The 34th Golden Age of Science Fiction: C.M. Kornbluth

by C. M. Kornbluth

It was 2349, Reuben sprang from bed and stood by the door, his pistol silenced and ready. At 2350 a naked man slipped swiftly into the room, heading for the bed as he raised a ten-centimeter poignard. He stopped in dismay when he realized that the bed was empty.

  Reuben killed him with a bullet through the throat.

  “But he doesn’t look a bit like me,” he said in bewilderment, closely examining the face. “Just in a general way.”

  Selene said dully: “Almon told me people always say that when they see their doubles. It’s funny, isn’t it? He looks just like you, really.”

  “How was my body to be disposed of?”

  She produced a small flat box. “A shadow suit. You were to be left here and somebody would come tomorrow.”

  “We won’t disappoint him.” Reuben pulled the web of the shadow suit over his double and turned on the power. In the half-lit room, it was a perfect disappearance; by daylight it would be less perfect. “They’ll ask why the body was shot instead of knifed. Tell them you shot me with the gun from under the pillow. Just say I heard the double come in and you were afraid there might have been a struggle.”

  She listlessly asked: “How do you know I won’t betray you?”

  “You won’t, Selene.” His voice bit. “You’re broken.”

  She nodded vaguely, started to say something and then went out without saying it.

  Reuben luxuriously stretched in his narrow bed. Later, his beds would be wider and softer, he thought. He drifted into sleep on a half-formed thought that some day he might vote with other generals on the man to wear the five stars—or even wear them himself, Master of Denv.

  He slept healthily through the morning alarm and arrived late at his regular twentieth-level station. He saw his superior, May’s man Oscar of the eighty-fifth level, Atomist, ostentatiously take his name. Let him!

  Oscar assembled his crew for a grim announcement: “We are going to even the score, and perhaps a little better, with Ellay. At sunset there will be three flights of missiles from Deck One.”

  There was a joyous murmur and Reuben trotted off on his task.

  All forenoon he was occupied with drawing plutonium slugs from hyper-suspicious storekeepers in the great rock-quarried vaults, and seeing them through countless audits and assays all the way to Weapons Assembly. Oscar supervised the scores there who assembled the curved slugs and the explosive lenses into sixty-kilogram warheads.

  In mid-afternoon there was an incident. Reuben saw Oscar step aside for a moment to speak to a Maintainer whose guard fell on one of the Assembly Servers, and dragged him away as he pleaded innocence. He had been detected in sabotage. When the warheads were in and the Missilers seated, waiting at their boards, the two Atomists rode up to the eighty-third’s refectory.

  The news of a near-maximum effort was in the air; it was electric. Reuben heard on all sides in tones of self-congratulation: “We’ll clobber them tonight!”

  “That Server you caught,” he said to Oscar. “What was he up to?”

  His commander stared. “Are you trying to learn my job? Don’t try it, I warn you. If my black marks against you aren’t enough, I could always arrange for some fissionable material in your custody to go astray.”

  “No, no! I was just wondering why people do something like that.”

  Oscar sniffed doubtfully. “He’s probably insane, like all the Angelos. I’ve heard the climate does it to them. You’re not a Maintainer or a Controller. Why worry about it?”

  “They’ll brainburn him, I suppose?”

  “I suppose. Listen!”

  * * * *

  Deck One was firing. One, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six, One, two, three, four, five, six.

  People turned to one another and shook hands, laughed and slapped shoulders heartily. Eighteen missiles were racing through the stratosphere, soon to tumble on Ellay. With any luck, one or two would slip through the first wall of interceptors and blast close enough to smash windows and topple walls in the crazy city by the ocean. It would serve the lunatics right.

  Five minutes later an exultant voice filled most of Denv.

  “Recon missile report,” it said, “Eighteen launched, eighteen perfect trajectories. Fifteen shot down by Ellay first-line interceptors, three shot down by Ellay second-line interceptors. Extensive blast damage observed in Griffith Park area of Ellay!”

  There were cheers.

  And eight Full Maintainers marched into the refectory silently, and marched out with Reuben.

  He knew better than to struggle or ask futile questions. Any question you asked of a Maintainer was futile. But he goggled when they marched him onto an upward-bound stairway.

  They rode past the eighty-ninth level and Reuben lost count, seeing only the marvels of the upper reaches of Denv. He saw carpets that ran the entire length of corridors, and intricate fountains, and mosaic walls, stained-glass windows, more wonders than he could recognize, things for which he had no name.

  He was marched at last into a wood-paneled room with a great polished desk and a map behind it. He saw May, and another man who must have been a general—Rudolph?—but sitting at the desk was a frail old man who wore a circlet of stars on each khaki shoulder.

  The old man said to Reuben: “You are an Ellay spy and saboteur.”

  Reuben looked at May. Did one speak directly to the man who wore the stars, even in reply to such an accusation?

  “Answer him, Reuben,” May said kindly.

  “I am May’s man Reuben, of the eighty-third level, an Atomist,” he said.

  “Explain,” said the other general heavily, “if you can, why all eighteen of the warheads you procured today failed to fire.”

  “But they did!” gasped Reuben. “The Recon missile report said there was blast damage from the three that got through and it didn’t say anything about the others failing to fire.”

  The other general suddenly looked sick and May looked even kindlier. The man who wore the stars turned inquiringly to the chief of the Maintainers, who nodded and said: “That was the Recon missile report, sir.”

  The general snapped: “What I said was that he would attempt to sabotage the attack. Evidently he failed. I also said he is a faulty double, somehow slipped with great ease into my good friend May’s organization. You will find that his left thumb print is a clumsy forgery of the real Reuben’s thumb print and that his hair has been artificially darkened.”

  The old man nodded at the chief of the Maintainers, who said: “We have his card, sir.”

  Reuben abruptly found himself being fingerprinted and deprived of some hair.

  “The f.p.s check, sir,” one Maintainer said. “He’s Reuben.”

  “Hair’s natural, sir,” said another.

  The general began a rear-guard action: “My information about his hair seems to have been inaccurate. But the fingerprint means only that Ellay spies substituted his prints for Reuben’s prints in the files—”

  “Enough, sir,” said the old man with the stars. “Dismissed. All of you. Rudolph, I am surprised. All of you, go.”

  Reuben found himself in a vast apartment with May, who was bubbling and chuckling uncontrollably until he popped three of the green capsules into his mouth hurriedly.

  “This means the eclipse for years of my good friend Rudolph,” he crowed. “His game was to have your double sabotage the attack warheads and so make it appear that my organization is rotten with spies. The double must have been under post-hypnotic, primed to admit everything. Rudolph was so sure of himself that he made his accusations before the attack, the fool!”

  He fumbled out the green capsules again.

  “Sir,” said Reuben, alarmed.

  “Only temporary,” May muttered, and swallowed a fourth. “But you’re right. You leave them alone. There are big things to be done in your time, not in mine. I
told you I needed a young man who could claw his way to the top. Rudolph’s a fool. He doesn’t need the capsules because he doesn’t ask questions. Funny, I thought a coup like the double affair would hit me hard, but I don’t feel a thing. It’s not like the old days. I used to plan and plan, and when the trap went snap it was better than this stuff. But now I don’t feel a thing.”

  He leaned forward from his chair; the pupils of his eyes were black bullets.

  “Do you want to work?” he demanded. “Do you want your world stood on its head and your brains to crack and do the only worthwhile job there is to do? Answer me!”

  “Sir, I am a loyal May’s man. I want to obey your orders and use my ability to the full.”

  “Good enough,” said the general, “You’ve got brains, you’ve got push. I’ll do the spade work. I won’t last long enough to push it through. You’ll have to follow. Ever been outside of Denv?”

  Reuben stiffened.

  “I’m not accusing you of being a spy. It’s really all right to go outside of Denv. I’ve been outside. There isn’t much to see at first—a lot of ground pocked and torn up by shorts and overs from Ellay and us. Farther out, especially east, it’s different. Grass, trees, flowers. Places where you could grow food.

  “When I went outside, it troubled me. It made me ask questions. I wanted to know how we started. Yes—started. It wasn’t always like this. Somebody built Denv. Am I getting the idea across to you? It wasn’t always like this!

  “Somebody set up the reactors to breed uranium and make plutonium. Somebody tooled us up for the missiles. Somebody wired the boards to control them. Somebody started the hydroponics tanks.

  “I’ve dug through the archives. Maybe I found something. I saw mountains of strength reports, ration reports, supply reports, and yet I never got back to the beginning. I found a piece of paper and maybe I understood it and maybe I didn’t. It was about the water of the Colorado River and who should get how much of it. How can you divide water in a river? But it could have been the start of Denv, Ellay, and the missile attacks.”

  The general shook his head, puzzled, and went on: “I don’t see clearly what’s ahead. I want to make peace between Denv and Ellay, but I don’t know how to start or what it will be like. I think it must mean not firing, not even making any more weapons. Maybe it means that some of us, or a lot of us, will go out of Denv and live a different kind of life. That’s why I’ve clawed my way up. That’s why I need a young man who can claw with the best of them. Tell me what you think.”

  “I think,” said Reuben measuredly, “it’s magnificent—the salvation of Denv. I’ll back you to my dying breath if you’ll let me.”

  May smiled tiredly and leaned back in the chair as Reuben tip-toed out.

  * * * *

  What luck. Reuben thought—what unbelievable luck to be at a fulcrum of history like this!

  He searched the level for Rudolph’s apartment and gained admission.

  To the general, he said: “Sir, I have to report that your friend May is insane. He has just been raving to me, advocating the destruction of civilization as we know it, and urging me to follow in his footsteps. I pretended to agree—since I can be of greater service to you if I’m in May’s confidence.”

  “So?” said Rudolph thoughtfully. “Tell me about the double. How did that go wrong?”

  “The bunglers were Selene and Almon. Selene because she alarmed me instead of distracting me. Almon because he failed to recognize her incompetence.”

  “They shall be brainburned. That leaves an eighty-ninth-level vacancy in my organization, doesn’t it?”

  “You’re very kind, sir, but I think I should remain a May’s man—outwardly. If I earn any rewards, I can wait for them. I presume that May will be elected to wear the five stars. He won’t live more than two years after that, at the rate he is taking drugs.”

  “We can shorten it,” grinned Rudolph. “I have pharmacists who can see that his drugs are more than normal strength.”

  “That would be excellent, sir. When he is too enfeebled to discharge his duties, there may be an attempt to rake up the affair of the double to discredit you. I could then testify that I was your man all along and that May coerced me.”

  They put their heads together, the two saviors of civilization as they knew it, and conspired ingeniously long into the endless night.

  MAKE MINE MARS

  Originally published in SF Adventures, November 1952.

  “X is for the ecstasy she ga-a-ave me;

  E is for her eyes—one, two, and three-ee;

  T is for the teeth with which she’d sha-a-ave me;

  S is for her scales of i-vo-ree-ee-ee…”

  Somebody was singing, and my throbbing head objected. I seemed to have a mouthful of sawdust.

  “T is for her tentacles ah-round me;

  J is for her jowls—were none soo-oo fair;

  H is for the happy day she found me;

  Fe is for the iron in her hair…”

  I ran my tongue around inside my mouth. It was full of sawdust—spruce and cedar, rocketed in from Earth.

  “Put them all to-gether, they spell Xetstjhfe…”

  My eyes snapped open, and I sat up, cracking my head on the underside of the table beneath which I was lying. I lay down and waited for the pinwheels to stop spinning. I tried to sort it out. Spruce and cedar…Honest Blogri’s Olde Earthe Saloon…eleven stingers with a Sirian named Wenjtkpli…

  “A worrud that means the wur-r-l-l-d too-oo mee-ee-ee!”

  Through the fading pinwheels, I saw a long and horrid face, a Sirian face, peering at me with kindly interest under the table. It was Wenjtkpli.

  “Good morning, little Earth chum,” he said. “You feel not so tired now?”

  “Morning?” I yelled, sitting up again and cracking my head again and lying down again to wait for the pinwheels to fade again.

  “You sleep,” I heard him say, “fourteen hours—so happy, so peaceful!”

  “I gotta get out of here,” I mumbled, scrambling about on the imported sawdust for my hat. I found I was wearing it and climbed out, stood up, and leaned against the table, swaying and spitting out the last of the spruce and cedar.

  “You like another stinger?” asked Wenjtkpli brightly. I retched feebly.

  “Fourteen hours,” I mumbled. “That makes it 0900 Mars now, or exactly ten hours past the time I was supposed to report for the nightside at the bureau.”

  “But last night you talk different,” the Sirian told me in surprise. “You say many times how bureau chief McGillicuddy can take lousy job and jam—”

  “That was last night,” I moaned. “This is this morning.”

  “Relax, little Earth chum. I sing again song you taught me:

  “X is for the ecstasy she ga-a-ave me; E is for—”

  My throbbing head still objected. I flapped good-by at him and set a course for the door of Blogri’s joint. The quaint period mottoes—“QUAFFE YE NUT-BROWN AYLE” “DROPPE DEAD TWYCE” and so on—didn’t look so quaint by the cold light of the Martian dawn.

  An unpleasant little character, Venusian or something, I’d seen around the place oozed up to me.

  “Head hurt plenty, huh?” he simpered.

  “This is no time for sympathy,” I said. “Now one side or flipper off—I gotta go to work.”

  “No sympathy,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. He fumbled oddly in his belt, then showed me a little white capsule. “Clear your head, huh? Work like lightning, you bet!”

  I was interested. “How much?”

  “For you, friend, nothing. Because I hate seeing fellows suffer with big head.”

  “Beat it,” I told him and shoved past through the door.

  That pitch of his with a free sample meant he was pushing J-K-B. I was in enough trouble without adding an u
nbreakable addiction to the stuff. If I’d taken his free sample, I would have been back to see him in 12 hours, sweating blood for more. And that time he would have named his own price.

  I fell into an eastbound chair and fumbled a quarter into the slot. The thin, cold air of the pressure dome was clearing my head already. I was sorry for all the times I’d cussed a skinflint dome administration for not supplying a richer air mix or heating the outdoors more lavishly. I felt good enough to shave, and luckily had my razor in my wallet. By the time the chair was gliding past the building where Interstellar News had a floor, I had the whiskers off my jaw and most of the sawdust out of my hair.

  The floater took me up to our floor while I tried not to think of what McGillicuddy would have to say.

  The newsroom was full of noise, as usual. McGillicuddy was in the copydesk slot chewing his way through a pile of dispatches due to be filed on the pressure dome split for A.M. newscasts in four minutes by the big wall clock. He fed his copy, without looking, to an operator battering the keys of the old-fashioned radioteletype that was good enough to serve for local clients.

  “Two minutes short!” he yelled at one of the men on the “Gimme a brightener! Gimme a god-damned brightener!” The rim man raced to the receiving ethertypes from Cammadion, Betelgeuse, and the other Interstellar bureaus. He yanked an item from one of the clicking machines and threw it at McGillicuddy, who slashed at it with his pencil and passed it to the operator. The tape the operator was cooing started through the transmitter-distributor, and on all local clients’ radioteletypes appeared:

  FIFTEEN-MINUTE INTERSTELLAR NEWSCAST A.M.

  MARS PRESSURE DOMES

  Everybody leaned back and lit up. McGillicuddy’s eye fell on me, and I cleared my throat.

  “Got a cold?” he asked genially.

  “Nope. No cold.”

  “Touch of indigestion? Flu, maybe? You’re tardy today.”

  “I know it.”

  “Bright boy.”

  He was smiling. That was bad.

  “Spencer,” he told me. “I thought long and hard about you. I thought about you when you failed to show up for the nightside. I thought about you intermittently through the night as I took your shift. Along about 0300 I decided what to do with you. It was as though Providence had taken a hand. It was as though I prayed ‘Lord, what shall I do with a drunken, no-good son of a spacecook who ranks in my opinion with the boils of Job as an affliction to man? Here’s the answer, Spencer.”