The Empire of Isher

by A. E. van Vogt

  FARA STOOD for a moment in the neat little pathway, striving to grasp the finality of his situation. But nothing would come except awareness of many men around him. His mind was like a log drifting along a stream at night. Through that darkness grew a consciousness of something wrong. The wrongness was there in the back of his mind as he turned leftward to go to the front of the weapon shop. Vagueness transformed to a startled sense of shock. For he was not in Glay, and the weapon shop was not where it had been.

  A dozen men brushed past Fara to join a long line of men farther along. But Fara was immune to their presence, their strangeness. His mind, his vision, his very being was concentrating on the section of machine that stood where the weapon shop had been. His brain lifted up, up in his effort to grasp the tremendousness of the dull-metaled immensity of what was spread here under a summer sun beneath a sky as blue as a remote southern sea.

  The machine towered into the heavens, five great tiers of metal, each a hundred feet high; and the superbly streamlined five hundred feet ended in a peak of light, a spire that tilted straight up a sheer two hundred feet farther, and matched the sun for brightness.

  And it was a machine, not a building, because the whole lower tier was alive with shimmering lights, mostly green, but sprinkled colorfully with red and occasionally blue and yellow. Twice, as Fara watched, green lights directly in front of him flashed unscintillatingly into red.

  The second tier glowed with white and red lights, although there were only a fraction as many lights as on the lowest tier. The third section had on its dull-metal surface lights of blue and yellow; they twinkled softly here and there over the vast area.

  The fourth tier was a series of signs, that brought the beginning of comprehension. The whole sign was:

  WHITE—BIRTHS

  RED—DEATHS

  GREEN—LIVING

  BLUE—IMMIGRATION TO EARTH

  YELLOW—EMIGRATION

  The fifth tier was all sign, finally explaining:

  POPULATIONS

  SOLAR SYSTEM 11,474,463,747

  EARTH 11,193,247,361

  MARS 97,298,604

  VENUS 141,053,811

  MOONS 42,863,971

  The numbers changed, even as he looked at them, leaping up and down, shifting below and above what they had first been. People were dying, being born, moving to Mars, to Venus, to the moons of Jupiter, to Earth's moon, and others coming back again, landing minute by minute in the scores of spaceports. Life went on in its gigantic fashion-and here was the record.

  "Better get in line," said a friendly voice beside Fara. "It takes quite a while to put through an individual case, I understand."

  Fara stared at the man. He had the impression of having had senseless words flung at him. "In line?" he started, then stopped himself with a jerk that hurt his throat.

  He was moving forward, blindly, ahead of the younger man, thinking a jumble about this having been the way that Constable Jor was transported to Mars, when another of the man's words penetrated.

  "Case?" said Fara violently. "Individual case!"

  The man, a heavy-faced, blue-eyed young chap of around thirty-five, looked at him curiously: "You must know why you're here," he said. "Surely, you wouldn't have been sent through here unless you had a problem of some kind that the weapon shop courts will solve for you: there's no other reason for coming to Information Center."

  Fara walked on because he was in the line now, a fast-moving line that curved him inexorably around the machine; and seemed to be heading him toward a door that led into the interior of the great metal structure.

  So it was a building as well as a machine.

  A problem, he was thinking, why of course, he had a problem. A hopeless, insoluble, completely tangled problem so deeply rooted in the basic structure of Imperial civilization that the whole world would have to be overturned to make it right.

  With a start, he saw that he was at the entrance. He thought with awe: In seconds he could be committed irrevocably-to what?

  Eighteen

  INSIDE the weapon shop Information Center, Fara moved along a wide, shining corridor. Behind him, the young man said:

  "There's a side corridor, practically empty. Let's go."

  Fara turned into it, trembling. He noticed that at the end of the hallway were a dozen young women sitting at desks interviewing men. He stopped in front of one of the girls. She was older than she had looked from a distance, over thirty, but good-looking, alert. She smiled pleasantly but impersonally, and said:

  "Your name, please?"

  He gave it, and added a mumble about being from the village of Glay. The woman said:

  "Thank you. It will take a few minutes to get your file. Won't you sit down?"

  He hadn't noticed the chair. He sank into it, and his heart was beating so wildly that he felt choked. There was scarcely a thought in his head, nor a real hope; only an intense, almost mind-wrecking excitement. He realized, suddenly, that the girl was speaking to him, but only snatches of what she said came through that screen of tension in his mind:

  “—Information Center is ... in effect ... a bureau of statistics. Every person born . . . registered here . . . their education, change of address . . . occupation . . . and the highlights of their life. The whole is maintained by ... combination of ... unauthorized and unsuspected liaison with . . . Imperial Chamber of Statistics and . . . through medium of agents . . . every community—”

  It seemed to Fara that he was missing vital information, and that if he could only force his attention and hear more —He strained, but it was of no use. His nerves were jumping too madly for him to focus his mind on what she was saying. He tried to speak, but before he could force words out of his trembling lips, there was a click, and a thin, dark plate slid onto the woman's desk. She took it up and examined it. After a moment, she said something into a mouthpiece, and in a short time two more plates precipitated out of the empty air onto her desk. She studied them impassively, looked up finally.

  "You will be interested to know," she said, "that your son, Cayle, is on Mars."

  "Eh?" said Fara. He half rose from his chair, but before he could say anything the young woman was speaking again, firmly:

  "I must inform you that the weapon shops take no action against individuals. We are not concerned with moral correction. That must come naturally from the individual, and from the people as a whole-and now if you will give me a brief account of your problem for the record and the court."

  Sweating, Fara sank back into his seat; most desperately, he wanted more information about Cayle. He began: "But . . . but what . . . how—” He caught himself; and in a low voice described what had happened. When he finished, the girl said:

  "You will proceed now to the Name Room; watch for your name, and when it appears go straight to Room 474. Remember, 474-and now, the line is waiting, if you please—”

  She smiled politely, and Fara was moving off almost before he realized it. He half turned to ask another question, but an old man was sinking into his chair. Fara hurried on, along a great corridor, conscious of curious blasts of sound coming from ahead.

  Eagerly, he opened the door; and the sound crashed at him with all the impact of a sledge-hammer blow. It was such a colossal, incredible sound that he stopped just inside the door, shrinking back. He stood then, trying to blink sense into a visual confusion that rivaled in magnitude the tornado of noise.

  Men, men, men everywhere; men by the thousands in a long, broad auditorium, packed into rows of seats, pacing with an abandon of restlessness up and down the aisles, and all of them staring with frantic interest at a long board marked off into squares, each square lettered from the alphabet. The tremendous board with its lists of names ran the full length of the immense room. The Name Room, Fara thought shakily as he sank into a seat. And his name would come up in the C's.

  It was like sitting in at a no-limit poker game, watching the jewel-precious cards turn up. It was like playing the exchange with all the wo
rld at stake during a stock crash. It was nerve-wracking, dazzling, exhausting, fascinating, terrible.

  New names kept flashing on to the twenty-six squares; and men would shout like insane beings and some fainted, and the uproar was shattering; the pandemonium raged on, one continuous, unbelievable sound. And every few minutes a great sign would flash along the board, telling everyone:

  WATCH YOUR OWN INITIALS.

  Fara watched. Each second it seemed to him that he couldn't stand it an instant longer. He wanted to scream at the roomful of men to be silent. He wanted to jump up to pace the floor, but others who did that were yelled at hysterically. Abruptly, the blind savagery of it scared Fara. He thought unsteadily: "I'm not going to make a fool of myself. I—”

  "Clark, Fara—” winked the board. "Clark, Fara—”

  With a shout, Fara leaped to his feet. "That's me!" he shrieked. "Me!"

  No one turned. No one paid the slightest attention. Shamed, he slunk across the room where an endless line of men kept crowding into a corridor beyond. The silence in the long corridor was almost as shattering as the noise it replaced. It was hard to concentrate on the idea of a number, 474. It was completely impossible to imagine what could lie beyond-474.

  The room was small. It was furnished with a small, business-type table and two chairs. On the table were seven neat piles of folders, each pile a different color. The piles were arranged in a row in front of a large milky-white globe, that began to glow with a soft light. Out of its depths, a man's baritone voice said:

  "Fara Clark?"

  "Yes," said Fara.

  "Before the verdict is rendered in your case," the voice went on quietly, "I want you to take a folder from the blue pile. The list will show the Fifth Interplanetary Bank in its proper relation to yourself and the world, and it will be explained to you in due course."

  The list, Fara saw, was simply a list of the names of companies. The names ran from A to Z, and there were about five hundred of them. The folder carried no explanation; and Fara slipped it automatically into his side pocket, as the voice came again from the shining globe.

  "It has been established," the words came precisely, "that the Fifth Interplanetary Bank perpetrated upon you a gross swindle, and that it is further guilty of practicing scavengery, deception, blackmail and was accessory in a criminal conspiracy. The bank made contact with your son, Cayle, through what is quite properly known as a scavenger, that is, an agent whose job it is to find young men and women who are in financial difficulties but who have parents with money. The scavenger obtains for this service a commission of eight percent, which is always paid by the borrower, in this case, your son. The bank practiced deception in that its authorized agents deceived you by claiming that it had already paid out ten thousand credits to your son, whereas only one thousand credits was paid over and that not until your signature had been obtained. The blackmail guilt arises out of the threat to have your son arrested for falsely obtaining a loan, a threat made at a time when no money had exchanged hands. The conspiracy consists of the action whereby your note was promptly turned over to your competitor. The bank is accordingly triple-fined thirty-six thousand three hundred credits. It is not in our interest Fara Clark, for you to know how this money is obtained. Suffice to know that the bank pays it, and that of the fine the weapon shops allocate to their own treasury a total of one half. The other half—”

  There was a plop; a. neatly packaged pile of bills fell onto the table. "For you," said the voice. Fara, with trembling fingers, slipped the package into his coat pocket. It required the purest mental and physical effort for him to concentrate on the next words that came.

  "You must not assume that your troubles are over. The re-establishment of your motor repair shop in Glay will require force and courage. Be discreet, brave and determined, and you cannot fail. Do not hesitate to use the gun you have purchased in defense of your rights. The plan will be explained to you. And now, proceed through the door facing you."

  Fara braced himself with an effort, opened the door and walked through. It was a dim, familiar room that he stepped into, and there was a silver-haired, fine-faced man who rose from a reading chair, and came forward in the dimness, smiling gravely.

  The stupendous, fantastic, exhilarating adventure was over. He was back in the weapon shop of Glay.

  Nineteen

  HE COULDN'T get over the wonder of it. This great and fascinating organization established here in the very heart of a ruthless civilization, a civilization that had in a few brief weeks stripped him of everything he possessed. With a deliberate will, he stopped that glowing flow of thought. A frown wrinkled his solidly built face; he said:

  "The . . . judge—” Fara hesitated over the name, frowned again in annoyance with himself, then went on: "The judge said that to re-establish myself I would have to—”

  "Before we go into that," said the old man, "I want you to examine the blue folder you brought with you."

  "Folder?" Fara echoed blankly. It took him a long moment to remember that he had picked up a folder from the table in Room 474.

  He studied the list of company names with a gathering puzzlement, noting that the name Automatic Atomic Motor Repair Shops was well down among the A's, and the Fifth Interplanetary Bank only one of several great banks included. Fara looked up finally:

  "I don't understand," he said. "Are these the companies you have had to act against?"

  The silver-haired man smiled grimly, shook his head.

  "That is not what I mean. These firms constitute only a fraction of the eight million companies that are constantly in our books." He smiled again, humorlessly: "These companies all know that, because of us, their profits on paper bear no relation to their assets. What they don't know is what the difference really is, and, as we want a general improvement in business morals, not merely more skillful scheming to outwit us, we prefer them to remain in ignorance."

  He paused, and this time he gave Fara a searching look, said at last: "The unique feature of the companies on this particular list is that they are every one wholly owned by Empress Isher." He finished swiftly: "In view of your past opinions on that subject, I do not expect you to believe me."

  Fara stood quite still. He did believe it, with unquestioning conviction, completely, finally. The amazing, the unforgivable thing was that all his life he had watched the march of ruined men into the oblivion of poverty and disgrace-and blamed them.

  Fara groaned. "I've been like a madman," he said. "Everything the empress and her officials did was right. No friendship, no personal relationship could survive with me that did not include belief in things as they were. I suppose if I started to talk against the empress I would receive equally short shrift."

  "Under no circumstances," said the old man, "must you say anything against her majesty. The weapon shops will not countenance any such words, and will give no further aid to anyone who is so indiscreet. The empress is personally not as responsible as might appear. Like you, she is, to some extent, adrift on the tide of our civilization. But I will not enlarge upon our policy. The worst period of our relations with the Imperial power was reached some forty years ago when every person who was discovered receiving aid from us was murdered in some fashion. You may be surprised to learn that your father-in-law was among those assassinated at that time."

  "Creel's father!" gasped Fara. "But—” He stopped. There was such a rush of blood to his head that for a moment he could hardly see. "But," he managed at last, "it was reported that he ran away with another woman."

  "They always spread a story of some kind," the old man said; and Fara was silent.

  The other went on: "We finally put a stop to their murders by killing the three men from the top down, excluding the royal family, who gave the order for the particular execution involved. But we do not again want that kind of bloody murder. Nor are we interested in any criticism of our toleration of so much that is evil. It is important to understand that we do not interfere in the main stream of huma
n existence. We right wrongs; we act as a barrier between the people and their more ruthless exploiters. Generally speaking, we help only honest men; that is not to say that we do not give assistance to the less scrupulous, but only to the extent of selling them guns-which is a very great aid indeed, and which is one of the reasons why the government is relying almost exclusively for its power on an economic chicanery.

  "In the four thousand years since the brilliant genius, Walter S. de Lany invented the vibration process that made the weapon shops possible, and laid down the first principles of weapon shop political philosophy, we have watched the tide of government swing backward and forward between democracy under a limited monarchy to complete tyranny. And we have discovered one thing: People always have the kind of government they want. When they want change, they must change it. As always we shall remain an incorruptible core-and I mean that literally; we have a psychological machine that never lies about a man's character-I repeat, an incorruptible core of human idealism, devoted to relieving the ills that arise inevitably under any form of government.

  "But now-your problem. It is very simple, really. You must fight, as all men have fought since the beginning of time for what they valued, for their just rights. As you know, the Automatic Atomic Repair people removed all your machinery and tools within an hour of foreclosing on your shop. This material was taken to Ferd, and then shipped to a great warehouse on the coast. We recovered it, and with our special means of transportation have now replaced the machines in your shop. You will accordingly go there and—”

  Fara listened with a gathering grimness to the instructions, nodded finally, his jaw clamped tight.

  "You can count on me," he said curtly. I’ve been a stubborn man in my time; and though I've changed sides, I haven't changed that."

  Twenty

  MOST OF THE houses were known to the police. But there was an unwritten law in connection with them. When a raid was due to take place the owner was warned. But the names of the men who had been imprisoned on the premises must be discoverable in some easily accessible desk drawer. During the next few days a check-up would be made of passenger lists recording the names of indigents and criminals being sent to Mars, Venus, and the various moons. Government contractors were insatiably in need of men for work on other planets. And the houses, frequented as they were by wealthy women who could not afford scandals, supplied a constant trickle of labor with no questions asked.