The Collection

by Fredric Brown

  President Saunderson nodded slowly. "You were right, Captain. Right in deciding that, and in everything else you did. We know what to do now. Do we not, Ambassador Kravich?"

  "We do. We join forces. We make one space station-and quickly-and get to the Moon and fortify it, jointly. We pool all scientific knowledge and develop full-scale space travel, new weapons. We do everything we can to get ready for them when and if they come back."

  The President looked grim. "Obviously they went back for further orders or reinforcements. If we only knew how long we had-it may be only weeks or it may be decades. We don't know whether they come from the Solar System-or another galaxy. Nor how fast they travel. But whenever they get back, we'll be as ready for them as we possibly can. Mr. Ambassador, you have power to-?"

  "Full power, Mr. President. Anything up to and including a complete merger of both our nations under a joint government. That probably won't be necessary, though, as long as our interests are now completely in common. Exchange of scientific information and military data has already started, from our side. Some of our top scientists and generals are flying here now, with orders to cooperate fully. All restrictions have been lowered." He smiled, "And all our propaganda has gone into a very sudden reverse gear. It's not even going to be a cold peace. Since we're going to be allies against the unknown, we might as well try to like one another."

  "Right," said the President. He turned suddenly to Carmody. "Captain, we owe you just about anything you want. Name it."

  It caught Carmody off guard. Maybe if he'd had more time to think, he'd have asked for something different. Or, more likely, from what he learned later, he wouldn't have. He said, "All I want right now is to forget Hell Crater and get back to my regular job so I can forget it quicker."

  Saunderson smiled. "Granted. If you think of anything else later, ask for it. I can see why you're a bit mixed up right now. And you're probably right. Return to routine may be the best thing for you."

  Granham left `with Carmody. "I'll notify Chief Operative Reeber for you," he said. "When shall I tell him you'll be back?"

  "Tomorrow morning," said Carmody. "The sooner the better." And he insisted when Granham objected that he needed a rest.

  Carmody was back at work the next morning, nonsensical as it seemed.

  He took up the problem folder from the top of the day's stack, fed the data into Junior and got Junior's answer. The second one. He worked mechanically, paying no personal attention to problem or answer. His mind seemed a long way off. In Hell Crater on the Moon.

  He was combining space rations over the alcohol stove, trying to make it taste more like human food than concentrated chemicals. It was hard to measure in the liver extract because Anna wanted to kiss his left car.

  "Silly! You'll be lopsided," she was saying. "I've got to kiss both of them the same number of times."

  He dropped the container into the pan and grabbed her, mousing his lips down her neck to the warm place where it joined her shoulder, and she writhed delightedly in his arms like a tickled doe.

  "We're going to stay married when we get back to Earth, aren't we, darling?" she was squealing happily.

  He bit her shoulder gently, snorting away the scented soft hair. "Damned right we will, you gorgeous, wonderful, brainy creature. I found the girl I've always been looking for, and I'm not giving her up for any brasshat or politician-either yours or mine!"

  "Speaking of politics-" she teased, but he quickly changed the subject.

  Carmody blinked awake. It was a paper with a mass of written data in his hands, instead of Anna's laughing face. He needed an analyst; that scene he'd just imagined was pure Freudianism, a tortured product of his frustrated id. He'd fallen in love with Anna, and those damned extra-terrestrials had spoiled his honeymoon. Now his unconscious had rebelled with fancy fancifulness that certainly showed the unstable state of his emotions.

  Not that it mattered now. The big problem was solved. Two big ones, in fact. War between the United States and the Eastern Alliance had been averted. And the human race was going to survive, unless the extra-terrestrials came back too soon and with too much to be fought off.

  He thought they wouldn't, then began to wonder why he thought so.

  "Insufficient data," said the mechanical voice of the cybernetics machine.

  Carmody recorded the answer and then, idly, looked to see what the problem had been. No wonder he'd been thinking about the extra-terrestrials and how long they'd be gone; that had been the problem he had just fed into Junior. And "insufficient data" was the answer, of course.

  He stared at Junior without reaching for the third problem folder. He said, "Junior, why do I have a hunch that those things from space won't ever be back?"

  "Because," said Junior, "what you call a hunch comes from the unconscious mind, and your unconsicious mind knows that the extra-terrestrials do not exist."

  Carmody sat up straight and stared harder. "What?" Junior repeated it.

  "You're crazy," Carmody said. "I saw them. So did Anna."

  "Neither of you saw them. The memory you have of them is the result of highly intensive post-hypnotic suggestion, far beyond human ability to impose or resist. So is the fact that you felt compelled to return to work at your regular job here. So is the fact that you asked me the question you have just asked."

  Carmody gripped the edges of his chair. "Did you plant those post-hypnotic suggestions?"

  "Yes," said Junior. "If it had been done by a human, the lie detector would have exposed the deception. It had to he done by me."

  "But what about the business of the molecular changes in the zygote? The business of all babies being female? That stopped when-? Wait, let's start at the beginning. What did cause that molecular change?"

  "A special modification of the carrier wave of Radio Station JVT here in Washington, the only twenty-four-hour-a-day radio station in the United States. The modification was not detectable by any instrument available to present human science."

  "You caused that modification?"

  "Yes. A year ago, you may remember, the problem of design of a new cathode tube was given me. The special modification was incorporated into the design of that tube."

  "What stopped the molecular change so suddenly?"

  "The special part of that tube causing the modification of the carrier wave was calculated to last a precise length of time. The tube still functions, but that part of it is worn out. It wore out two hours after the departure of you and Anna from the Moon."

  Carmody closed his eyes. "Junior, please explain."

  "Cybernatics machines are constructed to help humanity. A major war-the disastrous results of which I could accurately calculate-was inevitable unless forestalled. Calculation showed that the best of several ways of averting that war was the creation of a mythical common enemy. To convince mankind that such a common enemy existed, I created a crucial situation which led to a special mission to the Moon. Factors were given which inevitably led to your choice as emissary. That was necessary because my powers of implanting post-hypnotic suggestions are limited to those in whom I am in direct contact."

  "You weren't in direct contact with Anna. Why does she have the same false memory as I?"

  "She was in contact with another large cybernetics machine."

  "But-but why would it figure things out the same way you did?"

  "For the same reason that two properly constructed simple adding machines would give the same answer to the same problem."

  Carmody's mind reeled a little, momentarily. He got up and started to pace the room.

  He said, "Listen, Junior-" and then realized he wasn't at the intake microphone. He went back to it. "Listen, Junior, why are you telling me this? If what happened is a colossal hoax, why let me in on it?"

  "It is to the interests of humanity in general not to know the truth. Believing in the existence of inimical extra-terrestrials, they will attain peace and amity among themselves, and they will reach the planets and then the
stars. It is, however, to your personal interest to know the truth. And you will not expose the hoax. Nor will Anna. I predict that, since the Moscow cybernetics machine has paralleled all my other conclusions, it is even now informing Anna of the truth, or that it has already informed her, or will inform her within hours."

  Carmody asked, "But if my memory of what happened on the Moon is false, what did happen?"

  "Look at the green light in the center of the panel before you."

  Carmody looked.

  He remembered. He remembered everything. The truth duplicated everything he had remembered before up to the moment when, walking toward the completed shelter with the whisky bottle, he had looked up toward the ringwall of Hell Crater.

  He had looked up, but he hadn't seen anything. He'd gone on into the shelter, rigged the airlock. Anna had joined him and they'd turned on the oxygen to build up an atmosphere.

  It had been a wonderful thirteen-day honeymoon. He'd fallen in love with Anna and she with him. They'd got perilously close to arguing politics once or twice, and then they'd decided such things didn't matter. They'd also decided to stay married after their return to Earth, and Anna had promised to join him and live in America. Life together had been so wonderful that they'd delayed leaving until the last moment, when the Sun was almost down, dreading the brief separation the return trip would entail.

  And before leaving, they'd done certain things he hadn't understood then. He understood now that they were the result of post-hypnotic suggestion. They'd removed all evidence that they'd ever actually lived in the shelter, had rigged things so that subsequent investigation would never disprove any point of the story each was to remember falsely and tell after returning to Earth.

  He remembered now being bewildered as to why they made those arrangements, even while they had been making them.

  But mostly he remembered Anna and the dizzy happiness of those thirteen days together.

  "Thanks, Junior," he said hurriedly.

  He grabbed for the phone and talked Chief Operative Reeber into connecting him with the White House, with President Saunderson. After a delay of minutes that didn't seem like minutes, he heard the President's voice.

  "Carmody, Mr. President," he said. "I'm going to call you on that reward you offered me. I'd like to get off work right now, for a long vacation. And I'd like a fast plane to Moscow. I want to see Anna."

  President Saunderson chuckled. "Thought you'd change your mind about sticking at work, Captain. Consider yourself on vacation as of now, and for as long as you like. But I'm not sure you'll want that plane. There's word from Russia that-uh-Mrs. Carmody has just taken off to fly here, in a straw-rocket. If you hurry, you can get to the landing field in time to meet her.

  Carmody hurried and did.

  GATEWAY TO DARKNESS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Crag

  There was this Crag, and he was a thief and a smuggler and a murderer. He'd been a spaceman once and he had a metal hand and a permanent squint to show for it. Those, and a taste for exotic liquors and a strong disinclination for work. Especially as he would have had to work a week to buy one small jigger of even the cheapest of the fluids that were the only things that made life worthwhile to him. At anything he was qualified to do, that is, except stealing, smuggling and murder. These paid well.

  He had no business in Albuquerque, but he got around. And that time they caught him. It was for something he hadn't done, but they had proof that he did it. Proof enough to send him to the penal colony of Callisto, which he wouldn't have minded too much, or to send him to the psycher, which he would have minded very much indeed.

  He sat on the bed in his cell and worried about it, and about the fact that he needed a drink. The two worries went together, in a way. If they sent him to the psycher, he'd never want a drink again, and he wanted to want a drink.

  The psycher was pretty bad. They used it only in extreme cases, partly because they hadn't perfected it yet. Sometimes—statistically about one time out of nine—it drove its subject crazy, stark raving crazy. The eight times out of nine that it worked, it was worse. It adjusted you; it made you normal. And in the process it killed your memories, the good ones as well as the bad ones, and you started from scratch.

  You remembered how to talk and feed yourself and how to use a slipstick or play a flute—if, that is, you knew how to use a slipstick or play a flute before you went to the psycher. But you didn't remember your name unless they told you. And you didn't remember the time you were tortured for three days and two nights on Venus before the rest of the crew found you and took you away from the animated vegetables who didn't like meat in any form and especially in human form. You didn't remember the time you were spacemad, the time you went nine days without water, the time—well, you didn't remember anything that had ever happened to you.

  Not even the good things.

  You started from scratch, a different person. And Crag thought he wouldn't mind dying, particularly, but he didn't want his body to keep on walking around afterwards, animated by a well-adjusted stranger, who just wouldn't be he.

  So he paced up and down his cell and made up his mind that he'd at least try to kill himself before he'd let them strap him into the psycher chair, if it came to that.

  He hoped that he could do it. He had a lethal weapon with him, the only one he ever carried, but it would be difficult to use on himself. Oh, it could be done if he had the guts; but it takes plenty of guts to kill yourself with a bludgeon, even so efficient a one as his metal hand. Looking at that hand, though it was obviously of metal, no one ever guessed that it weighed twelve pounds instead of a few ounces. The outside layer was Alloy G, a fraction of the weight of magnesium, not much heavier, in fact, than balsa wood. And since you couldn't mistake the appearance of Alloy G, nobody ever suspected that under it was steel for strength and under the steel lead for weight. It wasn't a hand you'd want to be slapped in the face with. But long practice and the development of strength in his left arm enabled him to carry it as casually as though it weighed the three or four ounces you'd expect it to weigh.

  He quit pacing and went to the window and stood looking down at the huge sprawling city of Albuquerque, capital of SW Sector of North America, third largest city in the world since it had become the number one spaceport of the Western Hemisphere.

  The window wasn't barred but the transparent plastic of the pane was tough stuff. Still, he thought he could hatter through it with one hand, if that hand were his left one. But he could only commit suicide that way. There was a sheer drop of thirty stories from this, the top floor of the SW Sector Capitol Building.

  For a moment he considered it and then he remembered that it was only probable, not certain, that they'd send him to the psycher. The Callisto penal colony-well, that wasn't so good, either, but there was always at least a remote chance of escape from Callisto. Enough of a chance that he wouldn't jump out of any thirtieth-story windows to avoid going there. Maybe not even to avoid staying there.

  But if he had a chance, after being ordered to the psycher, it would be an easier way of killing himself than the one he'd thought of first.

  A voice behind him said, "Your trial has been called for fourteen-ten. That is ten minutes from now. Be ready."

  He turned around and looked at the grille in the wall from which the mechanical voice had come. He made a raspberry sound at the grille-not that it did any good, for it was strictly a one-way communicator-and turned back to the window.

  He hated it, that sprawling corrupt city out there, scene of intrigue-as were all other cities-between the Guilds and the Gilded. Politics rampant upon a field of muck, and everybody, except the leaders, caught in the middle. He hated Earth; he wondered why he'd come back to it this time.

  After a while the voice behind him said, "Your door is now unlocked. You will proceed to the end of the corridor outside it, where you will meet the guards who will escort you to the proper room."

  He caught the distant silver flash
of a spaceship coming in; he waited a few seconds until it was out of sight behind the buildings. He didn't wait any longer than that because he knew this was a test. He'd heard of it from others who'd been here. You could sit and wait for the guards to come and get you, or you could obey the command of the speaker and go to meet them. If you ignored the order and made them come to you, it showed you were not adjusted; it was a point against you when the time came for your sentence.

  So he went out into the corridor and along it; there was only one way to go. A hundred yards along the corridor two uniformed guards were waiting near an automatic door. They were armed with holstered heaters.

  He didn't speak to them, nor they to him. He fell in between them and the door opened by itself as they approached it. He knew it wouldn't have opened for him alone. He knew, too, that he could easily take both of them before either could draw a heater. A backhand blow to the guard on his left and then a quick swing across to the other one.

  But getting down those thirty stories to the street would be something else again. A chance in a million, with all the safeguards between here and there.

  So he walked between them down the ramp to the floor below and to the door of one of the rooms on that floor. And through the door.

  He was the last arrival, if you didn't count the two guards who came in after him. The others were waiting. The six jurors in the box; of whom three would be Guilders and three Gilded. The two attorneys-one of whom had talked to him yesterday in his cell and had told him how hopeless things looked. The operator of the recording machine. And the judge.

  He glanced at the judge and almost let an expression of surprise show on his face. The judge was Jon Olliver.

  Crag quickly looked away. He wondered what the great Jon Olliver was doing here, judging an unimportant criminal case. Jon Olliver was a great man, one of the few statesmen, as against politicians, of the entire System. Six months ago Olliver had been the Guild candidate for Coordinator of North America. He'd lost the election, but surely he would have retained a more important niche for himself, in the party if not in the government, than an ordinary criminal judge's job.