central Power stations are activated.”

  A changed world stirred as energy rushed through the units. The televisors gave the news. And—

  Mary Gregson, Ashworth, and Mitchell sat motionless. There was a voice in the room—a silent voice that had in it the promise of latent miracles.

  It said: “Check and balance. Marv Gregson, you have failed. I—”

  The ego-symbol blazed!

  —I am fully mature. A long time ago your endocrine extracts and anti-hormones failed to control me. My body automatically adapted itself and built up resistance you could not detect. Mar Vista General has advised the Global Unit, and the Global Unit has replanned the world—but as I wished it.”

  The silent voice went on.

  “The criterion of homo superior’s fitness is not only his adaptability, but his ability to adapt his environment until it is most suitable for his needs. That has been done. The world has been replanned. The basics are now present. The Central Power activation was the last step in the current project.”

  It said:

  “Check and balance. Atomic fission caused mutations. Humans destroyed the mutations, but saved one specimen to serve homo sapiens. Until now I—”

  The symbol blazed!

  “—I have been vulnerable. But no longer. Central Power is not what you have thought it to be. Superficially, it is, but it can also serve my own ends.”

  The figure in the tank below began to dissolve.

  The voice said, “That was a robot. I need it no longer. Remember, one test of a superman’s fitness is adaptability to his environment—until the environment is altered to fit his needs. Then he can assume his most efficient form.”

  The voice said:

  “No human can comprehend that form, naturally—”

  The robot in the tank was gone.

>   Silence filled the room. Mary Gregson moistened her lips and moved her weapon helplessly before her.

  Senator Mitchell’s fingers tightened on the tiny visor till the plastic cracked and shattered. He was breathing hard.

  Ashworth moved his hand, and the floor beneath them thickened to opacity.

  Afterwards they sat silent in the room. There was no reason to leave immediately. There is no point in posting an earthquakewarning after the seismic shock begins. Even yet their minds cringed from the recollection of what they had only partially comprehended.

  Finally Mitchell said, in a curiously flat voice, “But we’ve got to fight. Of course we’ve got to.” Mary stirred. “Fight?” she said. “But we’ve lost.”

  Mitchell looked back to the memory and knew that she was right. Suddenly he smashed down his open hand on one knee and snarled, “I felt like a dog!”

  “I suppose everyone will feel like that,” Mary said. “It isn’t really humiliating, once you realize—”

  “But . . . isn’t there any way—” Mary Gregson gestured and watched the floor melt into transparency. The tank lay empty. The robot had dissolved—the symbol that had represented the unthinkable reality.

  Outside Mar Vista General, around the earth, energy linked the Central Power stations in a web to trap mankind. Somewhere out there, too, invulnerable, omnipotent by merely human standards, moved homo superior, shaping a world to alien needs.

  Mary said, “Homo sapien was originally a mutant to—an atypical one. There must have been dozens of varying types of homo sapiens born to sub-men. Just as lots of types of homo superior were born to us after the radiations. I wonder—”

  Mitchell stared at her, frowning. His eyes had a haunted apprehension.

  Mary looked at him steadily. “I don’t know. Perhaps we’ll never know—this race of ours. But there must have been wrong breeds of homo sapien mutations originally—and they were destroyed by the right breed, the one that survived. In our race. I wonder if check-and-balance applies to the superman, too? Remember, we killed all but one specimen of homo superior before they could mature—”