Big Book of Science Fiction

by Groff Conklin

  Jed stood at the window. His stomach clamped into a small tight knot which slowly rose up into his throat. His eyes widened until the lids hurt. He steadied himself with his fingertips against the glass and took several deep, aching breaths. Then he turned somehow and walked, with knees that threatened to bend both ways, back to the chair. The draperies rustled back into position.

  “No,” Jed said weakly, “this isn’t my world.” He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand, finding there a cold and faintly oily perspiration. “I had two classes this morning. I came down to look up certain documents. Everything was fine. And then I came in . . . how . . .”

  Greenbush pursed his lips. “How? Who can say? I’m banker, not temporal tech. Doubtless you’d like to return to your own environment. I will signal Department of Temporal Technics at Columbia where you were employed so many years ago…”

  “That particular phraseology, Mr. Greenbush, I find rather disturbing.”

  “Sorry.” Greenbush stood up. “Wait here. My communicator is deranged. I’ll have to use other office.”

  “Can’t we go there? To the University?”

  “I wouldn’t advise it. In popular shows I’ve seen on subject, point of entry is always important. I rather postulate they’ll assist you back through front door.”

  Greenbush was at the office door. Jed said, “Have—have you people sent humans back and forth in time?”

  “No. They send neutrons and gravitons or something like those. Ten minutes in future or ten minutes in past. Very intricate. Enormous energy problem. Way over my head.”

  While Greenbush was gone, Jed methodically collected his belongings from the desk and stowed them away in his pockets. Greenbush bustled in and said, “They’ll be over in half hour with necessary equipment. They think they can help you.”

  Half an hour. Jed said, “As long as I’m here, I wonder if I could impose? You see, I have attempted to predict certain long-range trends in monetary procedures. Your currency would be—”

  “Of course, my dear fellow! Of course! Kindred interest, etc. What would you like to know?”

  “Can I see some of your currency?”

  Greenbush shoved some small pellets of plastic across the desk. They were made from intricate molds. The inscription was in a sort of shorthand English. “Those are universal, of course,” Greenbush said.

  Two of them were for twenty-five cents and the other for fifty cents. Jed was surprised to see so little change from the money of his own day.

  “One hundred cents equals dollar, just as in your times,” Greenbush said.

  “Backed by gold, of course,” Jed said.

  Greenbush gasped and then laughed. “What ludicrous idea! Any fool with public-school education has learned enough about transmutation of elements to make five tons of gold in afternoon, or of platinum or zinc or any other metal or alloy of metal you desire.”

  “Backed by a unit of power? An erg or something?” Jed asked with false confidence.

  “With power unlimited? With all power anyone wants without charge? You’re not doing any better, Amberson.”

  “By a unit share of national resources maybe?” Jed asked hollowly.

  “National is obsolete word. There are no more nations. And world resources are limitless. We create enough for our use. There is no depletion.”

  “But currency, to have value, must be backed by something,” Jed protested.

  “Obviously!”

  “Precious stones?”

  “Children play with diamonds as big as baseballs,” Green-bush said. “Speaking as economist, Amberson, why was gold used in your day?”

  “It was rare, and, where obtainable, could not be obtained without a certain average fixed expenditure of man hours. Thus it wasn’t really the metal itself, it was the man hours involved that was the real basis. Look, now, you’ve got me talking in the past tense.”

  “And quite rightly. Now use your head, Mr. Amberson. In world where power is free, resources are unlimited and no metal or jewel is rare, what is one constant, one user of time, one external fixity on which monetary systems could be based?”

  Jed almost forgot his situation as he labored with the problem. Finally he had an answer, and yet it seemed-so incredible that he hardly dared express it. He said in a thin voice, “The creation of a human being is something that probably cannot be shortened or made easy. Is—is human life itself your basis?”

  “Bravo!” Greenbush said. “One hundred cents in dollar, and five thousand dollars in HUC. That’s brief for Human Unit of Currency.”

  “But that’s slavery! That’s—why, that’s the height of inhumanity!”

  “Don’t sputter, my boy, until you know facts.”

  Jed laughed wildly. “If I’d made my check out for five thousand they’d have given me a—a person!”

  “They’d have given you certificate entitling you to HUC. Then you could spend that certificate, you see.”

  “But suppose I wanted the actual person?”

  “Then I suppose we could have obtained one for you from World Reserve Bank. As matter of fact, we have one in our vault now.”

  “In your vault!”

  “Where else would we keep it? Come along. We have time.”

  The vault was refrigerated. The two armed attendants stood by while Greenbush spun the knob of the inner chamber, slid out the small box. It was of dull silver, and roughly the size of a pound box of candy. Greenbush slid back the grooved lid and Jed, shuddering, looked down through clear ice to the tiny, naked, perfect figure of an adult male; complete even to the almost invisible wisp of hair on his chest.

  “Alive?” Jed asked.

  “Naturally. Pretty well suspended, of course.” Greenbush slid the lid back, replaced the box in the vault and led the way’ back to the office.

  Once again in the warm clasp of the chair, Jed asked, with a shaking voice, “Could you give me the background on—this amazing currency?”

  “Nothing amazing about it. Technic advances made all too easily obtainable through lab methods except living humans. There, due to growth problems and due to—certain amount of nontechnic co-operation necessary, things could not be made easily. Full-sized ones were too unwieldy, so lab garcons worked on size till they got them down to what you see. Of course, they are never brought up to level of consciousness. They go from birth bottle to suspension chambers and are held there until adult and then refrigerated and boxed.”

  Greenbush broke off suddenly and said, “Are you ill?”

  “No. No, I guess not.”

  “Well, when I first went to work for this bank, HUC was worth twenty thousand dollars. Then lab techs did some growth acceleration work—age acceleration, more accurate— and that brought price down and put us into rather severe inflationary period. Cup of java went up to dollar and it stayed there ever since. So World Union stepped in and made it against law to make any more refinements in HUC production. That froze it at five thousand. Things have been stable ever since.”

  “But they’re living, human beings!”

  “Now you sound like silly Anti-HUC League. My boy, they wouldn’t exist were it not for our need for currency base. They never achieve consciousness. We, in banking business, think of them just as about only manufactured item left in world which cannot be produced in afternoon. Time lag is what gives them their value. Besides, they are no longer in production, of course. Being economist, you must realize overproduction of HUC’s would put us back into inflationary period.”

  At that moment the girl announced that the temporal techs had arrived with their equipment. Jed was led from the office out into the bank proper. The last few customers were let out as the closing hour arrived.

  The men from Columbia seemed to have no interest in Jed as a human being. He said hesitantly to one, smiling shyly, “I would think you people would want to keep me here so your historians could do research on me.”

  The tech gave him a look of undisguised contempt. He said, “
We know all to be known about your era. Very dull period in world history.”

  Jed retired, abashed, and watched them set up the massive silvery coil on the inside of the bank door.

  The youngest tech said quietly, “This is third time we’ve had to do this. You people seem to wander into sort of rhythm pattern. Very careless. We had one failure from your era. Garcon named Crater. He wandered too far from point of entry. But you ought to be all opt.”

  “What do I have to do?”

  “Just walk through coil and out door. Adjustment is complicated. If we don’t use care you might go back into your own era embedded up to your eyes in pavement. Or again, you might come out forty feet in air. Don’t get unbalanced.”

  “I won’t,” Jed said fervently.

  Greenbush came up and said, “Could you give me that coin you have?”

  The young technician turned wearily and said, “Older, he has to leave with everything he brought and he can’t take anything other with him. We’ve got to fit him into same vibratory rhythm. You should know that.”

  “It is such nice coin,” Greenbush sighed.

  “If I tried to take something with me?” Jed asked.

  “It just wouldn’t go, gesell. You would go and it would stay.”

  Jed thought of another question. He turned to Greenbush. “Before I go, tell me. Where are the HUC’s kept?”

  “In refrigerated underground vault at place called Fort Knox.”

  “Come on, come on, you. Just walk straight ahead through coil. Don’t hurry. Push door open and go out onto street.”

  ~ * ~

  Jed stood, faintly dizzy, on the afternoon sidewalk of Wall Street in Manhattan. A woman bounced off him, snarled, “Fa godsake, ahya goin’ uh comin’!” Late papers were tossed off a truck onto the corner. Jed tiptoed over, looked cautiously and saw that the date was Tuesday, June 14th, 1949.

  The further the subway took him uptown, the more the keen reality of the three quarters of an hour in the bank faded. By the time he reached his own office, sat down behind his familiar desk, it had become like a fevered dream.

  Overwork. That was it. Brain fever. Probably wandered around in a daze. Better take it easy. Might fade off into a world of the imagination and never come back. Skip the book for a month. Start dating Helen again. Relax.

  He grinned slowly, content with his decision. “HUC’s, indeed!” he said.

  Date Helen tonight. Better call her now. Suddenly he remembered that he hadn’t cashed a check, and he couldn’t take Helen far on a dollar.

  He found the check in his pocket, glanced at it, and then found himself sitting rigid in the chair. Without taking his eyes from the check, he pulled open the desk drawer, took out the manuscript entitled, “Probable Bases of Future Monetary Systems,” tore it in half and dropped it in the wastebasket.

  His breath whistled in pinched nostrils. He heard, in his memory, a voice saying, “You would go and it would stay.”

  The check was properly made out for twenty dollars. But he had used the ink supplied by the bank. The check looked as though it had been written with a dull knife. The brown desk top showed up through the fragile lace of his signature.

  <>

  ~ * ~

  SANITY

  by Fritz Leiber, Jr.

  “COME in, Phy, and make yourself comfortable.”

  The mellow voice—and the suddenly dilating doorway— caught the general secretary of the World playing with a blob of greenish gasoid, squeezing it in his fist and watching it ooze between his fingers in spatulate tendrils that did not dissipate. Slowly, crookedly, he turned his head. World Manager Carrsbury became aware of a gaze that was at once oafish, sly, vacuous. Abruptly the expression was replaced by a nervous smile. The thin man straightened himself, as much as his habitually drooping shoulders would permit, hastily entered, and sat down on the extreme edge of a pneumatically form-fitting chair.

  He embarrassedly fumbled the blob of gasoid, looking around for a convenient disposal vent or a crevice in the upholstery. Finding none, he stuffed it hurriedly into his pocket. Then he repressed his fidgetings by clasping his hands resolutely together, and sat with downcast eyes.

  “How are you feeling, old man?” Carrsbury asked in a voice that was warm with a benign friendliness.

  The general secretary did not look up.

  “Anything bothering you, Phy?” Carrsbury continued solicitously. “Do you feel a bit unhappy, or dissatisfied, about your . . . er . . . transfer, now that the moment has arrived?”

  Still the general secretary did not respond. Carrsbury leaned forward across the dully silver, semi-circular desk and, in his most winning tones, urged, “Come on, old fellow, tell me all about it.”

  The general secretary did not lift his head, but he rolled up his strange, distant eyes until they were fixed directly on Carrsbury. He shivered a little, his body seemed to contract, and his bloodless hands tightened their interlocking grip.

  “I know,” he said in a low, effortless voice. “You think I’m insane.”

  Carrsbury sat back, forcing his brows to assume a baffled frown under the mane of silvery hair.

  “Oh, you needn’t pretend to be puzzled,” Phy continued, swiftly now that he had broken the ice. “You know what that word means as well as I do. Better—even though we both had to do historical research to find out.”

  “Insane,” he repeated dreamily, his gaze wavering. “Significant departure from the norm. Inability to conform to basic conventions underlying all human conduct.”

  “Nonsense!” said Carrsbury, rallying and putting on his warmest and most compelling smile. “I haven’t the slightest idea of what you’re talking about. That you’re a little tired, a little strained, a little distraught—that’s quite understandable, considering the burden you’ve been carrying, and a little rest will be just the thing to fix you up, a nice long vacation away from all this. But as for your being . . . why, ridiculous!”

  “No,” said Phy, his gaze pinning Carrsbury. “You think I’m insane. You think all my colleagues in the World Management Service are insane. That’s why you’re having us replaced with those men you’ve been training for ten years in your Institute of Political Leadership—ever since, with my help and connivance, you became World manager.”

  Carrsbury retreated before the finality of the statement. For the first time his smile became a bit uncertain. He started to say something, then hesitated and looked at Phy, as if half hoping he would go on.

  But that individual was once again staring rigidly at the floor.

  Carrsbury leaned back, thinking. When he spoke it was in a more natural voice, much less consciously soothing and fatherly.

  “Well, all right, Phy. But look here, tell me something, honestly. Won’t you—and the others—be a lot happier when you’ve been relieved of all your responsibilities?”

  Phy nodded somberly. “Yes,” he said, “we will . . . but”— his face became strained—”you see—”

  “But—?” Carrsbury prompted. „

  Phy swallowed hard. He seemed unable to go on. He had gradually slumped toward one side of the chair, and the pressure had caused the green gasoid to ooze from his pocket. His long fingers crept over and kneaded it fretfully.

  Carrsbury stood up and came around the desk. His sympathetic frown, from which perplexity had ebbed, was not quite genuine.

  “I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you all about it now, Phy,” he said simply. “In a queer sort of way I owe it all to you. And there isn’t any point now in keeping it a secret . . . there isn’t any danger—”

  “Yes,” Phy agreed with a quick bitter smile, “you haven’t been in any danger of a coup d’état for some years now. If ever we should have revolted, there’d have been”—his gaze shifted to a point in the opposite wall where a faint vertical crease indicated the presence of a doorway—”your secret police.”

  Carrsbury started. He hadn’t thought Phy had known. Disturbingly, there loomed in his
mind a phrase: the cunning of the insane. But only for a moment. Friendly complacency flooded back. He went behind Phy’s chair and rested his hands on the sloping shoulders.

  “You know, I’ve always had a special feeling toward you, Phy,” he said, “and not only because your whims made it a lot easier for me to become World manager. I’ve always felt that you were different from the others, that there were times when—” He hesitated.

  Phy squirmed a little under the friendly hands. “When I had my moments of sanity?” he finished flatly.

  “Like now,” said Carrsbury softly, after a nod the other could not see. “I’ve always felt that sometimes, in a kind of twisted, unrealistic way, you understood. And that has meant a lot to me. I’ve been alone, Phy, dreadfully alone, for ten whole years. No companionship anywhere, not even among the men I’ve been training in the Institute of Political Leadership—for I’ve had to play a part with them too, keep them in ignorance of certain facts, for fear they would try to seize power over my head before they were sufficiently prepared. No companionship anywhere, except for my hopes—and for occasional moments with you. Now that it’s over and a new regime is beginning for us both, I can tell you that. And I’m glad.”