Big Book of Science Fiction

by Groff Conklin

  “And then there was the Military Service. You had it sharply curtailed.”

  “Of course I did.” Shear weariness stung Carrsbury into talk. “There’s only one country in the world. Obviously, the only military requirement is an adequate police force. To say nothing of the risks involved in putting weapons into the hands of the present world population.”

  “I know,” Phy’s answer came guiltily from the darkness. “Still, what’s happened is that, unknown to you, the Military Service has been increased in size, and recently four rocket squadrons have been added.”

  Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight. Humor him. “Why?”

  “Well, you see we’ve found out that Earth is being reconnoitered. Maybe from Mars. Maybe hostile. Have to be prepared. We didn’t tell you . . . well, because we were afraid it might excite you.”

  The voice trailed off. Carrsbury shut his eyes. How long, he asked himself, how long? He realized with dull surprise that in the last hour people like Phy, endured for ten years had become unutterably weary to him. For the moment even the thought of the conference over which he would soon be presiding, the conference that was to usher in a sane world, failed to stir him. Reaction to success? To the end of a ten years’ tension?

  “Do you know how many floors there are in this building?”

  Carrsbury was not immediately conscious of the new note in Phy’s voice, but he reacted to it.

  “One hundred,” he replied promptly.

  “Then,” asked Phy, “just where are we?”

  Carr opened his eyes to the darkness. One hundred twenty-seven, blinked the floor numeral. One hundred twenty-eight. One hundred twenty-nine.

  Something cold dragged at Carrsbury’s stomach, pulled at his brain. He felt as if his mind were being slowly and irresistibly twisted. He thought of hidden dimensions, of unsuspected holes in space. Something remembered from elementary physics danced through his thoughts: If it were possible for an elevator to keep moving upward with uniform acceleration, no one inside an elevator could determine whether the effects they were experiencing were due to acceleration or to gravity—whether the elevator were standing motionless on some planet or shooting up at ever-increasing velocity through free space.

  One hundred forty-one. One hundred forty-two.

  “Or as if you were rising through consciousness into an unsuspected realm of mentality lying above,” suggested Phy in his new voice, with its hint of gentle laughter.

  One hundred forty-six. One hundred forty-seven. It was slowing now. One hundred forty-nine. One hundred fifty. It had stopped.

  This was some trick. The thought was like cold water in Carrsbury’s face. Some cunning childish trick of Phy’s. An easy thing to hocus the numerals. Carrsbury groped irascibly about in the darkness, encountered the slick surface of a holster, Hartman’s gaunt frame.

  “Get ready for a surprise,” Phy warned from close at his elbow.

  As Carrsbury turned and grabbed, bright sunlight drenched him, followed by a griping, heart-stopping spasm of vertigo.

  He, Hartman, and Phy, along with a few insubstantial bits of furnishings and controls were standing in the air fifty stories above the hundred-story summit of World Managerial Center.

  For a moment he grabbed frantically at nothing. Then he realized they were not falling and his eyes began to trace the hint of walls and ceiling and floor and, immediately below them, the ghost of a shaft.

  Phy nodded. “That’s all there is to it,” he assured Carrsbury casually. “Just another of those charmingly odd modern notions against which you have legislated so persistently—like our incomplete staircases and roads to nowhere. The Buildings and Grounds Committee decided to extend the range of the elevator for sightseeing purposes. The shaft was made air-transparent to avoid spoiling the form of the original building and to improve the view. This was achieved so satisfactorily that an electronic warning system had to be installed for the safety of passing airjets and other craft. Treating the surfaces of the cage like windows was an obvious detail.”

  He paused and looked quizzically at Carrsbury. “All very simple,” he observed, “but don’t you find a kind of symbolism in it? For ten years now you’ve been spending most of your life in that building below. Every day you’ve used this elevator. But not once have you dreamed of these fifty extra stories. Don’t you think that something of the same sort may be true of your observations of other aspects of contemporary social life?”

  Carrsbury gaped at him stupidly.

  Phy turned to watch the growing speck of an approaching aircraft. “You might look at it too,” he remarked to Carrsbury, “for it’s going to transport you to a far happier, more restful life.”

  Carrsbury parted his lips, wet them. “But—” he said, unsteadily. “But—”

  Phy smiled. “That’s right, I didn’t finish my explanation. Well, you might have gone on being World manager all your life, in the isolation of your office and your miles of taped official reports and your occasional confabs with me and the others. Except for your Institute of Political Leadership and your Ten-Year-Plan. That upset things. Of course, we were as much interested in it as we were in you. It had definite possibilities. We hoped it would work out. We would have been glad to retire from office if it had. But, most fortunately, it didn’t. And that sort of ended the whole experiment.”

  He caught the downward direction of Carrsbury’s gaze.

  “No,” he said, “I’m afraid your pupils aren’t waiting for you in the conference chamber on the hundredth story. I’m afraid they’re still in the Institute.” His voice became gently sympathetic. “And I’m afraid that it’s become . . . well . . . a somewhat different sort of institute.”

  ~ * ~

  Carrsbury stood very still, swaying a little. Gradually his thoughts and his will power were emerging from the waking nightmare that had paralyzed them. The cunning of the insane—he had neglected that trenchant warning. In the very moment of victory—

  No! He had forgotten Hartman! This was the very emergency for which that counterstroke had been prepared.

  He glanced sideways at the chief member of his secret police. The black giant, unconcerned by their strange position, was glaring fixedly at Phy as if at some evil magician from whom any malign impossibility could be expected.

  Now Hartman became aware of Carrsbury’s gaze. He divined his thought.

  He drew his dark weapon from its holster, pointed it unwaveringly at Phy.

  His black-bearded lips curled. From them came a hissing sound. Then, in a loud voice, he cried, “You’re dead, Phy! I disintegrated you.”

  Phy reached over and took the weapon from his hand.

  “That’s another respect in which you completely miscalculated the modern temperament,” he remarked to Carrsbury, a shade argumentatively. “All of us have certain subjects on which we’re a trifle unrealistic. That’s only human nature. Hartman’s was his suspiciousness—a weakness for ideas involving plots and persecutions. You gave him the worst sort of job—-one that catered to and encouraged his weaknesses. In a very short time he became hopelessly unrealistic. Why for years he’s never realized that he’s been carrying a dummy pistol.”

  He passed it to Carrsbury for inspection.

  “But,” he added, “give him the proper job and he’d function well enough—say something in creation of exploration or social service. Fitting the man to the job is an art with infinite possibilities. That’s why we had Morgenstern in Finance—to keep credit fluctuating in a safe, predictable rhythm. That’s why a euphoric is made a manager of Extraterrestrial Research—to keep it booming. Why a catatonic is given Cultural Advancement—to keep it from tripping on its face in its haste to get ahead.”

  He turned away. Dully, Carrsbury observed that the aircraft was hovering close to the cage and sidling slowly in.

  “But in that case why—” he began stupidly.

  “Why were you made World manager?” Phy finished easily. “Isn’t that fairly obvious? Haven’t I told yo
u several times that you did a lot of good, indirectly? You interested us, don’t you see? In fact, you were practically unique. As you know, it’s our cardinal principle to let every individual express himself as he wants to. In your case, that involved letting you become World manager. Taken all in all it worked out very well. Everyone had a good time, a number of constructive regulations were promulgated, we learned a lot—oh, we didn’t get everything we hoped for, but one never does. Unfortunately, in the end, we were forced to discontinue the experiment.”

  The aircraft had made contact.

  “You understand, of course, why that was necessary?” Phy continued hurriedly, as he urged Carrsbury toward the opening port. “I’m sure you must. It all comes down to a question of sanity. What is sanity—now, in the twentieth century, any time? Adherence to a norm. Conformity to certain basic conventions underlying all human conduct. In our age, departure from the norm has become the norm. Inability to conform has become the standard of conformity. That’s quite clear, isn’t it? And it enables you to understand, doesn’t it, your own case and that of your protégés? Over a long period of years you persisted in adhering to a norm, in conforming to certain basic conventions. You were completely unable to adapt yourself to the society around you. You could only pretend—and your protégés wouldn’t have been able to do even that. Despite our many engaging personal characteristics, there was obviously only one course of action open to us.”

  In the port Carrsbury turned. He had found his voice at last. It was hoarse, ragged. “You mean that all these years you’ve just been humoring me?”

  The port was closing. Phy did not answer the question.

  As the aircraft edged out, he waved farewell with the blob of green gasoid.

  “It’ll be very pleasant where you’re going,” he shouted encouragingly. “Comfortable quarters, adequate facilities for exercise, and a complete library of twentieth century literature to while away your time.” ,

  He watched Carrsbury’s rigid face, staring whitely from the vision port, until the aircraft had diminished to a speck.

  Then he turned away, looked at his hands, noticed the gasoid, tossed it out the open door of the cage, studied its flight for a few moments, then flicked the downbeam.

  “I’m glad to see the last of that fellow,” he muttered, more to himself than to Hartman, as they plummeted toward the roof. “He was beginning to have a very disturbing influence on me. In fact, I was beginning to fear for my”—his expression became suddenly vacuous—”sanity.”

  <>

  ~ * ~

  THE ONLY THING WE LEARN

  by C. M. Kornbluth

  THE professor, though he did not know the actor’s phrase for it, was counting the house—peering through a spyhole in the door through which he would in a moment appear before the class. He was pleased with what he saw. Tier after tier of young people, ready with notebooks and styli, chattering tentatively, glancing at the door against which his nose was flattened, waiting for the pleasant interlude known as “Archaeo-Literature 203” to begin.

  The professor stepped back, smoothed his tunic, crooked four books in his left elbow and made his entrance. Four swift strides brought him to the lectern and, for the thousandth-odd time, he impassively swept the lecture hall with his gaze. Then he gave a wry little smile. Inside, for the thousandth-odd time, he was nagged by the irritable little thought that the lectern really ought to be a foot or so higher.

  The irritation did not show. He was out to win the audience, and he did. A dead silence, the supreme tribute, gratified him. Imperceptibly, the lights of the lecture hall began to dim and the light on the lectern to brighten.

  He spoke.

  “Young gentlemen of the Empire, I ought to warn you that this and the succeeding lectures will be most subversive.”

  There was a little rustle of incomprehension from the audience—but by then the lectern light was strong enough to show the twinkling smile about his eyes that belied his stern mouth, and agreeable chuckles sounded in the gathering darkness of the tiered seats. Glow-lights grew bright gradually at the students’ tables, and they adjusted their notebooks in the narrow ribbons of illumination. He waited for the small commotion to subside.

  “Subversive—” He gave them a link to cling to. “Subversive because I shall make every effort to tell both sides of our ancient beginnings with every resource of archaeology and with every clue my diligence has discovered in our epic literature.

  “There were two sides, you know—difficult though it may be to believe that if we judge by the Old Epic alone—such epics as-the noble and tempestuous Chant of Remd, the remaining fragments of Krall’s Voyage, or the gory and rather out-of-date Battle for the Ten Suns.” He paused while styli scribbled across the notebook pages.

  “The Middle Epic is marked, however, by what I might call the rediscovered ethos.” From his voice, every student knew that that phrase, surer than death and taxes, would appear on an examination paper. The styli scribbled. “By this I mean an awakening of fellow-feeling with the Home Suns People, which had once been filial loyalty to them when our ancestors were few and pioneers, but which turned into contempt when their numbers grew.

  “The Middle Epic writers did not despise the Home Suns People, as did the bards of the Old Epic. Perhaps this was because they did not have to—since their long war against the Home Suns was drawing to a victorious close.

  “Of the New Epic I shall have little to say. It was a literary fad, a pose, and a silly one. Written within historic times, the some two score pseudo-epics now moulder in their cylinders, where they belong. Our ripening civilization could not with integrity work in the epic form, and the artistic failures produced so indicate. Our genius turned to the lyric and to the unabashedly romantic novel.

  “So much, for the moment, of literature. What contribution, you must wonder, have archaeological studies to make in an investigation of the wars from which our ancestry emerged?

  “Archaeology offers—one—a check in historical matter in the epics—confirming or denying. Two—it provides evidence glossed over in the epics—for artistic or patriotic reasons. Three—it provides evidence which has been lost, owing to the fragmentary nature of some of the early epics.”

  All this he fired at them crisply, enjoying himself. Let them not think him a dreamy litterateur, nor, worse, a flat precisionist, but let them be always a little off-balance before him, never knowing what came next, and often wondering, in class and out. The styli paused after heading Three.

  “We shall examine first, by our archaeo-literary technique, the second book of the Chant of Remd. As the selected youth of the Empire, you know much about it, of course—much that is false, some that is true and a great deal that is irrelevant. You know that Book One hurls us into the middle of things, aboard ship with Algan and his great captain, Remd, on their way from the triumph over a Home Suns stronghold, the planet Telse. We watch Remd on his diversionary action that splits the Ten Suns Fleet into two halves. But before we see the destruction of those halves by the Horde of Algan, we are told in Book Two of the battle for Telse.”

  He opened one of his books on the lectern, swept the amphitheater again and read sonorously.

  “Then battle broke And

  high the blinding blast

  Sight-searing leaped

  While folk in fear below

  Cowered in caverns

  From the wrath of Remd—

  “Or, in less sumptuous language, one fission bomb—or a stick of time-on-target bombs—was dropped. An unprepared and disorganized populace did not take the standard measure of dispersing, but huddled foolishly to await Algan’s gun-fighters and the death they brought.

  “One of the things you believe because you have seen them in notes to elementary-school editions of Remd is that Telse was the fourth planet of the star, Sol. Archaeology denies it by establishing that the fourth planet—actually called Marse, by the way—was in those days weather-roofed at least, and possib
ly atmosphere-roofed as well. As potential warriors, you know that one does not waste fissionable material on a roof, and there is no mention of chemical explosives being used to crack the roof. Marse, therefore, was not the locale of Remd, Book Two.

  “Which planet was? The answer to that has been established by X-radar, differential decay analyses, video-coring and every other resource of those scientists still quaintly called ‘diggers.’ We know and can prove that Telse was the third planet of Sol. So much for the opening of the attack. Let us jump to Canto Three, the Storming of the Dynastic Palace.

  “Imperial purple wore they

  Fresh from the feast

  Grossly gorged

  They sought to slay—

  “And so on. Now, as I warned you, Remd is of the Old Epic, and makes no pretense at fairness. The unorganized huddling of Telse’s population was read as cowardice instead of poor A.R.P. The same is true of the Third Canto. Video-cores show on the site of the palace a hecatomb of dead in once-purple livery, but also shows impartially that they were not particularly gorged and that digestion of their last meals had been well advanced. They didn’t give such a bad accounting of themselves, either. I hesitate to guess, but perhaps they accounted for one of our ancestors apiece and were simply outnumbered. The study is not complete.