The three Visitors swarmed down the ramp, three living black car-pets.
For maximum visibility they arranged themselves in three thin black lines which advanced slowly over the rugged terrain. At the tip of each line a few of the insects occasionally strayed too far from their connecting files and dropped out of the "life" field. These stag-gered in purposeless circles. Some blundered back into the field; some did not and died, leaving a minute hiatus in the "life's" memory— perhaps the shape of the full-stop" symbol in the written language of a planet long ago visited, long ago dust. Normally the thin line was not used for exploring any but the smoothest terrain; the fact that they took a small calculated risk was a measure of the Visitors' slightly irked curiosity.
With three billion faceted eyes the Visitors saw immediately that this was no semi-deserted world, and that furthermore it was proba-bly the world which had colonized the puzzling outer planet. Entities were everywhere; the air was thick with them in some places. There were numerous artifacts, all in ruins. Here the entities of the planet clustered, but here the bafflement deepened. The artifacts were all decidedly material and ponderous—but the entities were insubstantial.
Coarsely organized observers would not have perceived them consis-tently. They existed in a field similar to the organization field of the Visitors. Their bodies were constructs of wave trains rather than atoms. It was impossible to imagine them manipulating the materials of which the artifacts were composed.
And as before, the Visitors were ignored.
Deliberately they clustered themselves in three huge black balls, with the object of being as obstreperous as possible and also to mobi-lize their field strength for a brute-force attempt at communication with the annoying creatures. By this tune their attitude approxi-mated:
"We'll show these bastards!"
They didn't—not after running up and down every spectrum of thought in which they could project. Their attempt at reception was more successful, and completely horrifying. A few weak, attenuated messages did come through to the Visitors. They revealed the entities of the planet to be dull, whimpering cravens, whining evasively, bleating with self-pity. Though there were only two sexes among them, a situation which leads normally to a rather weak sex drive as such things go in the cosmos, these wispy things vibrated with libido which it was quite impossible for them to discharge.
The Visitors, thoroughly repelled, were rippling back toward their ship when one signaled: notice and hide.
The three great black carpets abruptly vanished—that is, each in-sect found itself a cranny to disappear into, a pebble or leaf to be on the other side of. Some hope flared that the visit might be productive of a more pleasant contact than the last with those aimless, chittering cretins.
The thing stumping across the terrain toward them was like and unlike the wave-train cretins. It had their conformation but was ma-terial rather than undulatory in nature—a puzzle that could wait. It appeared to have no contact with the wave-train life form. They soared and darted about it as it approached, but it ignored them. It passed once through a group of three who happened to be on the ground in its way.
Tentatively the three Visitors reached out into its mind. The thoughts were comparatively clear and steady.
When the figure had passed the Visitors chorused: Agreed, and headed back to their ship. There was nothing there for them. Among other things they had drawn from the figure's mind was the location of a ruined library; a feeble-minded working party of a million was dispatched to it.
Back at the ship they waited, unhappily ruminating the creature's foreground thoughts: "From Corey's Gin you get the charge to tote that bale and lift that barge. That's progress, God damn it. You know better than that, man. Liberty Unlimited for the Lonely Man, but it be nice to see that Mars ship land…"
Agreement: Despite all previous experience it seems that a sentient race is capable of destroying itself.
When the feeble-minded library detail returned and gratefully re-united itself with its parent "lives" they studied the magnetic tapes it had brought, reading them direct in the cans. They learned the name of the planet and the technical name for the wave-train entities which had inherited it and which would shortly be its sole proprietors. The solid life forms, it seemed, had not been totally unaware of them, though there was some confusion: Far the vaster section of the li-brary denied that they existed at all. But in the cellular minds of the Visitors there could be no doubt that the creatures described in a neglected few of the library's lesser works were the ones they had en-countered. Everything tallied. Their non-material quality; their curi-ous reaction to light. And, above all, their dominant personality trait, of remorse, repentance, furious regret. The technical term that the books gave to them was: ghosts.
The Visitors worked ship, knowing that the taste of this world and its colony would soon be out of what passed for their collective mouths, rinsed clean by new experiences and better-organized enti-ties.
But they had never left a solar system so gratefully or so fast.
Sir Mallory's Magnitude
[SF Quarterly -Winter 1941/1942 as by S. D. Gottesman]
1
After Armageddon
There was a lusty scream from the visitors' gallery. The lights of the hall flickered for a moment; guards drew and fired at shadows on the wall or at each other. Panic threatened; the restless roar of a great crowd rose to a jabbering sound like monkey-talk. In the great gallery and on the vast floor a few dimwits began to dash for exits.
"Rot them," growled Senator Beekman. He shoved the mike at Ballister.
"Shut them up," he snapped. "Use your precious psychology!"
Young Ballister took the mike, snapped on the button, dialed for heaviest amplification. "Atten-shun!" he barked into it, with the genuine parade-ground note of command.
The monkey-talk stopped for a priceless moment. Ballister jumped into it with both feet. Soothingly he said: "Now, folks, what's your hurry?
Stick around—these learned gentlemen put on a pretty good show for your benefit."
The learned gentlemen who were dashing for exits purpled; the visitors in the gallery laughed loud and long at the feeble little joke. They resumed their seats.
"Take it, Senator," snapped Ballister in an undertone. "I'll scamper for a gander at the fuss up there." He hopped nimbly from the platform into an elevator, which shot him up to the gallery. Displaying his Representative's badge, he broke through the cordon of International Police that was zealously guarding an ordinary seat, like any other of the five thousand in sight.
"What was it?" he demanded of a French provost. "Killing?"
The provost shrugged. "We do not know vat, m'sieu. On-lee we know that in that seat sat M'sieu the mayor of Bruxelles."
"Hi," snapped a crisp young voice at Ballister.
He removed his horn-rims to regard the young lady disapprovingly.
"Beat it, Kay," he ordered. "This isn't for the papers. Another unpleasant international incident. The Mayor of Brussels."
The young man looked down at the stage, very small and far away. From the speakers in the walls came the voice of Senator Beekman, hoarse and embarrassed:
"Our agenda will be incomplete today, gentlemen and ladies. I have been advised of the—the non-attendance of Monsieur Durtal, Mayor of Brussels and major sponsor of the bill entitled: 'An Act to Prevent Competitive Development of Instruments of Warfare.' We will proceed to—"
The Anti-War Conference had been in full swing for two months. There was nothing slow or inefficient about the great congress of all the nations; the tremendous task before them took time, lots of it. The Grand Agenda of the Conference covered a space of three years, and all busy ones.
Banister knew something about the Second World War; he had spent a couple of years in command of an infantry company at the tail-end of the mighty conflict. Then, when it was settled, and the sick-and-tired Axis armies and peoples had revolted and overthrown their warlords, he had natural
ly gone to the Conference as an American delegate.
Training as specialized as his—psychological jurisprudence—was in demand.
He thought he had seen everything, world-weary at twenty-three, but the Conference offered a few new kicks. There was something ludicrous about a Japanese delegate trying to wangle a few more square miles of Korea for his nation. Ballister was usually the trouble-shooter who explained to the simple people how their demands would encroach on so-and-so's rights, which would lead to such-and-such a consequence, which would be bad for the world in general for this-and-that reasons.
It was a plan magnificent in scope. The vast Auditorium of Oslo was jammed with the delegates and specialists; the gallery was jammed day and night with visitors—anybody who wanted to see. There was to be no diplomacy under the table in the world the Conference was making!
Twenty years of war had shown the fallacy of secret treaties; the delegates desperately hoped that their three years of cooperative common sense would blast the old diplomatic nonsense from the face of the Earth.
Ballister had his troubles, not the least of these being Kay Marsh, of the New York Enquirer. Any other reporter he could handle; not Kay, for she had majored with him at Columbia in the same psych courses and knew him like a book. She knew then, in the gallery, that this wasn't the time for comedy.
"Did you know him?" she asked.
"Met him twice," said Ballister despondently, regarding the empty chair. "A real humanitarian, man of the people. Not one of these professionals. And he's the third to go."
"Pelterie from Switzerland, Vanderhoek from South Africa, now Durtal of Belgium," she listed somberly. "Who's doing it?"
"If I knew I'd tell you," said Ballister. "Hell! Let us be gay! Have you got the handouts for the day's work?"
"I filed my copy already," she said. "Macklin's covering this business.
He's going to do a series of articles on it. You're off?"
"Through for the week. Let's flit."
"Sounds like an insect," she complained. "But if you wish."
They elbowed their way through the crowd, out of the Auditorium. Oslo was en flite, with its face washed and its hair brushed for the distinguished visitors. Its population had swelled by a half-million since it was chosen as the Conference site. Festively decked helicopters and 'gyros dragged advertising signs through the sky in all languages.
One battered little blimp towed the notice in French: "Attend the Produce Show! April 11!"
Kay pointed at it with a smile. "Did I ever tell you I was a farmer's daughter?" she remarked.
Ballister recognized the lead. "All right," he said. "I'll take you. But I guarantee you'll be bored silly; they probably won't even speak the international language."
"Cows and hay don't have to speak any language," she sparkled happily.
"I haven't seen a decent steer since Nebraska."
They got wind of the Produce Show and followed the smell to a neat collection of tents, where Kay delightedly inspected timothy and cheeses and champion milkers for two hours while Ballister tried to hold his breath for that length of time.
"Hold it," he snapped as she was going into a gush at a draft-horse who stared sullenly at her hat. "Gent's fainted."
They elbowed their way through the crowd, to find that the gentleman was nearly foaming at the mouth, twitching convulsively on the ground.
The only serious attention being paid him was by a barker from a nearby tent, who loudly offered three to one that the gentleman would die in less than half an hour.
"Throat constricted or something," said Kay after a swift examination.
"Looks like a super-violent allergy."
Ballister went through his pockets, found a box of amyl nitrite pearls.
He broke one under the man's nose, drawing it away as he came to.
"You, there," he snapped, waving up a couple of husky farmers. "Carry him away from this damned show of yours. There's something in the air that nearly killed him."
The peasants, grinning happily, lugged the man to the nearest taxi stand. Ballister ordered the hackie to drive to the center of town, where monoxide would most likely replace the pollen or whatever it was that had strangled him.
The man was unable to talk for a few miles, though he insisted, despite the soothing words of Miss Marsh, on pantomiming gratitude. He was a fine-looking gentleman, ruddy-faced, middle-aged or over, exquisitely dressed.
Finally, with one tremendous cough, he cleared his throat. "Thanks awf'ly," he exclaimed. "Those dim-head hunks would've let me perish on the spot!"
"What got you going?" asked Ballister. "Pollen from the hay?"
"Nothing so dashed ordin'ry. Would you believe it? It was mice that nearly did me in. They could get me in about sixty seconds."
"Why not?" replied Ballister. He thought to introduce himself, adding his official capacity at the Conference.
"Splendid," muttered the gentleman. "Psychological jurisprudence and all that, I mean! I'm Gaffney, by the way. Sir Mallory. Baronet."
Kay sat up like a shot; in the next two minutes she had asked him thirty questions and was primed for fifty more. Sir Mallory Gaffney was news—big news—hot news! He was said to be the man who had invented the springing system that made the revolutionary Enfield Armored Wagon a practical and terrible weapon. He was the man behind the gas-cooled tank motor. Likewise the synthesis of rubber from chalk and carbon dioxide, and any number of other departures.
And he had never been interviewed before!
Ballister pointedly interrupted the questioning with: "Didn't know you were at the Conference, Sir Mallory. Any official capacity, or just visiting?"
"Just ordered over, Mr. Ballister. They want my more-or-less expert testimony on this Durtal Bill."
"Durtal died or vanished without a trace this morning," said Kay. "Have you done anything in the invisibility line, Sir Mallory?"
The baronet laughed indulgently. "Hardly. You Americans had invisible battleships back in 1941, I hear. Learned the trick from some illusionist chap—Dunnings, or Kuss—one of them. But the mirrors lost their silvering in the sea-spray. That's as far as military invisibility's gone, I believe."
Ballister coughed warningly at the girl. "We'd better be getting back to the hotel," he said in overloud tones. "Sir Mallory's had a nasty shock."
He filled in the rest of the trip with diplomatic small talk, avoiding the controversial subjects dear to the reportorial heart of Kay.
2
Conspiracy
At the Hotel de Universe et d'Oslo they were all in for a nasty shock. The manager dashed to them as they emerged from the cab, and collared Sir Mallory and Ballister.
"Thank God for both of you!" he cried hysterically. "That this should happen chez moi—it is incroyable, the horrible truly that we face—I ruin and you despair!"
"Yeah," said Ballister skeptically. It was a little thick, believing that the hardheaded manager of a great international hotel could be shaken by anything that could happen in the way of bad luck. "Yeah. Explain yourself."
"The senator American—Beekman, he is vanished from his room."
A committee head hailed them from across the lobby and came over, looking grave. "He isn't kidding, Ballister. Beekman's flitted completely, like Durtal and the others. Right in the middle of a caucus on the Competition Act. Went out to—er, went out for a moment and never came back."
"My seempathie, monsignors," said a burly, black-haired man. "I have heard of the so-gre-ait loss of thee Amairicain delegation."
"Thanks, Rasonho," said the committee head abstractedly. "Maybe he'll turn up."
"Lait us hope so. Thee passage of thee Competition Act means vair-ree much to my people." As he walked off Ballister studied the man. There was something familiar about him, something damned strange to boot.
He inquired of the committee man.
"Rasonho? He's from the Pyrenese Peoples' Republic. Their only delegate. Good sort, but somewhat thick. He doesn't under
stand the parliamentary method."
"And what may the Pyrenese Peoples' Republic be?"
"I did an article on them," said Kay. "No wonder you missed them, because they popped up while you were at the front. They're a sort of Basque federation —not more than ten thousand of them, I'm sure. Yet they held DeCuerva's army when he was coming north through the Pyrenees to relieve Milhaud. By heaven, they held him for three months! It's gone unsung for the most part, but I call it the most remarkable feat of the war."
"No doubt," said Ballister abstractedly. "And then, after the Initial Treaty they organized under a simple native President, thinking they had won independence from France and Spain both?"
"That's right. The Conference recognizes them—even invited the delegate."
A bomb exploded in the lobby of the hotel; the high ceiling swayed right and left. Screams echoed through the great hall; emergency exits opened onto the street automatically.
"This is intolerable!" fumed Sir Mallory when they had gained cover.
"Someone—some party—is trying to destroy the Conference. They're trying to kill every damned one of us—or have us disappear bit by bit!"
"Sure," said Ballister. He wound a handkerchief around his wrist; flying plaster had clipped a bit of his flesh away. "What do you suggest, sir?"
"Armed guards, Mr. Ballister! We must fight this menace as it is trying to fight us! We must post men in every corridor—shoot suspicious persons on sight!"
"By heaven, yes!" snapped Kay. "They're trying to wreck the Anti-War Conference, and I won't have it. This is mankind's chance for peace at last, a final peace that will endure a hundred thousand years. Any dog who'd try to stand in the way of that, try to plunge the world back into the nightmare of war after war, deserves no mercy!"
Ballister looked somewhat sick; the corners of his mouth drooped peculiarly, as though he tasted something unpleasant. Finally he looked square into the eyes of the girl and said without conviction: "Yes. Fight them tooth and nail. The best thing to do."
His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction Page 84
