The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume VII: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

by Various

  "Do you think he's really the guy who pushed the buttons?" I asked Pop.

  "How should I know?" Pop replied. "He claims to be."

  I was going to say something about people who faked confessions to get a little easy glory, as compared to the guys who were really guilty and would sooner be chopped up than talk about it, but at that moment a fourth voice started talking in the plane. It seemed to be coming out of the violet patch on the North America screen. That is, it came from the general direction of the screen at any rate and my mind instantly tied it to the violet patch at Atla-Hi. It gave us a fright, I can tell you. Alice grabbed my knee with her pliers (she changed again), harder than she'd intended, I suppose, though I didn't let out a yip--I was too defensively frozen.

  * * * * *

  The voice was talking a language I didn't understand at all that went up and down the scale like atonal music.

  "Sounds like Chinese," Pop whispered, giving me a nudge.

  "It is Chinese. Mandarin," the screen responded instantly in the purest English--at least that was how I'd describe it. Practically Boston. "Who are you? And where is Grayl? Come in, Grayl."

  I knew well enough who Grayl must be--or rather, have been. I looked at Pop and Alice. Pop grinned, maybe a mite feebly this time, I thought, and gave me a look as if to say, "You want to handle it?"

  I cleared my throat. Then, "We've taken over for Grayl," I said to the screen.

  "Oh." The screen hesitated, just barely. Then, "Do any of 'you' speak Mandarin?"

  I hardly bothered to look at Pop and Alice. "No," I said.

  "Oh." Again a tiny pause. "Is Grayl aboard the plane?"

  "No." I said.

  "Oh. Incapacitated in some way, I suppose?"

  "Yes," I said, grateful for the screen's tactfulness, unintentional or not.

  "But you have taken over for him?" the screen pressed.

  "Yes," I said, swallowing. I didn't know what I was getting us into, things were moving too fast, but it seemed the merest sense to act cooperative.

  "I'm very glad of that," the screen said with something in its tone that made me feel funny--I guess it was sincerity. Then it said, "Is the--" and hesitated, and started again with "Are the blocks aboard?"

  I thought. Alice pointed at the stuff she dumped out of the other seat. I said. "There's a box with a thousand or so one-inch underweight steel cubes in it. Like a child's blocks, but with buttons in them. Alongside a box with a parachute."

  "That's what I mean," the screen said and somehow, maybe because whoever was talking was trying to hide it, I caught a note of great relief.

  "Look," the screen said, more rapidly now, "I don't know how much you know, but we may have to work very fast. You aren't going to be able to deliver the steel cubes to us directly. In fact you aren't going to be able to land in Atlantic Highlands at all. We're sieged in by planes and ground forces of Savannah Fortress. All our aircraft, such as haven't been destroyed, are pinned down. You're going to have to parachute the blocks to a point as near as possible to one of our ground parties that's made a sortie. We'll give you a signal. I hope it will be later--nearer here, that is--but it may be sooner. Do you know how to fight the plane you're in? Operate its armament?"

  "No," I said, wetting my lip.

  "Then that's the first thing I'd best teach you. Anything you see in the haze from now on will be from Savannah. You must shoot it down."

  CHAPTER 5

  And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.

  --Dover Beach, by Matthew Arnold

  I am not going to try to describe point by point all that happened the next half hour because there was too much of it and it involved all three of us, sometimes doing different things at the same time, and although we were told a lot of things, we were seldom if ever told the why of them, and through it all was the constant impression that we were dealing with human beings (I almost left out the "human" and I'm still not absolutely sure whether I shouldn't) of vastly greater scope--and probably intelligence too--than ourselves.

  And that was just the basic confusion, to give it a name. After a while the situation got more difficult, as I'll try to tell in due course.

  * * * * *

  To begin with, it was extremely weird to plunge from a rather leisurely confab about a fairy-tale fellowship of non-practicing murderers into a shooting war between a violet blob and a dark red puddle on a shadowy fluorescent map. The voice didn't throw any great shining lights on this topic, because after the first--and perhaps unguarded--revelation, we learned little more of the war between Atla-Hi and Savannah Fortress and nothing of the reasons behind it. Presumably Savannah was the aggressor, reaching out north after the conquest of Birmingham, but even that was just a guess. It is hard to describe how shadowy it all felt to me; there were some minutes while my mind kept mixing up the whole thing with what I'd read long ago about the Civil War: Savannah was Lee, Atla-Hi was Grant, and we had been dropped spang into the middle of the second Battle of the Wilderness.

  Apparently the Savannah planes had some sort of needle ray as part of their armament--at any rate I was warned to watch out for "swinging lines in the haze, like straight strings of pink stars" and later told to aim at the sources of such lines. And naturally I guessed that the steel cubes must be some crucial weapon for Atla-Hi, or ammunition for a weapon, or parts for some essential instrument like a giant computer, but the voice ignored my questions on that point and didn't fall into the couple of crude conversational traps I tried to set. We were to drop the cubes when told, that was all. Pop had the box of them closed again and rigged to the parachute--he took over that job because Alice and me were busy with other things when the instructions on that came through--and he was told how to open the door of the plane for the drop (you just held your hand steadily on a point beside the door), but, as I say, that was all.

  Naturally it occurred to me that once we had made the drop, Atla-Hi would have no more use for us and might simply let us be destroyed by Savannah or otherwise--perhaps want us to be destroyed--so that it might be wisest for us to refuse to make the drop when the signal came and hang onto those myriad steel cubes as our only bargaining point. Still, I could see no advantage to refusing before the signal came. I'd have liked to discuss the point with Alice and maybe Pop too, but apparently everything we said, even whispered, could be overheard by Atla-Hi. (We never did determine, incidentally, whether Atla-Hi could see into the cabin of the plane also. I don't believe they could, though they sure had it bugged for sound.)

  All in all, we found out almost nothing about Atla-Hi. In fact, three witless germs traveling in a cabin in an iron filing wasn't a bad description of us at all. As I often say of my deductive faculties--think--shmink! But Atla-Hi (always meaning, of course, the personality behind the voice from the screen) found out all it wanted about us--and apparently knew a good deal to start with. For one thing, they must have been tracking our plane for some time, because they guessed it was on automatic and that we could reverse its course but nothing else. Though they seemed under the impression that we could reverse its course to Los Alamos, not the cracking plant. Here obviously I did get a nugget of new data, though it was just about the only one. For a moment the voice from the screen got real unguarded--anxious as it asked, "Do you know if it is true that they have stopped dying at Los Alamos, or are they merely broadcasting that to cheer us up?"

  I answered, "Oh yes, they're all fine," to that, but I couldn't have made it very convincing, because the next thing I knew the voice was getting me to admit that we'd only boarded the plane somewhere in the Central Deathlands. I even had to describe the cracking plant and freeway and gas tanks--I couldn't think of a lie that mightn't get us into as much trouble as the truth--and the voice said, "Oh, did Grayl stay there?" and I said, "Yes," and braced myself to do some more admitting, or some heavy lying, as the inspiration took me.

  But the voice continued to ski
rt around the question of what exactly had happened to Grayl. I guess they knew well enough we'd bumped him off, but didn't bring it up because they needed our cooperation--they were handling us like children or savages, you see.

  * * * * *

  One pretty amazing point--Atla-Hi apparently knew something about Pop's fairy-tale fellowship of non-practicing murderers, because when he had to speak up, while he was getting instructions on preparing the stuff for the drop, the voice said, "Excuse me, but you sound like one of those M. A. boys."

  Murderers Anonymous, Pop had said some of their boys called their unorganized organization.

  "Yep, I am," Pop admitted uncomfortably.

  "Well, a word of advice then, or perhaps I only mean gossip," the screen said, for once getting on a side track. "Most of our people do not believe you are serious about it, although you may think that you are. Our skeptics (which includes all but a very few of us) split quite evenly between those who think that the M. A. spirit is a terminal psychotic illusion and those who believe it is an elaborate ruse in preparation for some concerted attack on cities by Deathlanders."

  "Can't say that I blame the either of them," was Pop's only comment. "I think I'm nuts myself and a murderer forever." Alice glared at him for that admission, but it seemed to do us no damage. Pop really did seem out of his depth though during this part of our adventure, more out of his depth than even Alice and me--I mean, as if he could only really function in the Deathland with Deathlanders and wanted to get anything else over quickly.

  * * * * *

  I think one reason Pop was that way was that he was feeling very intensely something I was feeling myself: a sort of sadness and bewilderment that beings as smart as the voice from the screen sounded should still be fighting wars. Murder, as you must know by now, I can understand and sympathize with deeply, but war?--no!

  Oh, I can understand cultural queers fighting city squares and even get a kick out of it and whoop 'em on, but these Atla-Hi and Alamos folk seemed a different sort of cat altogether (though I'd only come to that point of view today)--the kind of cat that ought to have outgrown war or thought its way around it. Maybe Savannah Fortress had simply forced the war on them and they had to defend themselves. I hadn't contacted any Savannans--they might be as blood-simple as the Porterites. Still, I don't know that it's always a good excuse that somebody else forced you into war. That sort of justification can keep on until the end of time. But who's a germ to judge?

  A minute later I was feeling doubly like a germ and a very lowly one, because the situation had just got more difficult and depressing too--the thing had happened that I said I'd tell you about in due course.

  The voice was just repeating its instructions to Pop on making the drop, when it broke off of a sudden and a second voice came in, a deep voice with a sort of European accent (not Chinese, oddly)--not talking to us, I think, but to the first voice and overlooking or not caring that we could hear.

  "Also tell them," the second voice said, "that we will blow them out of the sky the instant they stop obeying us! If they should hesitate to make the drop or if they should put a finger on the button that reverses their course, then--pouf! Such brutes understand only the language of force. Also warn them that the blocks are atomic grenades that will blow them out of the sky too if--"

  "Dr. Kovalsky, will you permit me to point out--" the first voice interrupted, getting as close to expressing irritation as I imagine it ever allowed itself to do. Then both voices cut off abruptly and the screen was silent for ten seconds or so. I guess the first voice thought it wasn't nice for us to overhear Atla-Hi bickering with itself, even if the second voice didn't give a damn (any more than a farmer would mind the pigs overhearing him squabble with his hired man; of course this guy seemed to overlook that we were killer-pigs, but there wasn't anything we could do in that line just now except get burned up).

  When the screen came on again, it was just the first voice talking once more, but it had something to say that was probably the result of a rapid conference and compromise.

  "Attention, everyone! I wish to inform you that the plane in which you are traveling can be exploded--melted in the air, rather--if we activate a certain control at this end. We will not do so, now or subsequently, if you make the drop when we give the signal and if you remain on your present course until then. Afterwards you will be at liberty to reverse your course and escape as best you may. Let me re-emphasize that when you told me you had taken over for Grayl I accepted that assertion in full faith and still so accept it. Is that all fully understood?"

  We all told him "Yes," though I don't imagine we sounded very happy about it, even Pop. However I did get that funny feeling again that the voice was being really sincere--an illusion, I supposed, but still a comforting one.

  Now while all these things were going on, believe it or not, and while the plane continued to bullet through the orange haze--which hadn't shown any foreign objects in it so far, thank God, even vultures, let alone "straight strings of pink stars"--I was receiving a cram course in gunnery! (Do you wonder I don't try to tell this part of my story consecutively?)

  * * * * *

  It turned out that Alice had been brilliantly right about one thing: if you pushed some of the buttons simultaneously in patterns of five they unlocked and you could play on them like organ keys. Two sets of five keys, played properly, would rig out a sight just in front of the viewport and let you aim and fire the plane's main gun in any forward direction. There was a rearward firing gun too, that you aimed by changing over the World Screen to a rear-view TV window, but we didn't get around to mastering that one. In fact, in spite of my special talents it was all I could do to achieve a beginner's control over the main gun, and I wouldn't have managed even that except that Alice, from the thinking she'd been doing about patterns of five, was quick at understanding from the voice's descriptions which buttons were meant. She couldn't work them herself of course, what with her stump and burnt hand, but she could point them out for me.

  After twenty minutes of drill I was a gunner of sorts, sprawled in the right-hand kneeling seat and intently scanning the onrushing orange haze which at last was beginning to change toward the bronze of evening. If something showed up in it I'd be able to make a stab at getting a shot in. Not that I knew what my gun fired--the voice wasn't giving away any unnecessary data.

  Naturally I had asked why didn't the voice teach me to fly the plane so that I could maneuver in case of attack, and naturally the voice had told me it was out of the question--much too difficult and besides they wanted us on a known course so they could plan better for the drop and recovery. (I think maybe the voice would have given me some hints--and maybe even told me more about the steel cubes too and how much danger we were in from them--if it hadn't been for the second voice, which presumably had issued from a being who was keeping watch to make sure among other things that the first voice didn't get soft-hearted.)

  So there I was being a front gunner. Actually a part of me was getting a big bang out of it--from antique Banker's Special to needle cannon (or whatever it was)--but at the same time another part of me was disgusted with the idea of acting like I belonged to a live culture (even a smart, unqueer one) and working in a war (even just so as to get out of it fast), while a third part of me--one that I normally keep down--was very simply horrified.

  Pop was back by the door with the box and 'chute, ready to make the drop.

  Alice had no duties for the moment, but she'd suddenly started gathering up food cans and packing them in one bag--I couldn't figure out at first what she had in mind. Orderly housewife wouldn't be exactly my description of her occupational personality.

  Then of course everything had to happen at once.

  The voice said, "Make the drop!"

  Alice crossed to Pop and thrust out the bag of cans toward him, writhing her lips in silent "talk" to tell him something. She had a knife in her burnt hand too.

  * * * * *

  But I didn't have
time to do any lip-reading, because just then a glittering pink asterisk showed up in the darkening haze ahead--a whole half dozen straight lines spreading out from a blank central spot, as if a super-fast gigantic spider had laid in the first strands of its web.

  Wind whistled as the door of the plane started to open.

  I fought to center my sight on the blank central spot, which drifted toward the left.

  One of the straight lines grew dazzlingly bright.

  I heard Alice whisper fiercely, "Drop these!" and the part of my mind that couldn't be applied to gunnery instantly deduced that she'd had some last-minute inspiration about dropping a bunch of cans instead of the steel cubes.

  I got the sight centered and held down the firing combo. The thought flashed to me: it's a city you're firing at, not a plane, and I flinched.

  The dazzlingly pink line dipped down toward me.

  Behind me, the sound of a struggle. Alice snarling and Pop giving a grunt.

  Then all at once a scream from Alice, a big whoosh of wind, a flash way ahead (where I'd aimed), a spatter of hot metal inside the cabin, a blinding spot in the middle of the World Screen, a searing beam inches from my neck, an electric shock that lifted me from my seat and ripped at my consciousness!

  * * * * *

  When I came to (if I really ever was out--seconds later, at most) there were no more pink lines. The haze was just its disgustingly tawny evening self with black spots that were only after-images. The cabin stunk of ozone, but wind funneling through a hole in the one-time World Screen was blowing it out fast enough--Savannah had gotten in one lick, all right. And we were falling, the plane was swinging down like a crippled bird--I could feel it and there was no use kidding myself.

  But staring at the control panel wouldn't keep us from crashing if that was in the cards. I looked around and there were Pop and Alice glaring at each other across the closing door. He looked mean. She looked agonized and was pressing her burnt hand into her side with her elbow as if he'd stamped on the hand, maybe. I didn't see any blood though. I didn't see the box and 'chute either, though I did see Alice's bag of groceries. I guessed Pop had made the drop.