The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack: 25 Classic and Modern Science Fiction Stories

by Arthur C. Clarke

  He did not fail to note a little twin groove between her brows that appeared when she said think and should. He knew that in a sense he was nearer death now than when Halloran’s bullet had been intercepted.

  “Are you staying with it?” she asked simply.

  Various factors entered into it. A life for the Syndic, as in the children’s history books. That one didn’t loom very large. But multiply it by it sounds like more fun than hot-rod polo, and that by this is going to raise my stock sky-high with the family and you had something. Somehow, under Lee Falcaro’s interested gaze, he neglected to divide it by if it works.

  “I’m staying with it,” he said.

  She grinned. “It won’t be too hard,” she said. “In the old days there would have been voting record, social security numbers, military service, addresses they could check on—hundreds of things. Now about all we have to fit you with is a name and a subjective life.”

  It began that spring day and went on into late fall.

  The ringing bell.

  The flashing light.

  The wobbling pendulum.

  You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic.…

  * * * *

  Mom fried pork sausages in the morning, you loved the smell of pumpernickel from the bakery in Vesey Street.

  Mr. Watsisname the English teacher with the mustache wanted you to go to college—

  Nay, ye can not, though ye had Argus eyes,

  In abbeyes they haue so many suttyll spyes;

  For ones in the yere they have secret vvsytacyons,

  And yf ony prynce reforme.…

  —but the stockyard job was closer, they needed breakdown men—

  You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are—

  The ringing bell.

  The flashing light.

  The wobbling pendulum.

  And the pork sausages and the teacher with the mustache and poems you loved and

  page 24, paragraph 3, maximum speed on a live-cattle walkway is three miles per hour: older walkways hold this speed with reduction gears coupled to a standard 18-inch ehrenhafter unit. Standard practice in new construction calls for holding speed by direct drive from a specially-wound ehrenhafter. This places a special obligation in breakdown maintenance men, who must distinguish between the two types, carry two sets of wiring diagrams and a certain number of mutually-uninterchangeable parts, though good design principles hold these to a minimum. The main difference in the winding of a standard 18-incher and a lowspeed ehrenhafter rotor—

  Of course things are better now, Max Wyman, you owe a great debt to Jim Hogan, Father of the Buffalo Syndic, who fought for your freedom in the great old days, and to his descendants who are tirelessly working for your freedom and happiness.

  And bow-happiness is a girl named Inge Klohbel now that you’re almost a man.

  You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory. You are Max Wyman of Buffalo Syndic Territory.

  And Inge Klohbel is why you put away the crazy dream of scholarship, for her lips and hair and eyes and legs mean more to you than anything, more than

  Later phonologic changes include palatal mutation; i.e., before cht and hs the diphthongs eo, io, which resulted from breaking, becameie (i, y) as in cneoht, chieht, and seox (x equalling hs), siex, six, syx.…

  the crazy dream of scholarship, what kind of a way is that to repay the Mob and

  The ringing bell.

  The flashing light.

  The wobbling pendulum.

  repay the Syndic and young Mike Hogan all over the neighborhood suddenly and Inge says he did stop and say hello but of course he was just being polite.

  so you hit the manuals hard and one day you go out on a breakdown call and none of the older men could figure out why the pump was on the blink; a roaring, chewing monster of a pump it was, sitting there like a dead husk and the cattlefeed backed up four miles to a storage tank in the suburbs and the steers in the yards bawling with hunger, and you traced the dead wire, you out with the spot-welder, a zip of blue flame and the pump began to chew again and you got the afternoon off.

  * * * *

  And there they were.

  Lee Falcaro: (Bending over the ‘muttering, twitching carcass) Adrenalin. Brighter picture and louder sound.

  Assistant: (Opening a pinch cock in the tube that enters the arm, increasing video contrast, increasing audio): He’s weakening.

  Lee Falcaro: (In a whisper) I know. I know. But this is IT.

  Assistant: (Inaudibly) You cold-blooded bitch.

  You are Max Wyman, you are Max Wyman,

  and you don’t know what to do about the Syndic that betrayed you, about the girl who betrayed you with the living representative of the Syndic, about the dream of scholarship that lies in ruins, the love that lies in ruins after how many promises and vows, the faith of twenty years that lies in ruins after how many declarations.

  The ringing bell.

  The flashing light.

  The wobbling pendulum.

  And a double whiskey with a beer chaser.

  Lee Falcaro: The alcohol. (It drips from a sterile graduate, trickles through the rubber tubing and into the arm of the mumbling, sweating carcass. The molecules mingle with the molecules of serum: In seconds they are washed against the cell-walls of the forebrain. The cell-walls their structure as the alcohol molecules bumble against them; the lattices of jelly that wall in the cytoplasm and nuclear jelly become thinner than they were. Streams of electrons that had coursed in familiar paths through chains of neurones find easier paths through the poison-thinned cell-walls. A “Memory” or an “Idea” or a “Hope” or a “Value” that was a configuration of neurones linked by electron streams vanishes when the electron streams find an easier way to flow a New “Memories,” “Ideas,” “Hopes” and “Values” that are configurations of neurones linked by electron streams are born.)

  Love and loyalty die, but not as if they had never been. Their ghosts remain, Max Wyman and you are haunted by them. They hound you from Buffalo to Erie, but there is no oblivion deep enough in the Mex joints, or in Tampa tequila or Pittsburgh zubrovka or New York gin.

  You tell incurious people who came to the place on the corner for a shot and some talk that you’re the best breakdown man that ever came out of Erie; you tell them women are no God-damn good, you tell them the Syndic—here you get sly and look around with drunken caution, lowering your voice—you tell them the Syndic’s no God-damned good, and you drunkenly recite poetry until they move away, puzzled and annoyed.

  Lee Falcaro: (Passing a weary hand across her forehead) well, he’s had it. Disconnect the tubes, give him a 48-hour stretch in bed and then get him on the street pointed towards Riveredge.

  Assistant: Does the apparatus go into dead storage?

  Lee Falcaro: (Grimacing uncontrollably) No. Unfortunately, no.

  Assistant: (Inaudibly, as she plucks needle-tipped tubes from the carcass’ elbows) who’s the next sucker?

  VIII

  The submarine surfaced at dawn. Orsino had been assigned a bunk and, to his surprise, had fallen asleep almost at once. At eight in the morning, he was shaken awake by one of the men in caps.

  “Shift change,” the man explained laconically.

  Orsino started to say something polite and sleepy. The man grabbed his shoulder and rolled him onto the deck, snarling: “You going to argue?”

  Orsino’s reactions were geared to hot-rod polo—doing the split-second right thing after instinctively evaluating the roll of the ball, the ricochet of bullets, the probable tactics and strategy of the opposing four. They were not geared to a human being who behaved with the blind ferocity of an inanimate object. He just gawked at him from the deck, noting that the man had one hand on a sheath knife.

  “All right, buster,” the man said contemptuously, apparently deciding that Orsino would stay put. “Just don’t mess with the Guard.” He rolled in
to the bunk and gave a good imitation of a man asleep until Orsino worked his way through the crowded compartment and up a ladder to the deck.

  There was a heavy, gray over-cast. The submarine seemed to be planing the water; salt spray washed the shining deck. A gun crew was forward, drilling with a five-incher. The rasp of a petty-officer singing out the numbers mingled with the hiss and gurgle of the spray. Orsino leaned against the conning tower and tried to comb his thoughts out clean and straight.

  It wasn’t easy.

  He was Charles Orsino, very junior Syndic member, with all memories pertaining thereto.

  He was also, more dimly, Max Wyman with his memories. Now, able to stand outside of Wyman, he could recall how those memories had been implanted—down to the last stab of the last needle. He thought some very bitter thoughts about Lee Falcaro—and dropped them, snapping to attention as Commander Grinnel pulled himself through the hatch. “Good morning, sir,” he said.

  The cold eyes drilled him. “Rest,” the commander said. “We don’t play it that way on a pigboat. I hear you had some trouble about your bunk.”

  Orsino shrugged uncomfortably.

  “Somebody should have told you,” the commander said. “The boat’s full of Guardsmen. They have a very high opinion of themselves—which is correct. They carried off the raid in good style. You don’t mess with Guards.”

  “What are they?” Orsino asked.

  Grinnel shrugged. “The usual elite,” he said. “Loman’s gang.” He noted Orsino’s blank look and smiled coldly. “Loman’s President of North America,” he said.

  “On shore,” Orsino hazarded, “we used to hear about somebody named Ben Miller.”

  “Obsolete information. Miller had the Marines behind him. Loman was Secretary of Defense. He beached the Marines and broke them up into guard detachments. Took away their heavy weapons. Meanwhile, he built up the Guard, very quietly—which, with the Secretary of Information behind him, he could do. About two years ago, he struck. The Marines who didn’t join the Guard were massacred. Miller had the sense to kill himself. The Veep and the Secretary of State resigned, but it didn’t save their necks. Loman assumed the Presidency automatically, of course, and had them shot. They were corrupt as hell anyway. They were owned body and soul by the southern bloc.”

  Two seamen appeared with a folding cot, followed by the sub commander. He was red-eyed with lack of sleep. “Set it there,” he told them, and sat heavily on the sagging canvas. “Morning, Grinnel,” he said with an effort. “Believe I’m getting too old for the pigboats. I want sun and air. Think you can use your influence at court to get me a corvette?” He bared his teeth to show it was a joke.

  Grinnel said, with a minimum smile: “If I had any influence, would I catch the cloak-and-dagger crap they sling at me?”

  The sub commander rolled back onto the cot and was instantly asleep, a muscle twitching the left side of his face every few seconds.

  Grinnel drew Orsino to the lee of the conning tower. “We’ll let him sleep,” he said. “Go tell that gun crew Commander Grinnel says they should lay below.”

  Orsino did. The petty officer said something exasperated about the gunnery training bill and Orsino repeated his piece. They secured the gun and went below.

  Grinnel said, with apparent irrelevance: “You’re a rare bird, Wyman. You’re capable—and you’re uncommitted. Let’s go below. Stick with me.”

  * * * *

  He followed the fat little commander into the conning tower. Grinnel told an officer of some sort: “I’ll take the con, mister. Wyman here will take the radar watch.” He gave Orsino a look that choked off his protests. Presumably, Grinnel knew that he was ignorant of radar.

  The officer, looking baffled, said: “Yes, Commander.” A seaman pulled his head out of a face-fitting box and told Wyman: “It’s all yours, stranger.” Wyman cautiously put his face into the box and was confronted by meaningless blobs of green, numerals in the dark, and a couple of arrows to make confusion complete.

  He heard Grinnel say to the helmsman: “Get me a mug of joe, sailor. I’ll take the wheel.”

  “I’ll pass the word, sir.”

  “Nuts you’ll pass the word, sailor. Go get the coffee—and I want it now and not when some steward’s mate decides he’s ready to bring it.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” Orsino heard him clatter down the ladder. Then his arm was gripped and Grinnel’s voice muttered in his ear: “When you hear me bitch about the coffee, sing out: ‘Aircraft 265, DX 3,000’. Good and loud. No, don’t stop looking. Repeat it.”

  Orsino said, his eyes crossing on double images of the meaningless, luminous blobs: “Aircraft 265, DX 3,000. Good and loud. When you bitch about the coffee.”

  “Right. Don’t forget it.”

  He heard the feet on the ladder again. “Coffee, sir.”

  “Thanks, sailor.” A long sip and then another. “I always said the pigboats drink the lousiest joe in the Navy.”

  “Aircraft 265, DX 3,000!” Orsino yelled.

  A thunderous alarm began to sound. “Take her down!” yelled Commander Grinnel.

  “Take her down, sir!” the helmsman echoed. “But sir, the skipper—”

  Orsino remembered him too then, dead asleep in his cot on the deck, the muscle twitching the left side of his face every few seconds.

  “God-damn it, those were aircraft! Take her down!”

  The luminous blobs and numbers and arrows swirled before Orsino’s eyes as the trim of the ship changed, hatches clanged to and water thundered into the ballast tanks. He staggered and caught himself as the deck angled sharply underfoot.

  He knew what Grinnel had meant by saying he was uncommitted, and he knew now that it was no longer true.

  He thought for a moment that he might be sick into the face-fitting box, but it passed.

  Minutes later, Grinnel was on the mike, his voice sounding metallically through the ship: “To all hands. To all hands. This is Commander Grinnel. We lost the skipper in that emergency dive—but you and I know that that’s the way he would have wanted it. As senior line officer aboard, I’m assuming command for the rest of the voyage. We will remain submerged until dark. Division officers report to the wardroom. That’s all.”

  He tapped Orsino on the shoulder. “Take off,” he said. Orsino realized that the green blobs—clouds, were they?—no longer showed, and recalled that radar didn’t work through water.

  He wasn’t in on the wardroom meeting, and wandered rather forlornly through the ship, incredibly jammed as it was with sleeping men, coffee-drinking men and booty. Half a dozen times he had to turn away close questioning about his radar experience and the appearance of the aircraft on the radar scope. Each time he managed it, with the feeling that one more question would have cooked his goose.

  The men weren’t sentimental about the skipper they had lost. Mostly they wondered how much of a cut Grinnel would allot them from the booty of Cape Cod.

  At last the word passed for “Wyman” to report to the captain’s cabin. He did, sweating after a fifteen-minute chat with a radar technician.

  Grinnel closed the door of the minute cabin and smirked at him. “You have trouble, Wyman?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You’d have worse trouble if they found out for sure that you don’t know radar. I’d be in the clear. I could tell them you claimed to be a qualified radar man. That would make me out to be pretty gullible, but it would make you out to be a murderer. Who’s backing you, Wyman? Who told you to get rid of the skipper?”

  “Quite right, sir,” Orsino said. “You’ve really got me there.”

  “Glad you realize it, Wyman. I’ve got you and I can use you. It was a great bit of luck, the skipper corking off on deck. But I’ve always had a talent for improvisation. If you’re determined to be a leader, Wyman, nothing is more valuable. Do you know, I can relax with you? It’s a rare feeling. For once I can be certain that the man I’m talking to isn’t one of Loman’s stooges, or one of Clin
ch’s N.A.B.I. ferrets or anything else but what he says he is—

  “But that’s beside the point. I have something else to tell you. There are two sides to working for me, Wyman. One of them’s punishment if you get off the track. That’s been made clear to you. The other is reward if you stay on. I have plans, Wyman, that are large-scale. They simply eclipse the wildest hopes of Loman, Clinch, Baggot and the rest. And yet, they’re not wild. How’d you like to be on the inside when the North American Government returns to the mainland?”

  Orsino uttered an authentic gasp and Commander Grinnel looked satisfied.

  IX

  The submarine docked at an indescribably lovely bay in the south of Ireland. Orsino asked Grinnel whether the Irish didn’t object to this, and was met with a blank stare. It developed that the Irish consisted of a few hundred wild men in the woods—maybe a few thousand. The stupid shore-bound personnel couldn’t seem to clean them out. Grinnel didn’t know anything about them, and he cared less.

  Ireland appeared to be the naval base. The government proper was located on Iceland, vernal again after a long, climatic swing. The Canaries and Ascencion were outposts.

  Orsino had learned enough on the voyage to recognize the Government for what it was. It had happened before in history; Uncle Frank had pointed it out. Big-time Caribbean piracy had grown from very respectable origins. Gentlemen-skippers had been granted letters of marque and reprisal by warring governments, which made them a sort of contract navy. Periods of peace had found these privateers unwilling to give up their hard earned complicated profession and their investments in it. When they could no longer hoist the flag of England or France or Spain, they simply hoisted the Jolly Roger and went it alone.

  Confusing? Hell, yes! The famous Captain Kidd thought he was a gallant privateer and sailed trustingly into New York. Somewhere he had failed to touch third base; they shipped him to London for trial and hanged him as a pirate. The famous Henry Morgan had never been anything but a pirate and a super-pirate; as admiral of a private fleet he executed a brilliant amphibious operation and sacked the city of Panama. He was knighted, made governor of a fair-sized English island in the West Indies and died loved and respected by all.