Short Stories Vol.1

by Isaac Asimov

  They were several hundred yards from the Hanshaw residence. The cloud passed and the sun shone once more. Dr. Sloane looked back and was appalled at the distance they had covered. If they moved out of sight of the house and if Richard ran off, would he be able to find his way back?

  He pushed the thought away impatiently and looked out toward the line of water (nearer now) and past it to where his own house must be. He thought wonderingly: Light green?

  He said, "You must be quite an explorer."

  Richard said, with a shy pride, "When I go to school and come back, I always try to use a different route and see new things."

  "But you don't go outside every morning, do you? Sometimes you use the Doors, I imagine."

  "Oh, sure."

  "Why is that, Richard?" Somehow, Dr. Sloane felt there might be significance in that point.

  But Richard quashed him. With his eyebrows up and a look of astonishment on his face, he said, "Well, gosh, some mornings it rains and I have to use the Door. I hate that, but what can you do? About two-weeks ago, I got

  caught in the rain and I-" he looked about him automatically, and his voice sank to a whisper "-caught a cold, and wasn't Mom upset, though."

  Dr. Sloane sighed. "Shall we go back now?"

  There was a quick disappointment on Richard's face. "Aw, what for?"

  "You remind me that your mother must be waiting for us."

  "I guess so." The boy turned reluctantly.

  They walked slowly back. Richard was saying, chattily, "I wrote a composition at school once about how if I could go on some ancient vehicle" (he pronounced it with exaggerated care) "I'd go in a stratoliner and look at stars and clouds and things. Oh, boy, I was sure nuts."

  "You'd pick something else now?"

  "You bet. I'd go in an aut'm'bile, real slow. Then I'd see everything there was."

  Mrs. Hanshaw seemed troubled, uncertain. "You don't think it's abnormal, then, Doctor?"

  "Unusual, perhaps, but not abnormal. He likes the outside."

  "But how can he? It's so dirty, so unpleasant."

  "That's a matter of individual taste. A hundred years ago our ancestors were all outside most of the time. Even today, I dare say there are a million Africans who have never seen a Door."

  "But Richard's always been taught to behave himself the way a decent person in District A-3 is supposed to behave," said Mrs. Hanshaw, fiercely. "Not like an African or-or an ancestor."

  "That may be part of the trouble, Mrs. Hanshaw. He feels this urge to go outside and yet he feels it to be wrong. He's ashamed to talk about it to you or to his teacher. It forces him into sullen retreat and it could eventually be dangerous."

  "Then how can we persuade him to stop?"

  Dr. Sloane said, "Don't try. Channel the activity instead. The day your Door broke down, he was forced outside, found he liked it, and that set a pattern. He used the trip to school and back as an excuse to repeat that first exciting experience. Now suppose you agree to let him out of the house for two hours on Saturdays and Sundays. Suppose he gets it through his head that after all he can go outside without necessarily having to go anywhere in the process. Don't you think he'll be willing to use the Door to go to school and back thereafter? And don't you think that will stop the trouble he's now having with his teacher and probably with his fellow-pupils?"

  "But then will matters remain so? Must they? Won't he ever be normal again?"

  Dr. Sloane rose to his feet. "Mrs. Hanshaw, he's as normal as need be right now. Right now, he's tasting the joys of the forbidden. If you cooperate with him, show that you don't disapprove, it will lose some of its attraction right there. Then, as he grows older, he will become more aware

  of the expectations and demands of society. He will learn to conform. After all, there is a little of the rebel in all of us, but it generally dies down as we grow old and tired. Unless, that is, it is unreasonably suppressed and allowed to build up pressure. Don't do that. Richard will be all right."

  He walked to the Door.

  Mrs. Hanshaw said, "And you don't think a probe will be necessary, Doctor?"

  He turned and said vehemently, "No, definitely not! There is nothing about the boy that requires it. Understand? Nothing."

  His fingers hesitated an inch from the combination board and the expression on his face grew lowering.

  "What's the matter, Dr. Sloane?" asked Mrs. Hanshaw.

  But he didn't hear her because he was thinking of the Door and the psychic probe and all the rising, choking tide of machinery. There is a little of the rebel in all of us, he thought.

  So he said in a soft voice, as his hand fell away from the board and his feet turned away from the Door, "You know, it's such a beautiful day that I think I'll walk."

  Strikebreaker

  Elvis Blei rubbed his plump hands and said, "Self-containment is the word." He smiled uneasily as he helped Steven Lamorak of Earth to a light. There was uneasiness all over his smooth face with its small wide-set eyes.

  Lamorak puffed smoke appreciatively and crossed his lanky legs.

  His hair was powdered with gray and he had a large and powerful jawbone. "Home grown?" he asked, staring critically at the cigarette. He tried to hide his own disturbance at the other's tension.

  "Quite," said Blei.

  "I wonder," said Lamorak, "that you have room on your small world for such luxuries."

  (Lamorak thought of his first view of Elsevere from the spaceship visiplate. It was a jagged, airless planetoid, some hundred miles in diameter -just a dust-gray rough-hewn rock, glimmering dully in the light of its sun, 200,000,000 miles distant. It was the only object more than a mile in diameter that circled that sun, and now men had burrowed into that miniature world and constructed a society in it. And he himself, as a sociologist, had come to study the world and see how humanity had made itself fit into that queerry specialized niche.)

  Blei's polite fixed smile expanded a hair. He said, "We are not a small world, Dr. Lamorak; you judge us by two-dimensional standards. The surface area of Elsevere is only three quarters that of the State of New York, but that's irrelevant. Remember, we can occupy, if we wish, the entire interior of Elsevere. A sphere of 50 miles radius has a volume of well over

  Copyright (c) 1956 by Columbia Publications, Inc. (Original title: "Male Strikebreaker.")

  half a million cubic miles. If all of Elsevere were occupied by levels 50 feet apart, the total surface area within the planetoid would be 56,000,000 square miles, and that is equal to the total land area of Earth. And none of these square miles, Doctor, would be unproductive."

  Lamorak said, "Good Lord," and stared blankly for a moment. "Yes, of course you're right. Strange I never thought of it that way. But then, Elsevere is the only thoroughly exploited planetoid world in the Galaxy; the rest of us simply can't get away from thinking of two-dimensional surfaces, as you pointed out. Well, I'm more than ever glad that your Council has been so cooperative as to give me a free hand in this investigation of mine."

  Blei nodded convulsively at that.

  Lamorak frowned slightly and thought: He acts for all the world as though he wished I had not come. Something's wrong.

  Blei said, "Of course, you understand that we are actually much smaller than we could be; only minor portions of Elsevere have as yet been hollowed out and occupied. Nor are we particularly anxious to expand, except very slowly. To a certain extent we are limited by the capacity of our pseudogravity engines and Solar energy converters."

  "I understand. But tell me, Councillor Blei-as a matter of personal curiosity, and not because it is of prime importance to my project-could I view some of your farming and herding levels first? I am fascinated by the thought of fields of wheat and herds of cattle inside a planetoid."

  "You'll find the cattle small by your standards, Doctor, and we don't have much wheat. We grow yeast to a much greater extent. But there will be some wheat to show you. Some cotton and tobacco, too. Even fruit trees."

  "Wonder
ful. As you say, self-containment. You recirculate everything, I imagine."

  Lamorak's sharp eyes did not miss the fact that this last remark twinged Blei. The Elseverian's eyes narrowed to slits that hid his expression.

  He said, "We must recirculate, yes. Air, water, food, minerals-everything that is used up-must be restored to its original state; waste products are reconverted to raw materials. All that is needed is energy, and we have enough of that. We don't manage with one hundred percent efficiency, of course; there is a certain seepage. We import a small amount of water each year; and if our needs grow, we may have to import some coal and oxygen."

  Lamorak said, "When can we start our tour, Councillor Blei?"

  Blei's smile lost some of its negligible warmth. "As soon as we can, Doctor. There are some routine matters that must be arranged."

  Lamorak nodded, and having finished his cigarette, stubbed it out.

  Routine matters? There was none of this hesitancy during the preliminary correspondence. Elsevere had seemed proud that its unique planetoid existence had attracted the attention of the Galaxy.

  He said, "I realize I would be a disturbing influence in" a tightly-knit

  society," and watched grimly as Blei leaped at the explanation and made it his own.

  "Yes," said Blei, "we feel marked off from the rest of the Galaxy. We have our own customs. Each individual Elseverian fits into a comfortable niche. The appearance of a stranger without fixed caste is unsettling."

  "The caste system does involve a certain inflexibility."

  "Granted," said Blei quickly; "but there is also a certain self-assurance. We have firm rules of intermarriage and rigid inheritance of occupation. Each man, woman and child knows his place, accepts it, and is accepted in it; we have virtually no neurosis or mental illness."

  "And are there no misfits?" asked Lamorak.

  Blei shaped his mouth as though to say no, then clamped it suddenly shut, biting the word into silence; a frown deepened on his forehead. He said, at length, "I will arrange for the tour, Doctor. Meanwhile, I imagine you would welcome a chance to freshen up and to sleep."

  They rose together and left the room, Blei politely motioning the Earthman to precede him out the door.

  Lamorak felt oppressed by the vague feeling of crisis that had pervaded his discussion with Blei.

  The newspaper reinforced that feeling. He read it carefully before getting into bed, with what was at first merely a clinical interest. It was an eight-page tabloid of synthetic paper. Cue quarter of its items consisted of "personals": births, marriages, deaths, record quotas, expanding habitable volume (not area! three dimensions!). The remainder included scholarly essays, educational material, and fiction. Of news, in the sense to which Lamorak was accustomed, there was virtually nothing.

  One item only could be so considered and that was chilling in its incompleteness.

  It said, under a small headline: DEMANDS UNCHANGED: There has been no change in his attitude of yesterday. The Chief Councillor, after a second interview, announced that his demands remain completely unreasonable and cannot be met under any circumstances.

  Then, in parentheses, and in different type, there was the statement: The editors of this paper agree that Elsevere cannot and will not jump to his whistle, come what may.

  Lamorak read it over three times. Ms attitude. Ms demands. Ms whistle.

  Whose?

  He slept uneasily, that night.

  He had no time for newspapers in the days that followed; but spasmodically, the matter returned to his thoughts.

  Blei, who remained his guide and companion for most of the tour, grew ever more withdrawn.

  On the third day (quite artificially clock-set in an Earthlike twenty-four

  hour pattern), Blei stopped at one point, and said, "Now this level is devoted entirely to chemical industries. That section is not important-"

  But he turned away a shade too rapidly, and Lamorak seized his arm. "What are the products of that section?"

  "Fertilizers. Certain organics," said Blei stiffly.

  Lamorak held him back, looking for what sight Blei might be evading. His gaze swept over the close-by horizons of lined rock and the buildings squeezed and layered between the levels.

  Lamorak said, "Isn't that a private residence there?"

  Blei did not look in the indicated direction.

  Lamorak said, "I think that's the largest one I've seen yet. Why is it here on a factory level?" That alone made it noteworthy. He had already seen that the levels on Elsevere were divided rigidly among the residential, the agricultural and the industrial.

  He looked back and called, "Councillor Blei!"

  The Councillor was walking away and Lamorak pursued him with hasty steps. "Is there something wrong, sir?"

  Blei muttered, "I am rude, I know. I am sorry. There are matters that prey on my mind-" He kept up his rapid pace.

  "Concerning his demands."

  Blei came to a full halt. "What do you know about that?"

  "No more than I've said. I read that much in the newspaper."

  Blei muttered something to himself.

  Lamorak said, "Ragusnik? What's that?"

  Blei sighed heavily. "I suppose you ought to be told. It's humiliating, deeply embarrassing. The Council thought that matters would certainly be arranged shortly and that your visit need not be interfered with, that you need not know or be concerned. But it is almost a week now. I don't know what will happen and, appearances notwithstanding, it might be best for you to leave. No reason for an Outworlder to risk death."

  The Earthman smiled incredulously. "Risk death? In this little world, so peaceful and busy. I can't believe it."

  The Elseverian councillor said, "I can explain. I think it best I should." He turned his head away. "As I told you, everything on Elsevere must recirculate. You understand that."

  "Yes."

  "That includes-uh, human wastes."

  "I assumed so," said Lamorak.

  "Water is reclaimed from it by distillation and absorption. What remains is converted into fertilizer for yeast use; some of it is used as a source of fine organics and other by-products. These factories you see are devoted to this."

  "Well?" Lamorak had experienced a certain difficulty in the drinking of water when he first landed on Elsevere, because he had been realistic enough to know what it must be reclaimed from; but he had conquered the

  feeling easily enough. Even on Earth, water was reclaimed by natural processes from all sorts of unpalatable substances.

  Blei, with increasing difficulty, said, "Igor Ragusnik is the man who is in charge of the industrial processes immediately involving the wastes. The position has been in his family since Elsevere was first colonized. One of the original settlers was Mikhail Ragusnik and he-he-"

  "Was in charge of waste reclamation."

  "Yes. Now that residence you singled out is the Ragusnik residence; it is the best and most elaborate on the planetoid. Ragusnik gets many privileges the rest of us do not have; but, after all-" Passion entered the Councillor's voice with great suddenness, "we cannot speak to him."

  "What?"

  "He demands full social equality. He wants his children to mingle with ours, and our wives to visit- Oh!" It was a groan of utter disgust.

  Lamorak thought of the newspaper item that could not even bring itself to mention Ragusnik's name in print, or to say anything specific about his demands. He said, "1 take it he's an outcast because of his job."

  "Naturally. Human wastes and-" words failed Blei. After a pause, he said more quietly, "As an Earthman, 1 suppose you don't understand."

  "As a sociologist, I think I do." Lamorak thought of the Untouchables in ancient India, the ones who handled corpses. He thought of the position of swineherds in ancient Judea.

  He went on, "I gather Elsevere will not give in to those demands."

  "Never," said Blei, energetically. "Never."

  "And so?"

  "Ragusnik has threatened to
cease operations."

  "Go on strike, in other words."

  "Yes."

  "Would that be serious?"

  "We have enough food and water to last quite a while; reclamation is not essential in that sense. But the wastes would accumulate; they would infect the planetoid. After generations of careful disease control, we have low natural resistance to germ diseases. Once an epidemic started-and one would-we would drop by the hundred."

  "Is Ragusnik aware of this?"

  "Yes, of course."

  "Do you think he is likely to go through with his threat, then?"

  "He is mad. He has already stopped working; there has been no waste reclamation since the day before you landed." Blei's bulbous nose sniffed at the air as though it already caught the whiff of excrement.

  Lamorak sniffed mechanically at that, but smelled nothing.

  Blei said, "So you see why it might be wise for you to leave. We are humiliated, of course, to have to suggest it."

  But Lamorak said, "Wait; not just yet. Good Lord, this is a matter of great interest to me professionally. May I speak to the Ragusnik?"

  "On no account," said Blei, alarmed.

  "But I would like to understand the situation. The sociological conditions here are unique and not to be duplicated elsewhere. In the name of science-"

  "How do you mean, speak? Would image-reception do?"

  "Yes."

  "I will ask the Council," muttered Blei.

  They sat about Lamorak uneasily, their austere and dignified expressions badly marred with anxiety. Blei, seated in the midst of them, studiously avoided the Earthman's eyes.

  The Chief Councillor, gray-haired, his face harshly wrinkled, his neck scrawny, said in a soft voice, "If in any way you can persuade him, sir, out of your own convictions, we will welcome that. In no case, however, are you to imply that we will, in any way, yield."

  A gauzy curtain fell between the Council and Lamorak. He could make out the individual councillors still, but now he turned sharply toward the receiver before him. It glowed to life.

  A head appeared in it, in natural color and with great realism. A strong dark head, with massive chin faintly stubbkd, and thick, red lips set into a firm horizontal line.