Astounding Science Fiction Stories: An Anthology of 350 Scifi Stories Volume 2 (Halcyon Classics)

by Various

  It was personal anger, then, not rebellion against the Empire which had appointed the ex-commander to his post as Viceroy.

  "Where is the Viceroy? Death to the Tyrant!" The assassins moved in.

  Swords in hand, and cloaks wrapped around their left arms, Sir Martin and the Viceroy moved to meet the oncoming attackers.

  "Traitors!" bellowed the Viceroy. "Cowards! Have you come to kill me in my own house?"

  Parry, thrust! Parry, thrust! Two of the attackers fell before the snake-tongue blade of the fighting Viceroy. Sir Martin accounted for two more before he fell in a flood of his own blood.

  The Viceroy was alone, now. His blade flickered as though inspired, and two more died under its tireless onslaught. Even more would have died if the head of the conspiracy, a supporter of Young Jim named Rada, hadn't pulled a trick that not even the Viceroy would have pulled.

  Rada grabbed one of his own men and shoved him toward the Viceroy's sword, impaling the hapless man upon that deadly blade.

  And, in the moment while the Viceroy's weapon was buried to the hilt in an enemy's body, the others leaped around the dying man and ran their blades through the Viceroy.

  He dropped to the floor, blood gushing from half a dozen wounds.

  Even so, his fighting heart still had seconds more to beat. As he propped himself up on one arm, the assassins stood back; even they recognized that they had killed something bigger and stronger than they. A better man than any of them lay dying at their feet.

  He clawed with one hand at the river of red that flowed from his pierced throat and then fell forward across the stone floor. With his crimson hand, he traced the great symbol of his Faith on the stone--the Sign of the Cross. He bent his head to kiss it, and, with a final cry of "Jesus!" he died. At the age of seventy, it had taken a dozen men to kill him with treachery, something all the hell of nine years of conquest and rule had been unable to do.

  And thus died Francisco Pizarro, the Conqueror of Peru.

  THE END

  TO BE READ AFTER YOU HAVE FINISHED "DESPOILERS OF THE GOLDEN EMPIRE."

  Dear John,

  It has been brought to my attention, by those who have read the story, that "Despoilers of the Golden Empire" might conceivably be charged with being a "reader cheater"--i.e., that it does not play fair with the reader, but leads him astray by means of false statements. Naturally, I feel it me bounden duty to refute such scurrilous and untrue affronts, and thus save meself from opprobrium.

  Therefore, I address what follows to the interested reader:

  It cannot be denied that you must have been misled when you read the story; indeed, I'd be the last to deny it, since I intended that you should be misled. What I most certainly do deny is any implication that such misleading was accomplished by the telling of untruths. A fiction writer is, by definition, a professional liar; he makes his living by telling interesting lies on paper and selling the results to the highest bidder for publication. Since fiction writing is my livelihood, I cannot and will not deny that I am an accomplished liar--indeed, almost an habitual one. Therefore, I feel some small pique when, on the one occasion on which I stick strictly to the truth, I am accused of fraud. Pfui! say I; I refute you. "I deny the allegation, and I defy the alligator!"

  To prove my case, I shall take several examples from "Despoilers" and show that the statements made are perfectly valid. (Please note that I do not claim any absolute accuracy for such details as quoted dialogue, except that none of the characters lies. I simply contend that the story is as accurate as any other good historical novelette. I also might say here that any resemblance between "Despoilers" and any story picked at random from the late lamented Planet Stories is purely intentional and carefully contrived.)

  Take the first sentence:

  "In the seven centuries that had elapsed since the Second Empire had been founded on the shattered remnants of the First, the nobles of the Imperium had come slowly to realize that the empire was not to be judged by the examples of its predecessor."

  Perfectly true. By the time of the Renaissance, the nobles of the Holy Roman Empire knew that their empire was not just a continuation of the Roman Empire, but a new entity. The old Roman Empire had collapsed in the Sixth Century, and the Holy Roman Empire, which was actually a loose confederation of Germanic states, did not come into being until A. D. 800, when Karl der Grosse (Charlemagne) was crowned emperor by the Pope.

  Anyone who wishes to quibble that the date should be postponed for a century and a half, until the time of the German prince, Otto, may do so; I will ignore him.

  A few paragraphs later, I said:

  "Without power, neither Civilization nor the Empire could hold itself together, and His Universal Majesty, the Emperor Carl, well knew it. And power was linked solidly to one element, one metal ..."

  The metal, as I said later on, was Gold-197.

  By "power," of course, I meant political and economic power. In the Sixteenth Century, that's what almost anyone would have meant. If you chose to interpret it as meaning "energy per unit time," why, that's real tough.

  Why nail the "power metal" down to an isotope of gold with an atomic weight of 197? Because that's the only naturally occurring isotope of gold.

  The "Emperor Carl" was, of course, Charles V, who also happened to be King of Spain, and therefore Pizarro's sovereign. I Germanicized his name, as I did the others--Francisco Pizarro becomes "Frank," et cetera--but this is perfectly legitimate. After all, the king's name in Latin, which was used in all state papers, was Carolus; the Spanish called him Carlos, and history books in English call him Charles. Either Karl or Carl is just as legitimate as Charles, certainly, and the same applies to the other names in the story.

  As to the title "His Universal Majesty," that's exactly what he was called. It is usually translated as "His Catholic Majesty," but the word Catholic comes from the Greek katholikos, meaning "universal." And, further on in the story, when the term "Universal Assembly" is used, it is a direct translation of the Greek term, Ekklesia Katholikos, and is actually a better translation than "Catholic Church," since the English word church comes from the Greek kyriakon, meaning "the house of the Lord"--in other words, a church building, not the organization as a whole.

  Toward the end of Chapter One, I wrote:

  "Throughout the Empire, research laboratories worked tirelessly at the problem of transmuting commoner elements into Gold-197, but thus far none of the processes was commercially feasible."

  I think you will admit that the alchemists never found a method of transmuting the elements--certainly none which was commercially feasible.

  In Chapter Three, the statement that Pizarro left his home--Spain--with undermanned ships, and had to sneak off illegally before the King's inspectors checked up on him, is historically accurate. And who can argue with the statement that "there wasn't a scientist worthy of the name in the whole outfit"?

  At the beginning of Chapter Four, you'll find:

  "Due to atmospheric disturbances, the ship's landing was several hundred miles from the point the commander had originally picked ..." and "... the ship simply wasn't built for atmospheric navigation."

  The adverse winds which drove Pizarro's ships off course were certainly "atmospheric disturbances," and I defy anyone to prove that a Sixteenth Century Spanish galleon was built for atmospheric navigation.

  And I insist that using the term "carrier" instead of "horse," while misleading, is not inaccurate. However, I would like to know just what sort of picture the term conjured up in the reader's mind. In Chapter Ten, in the battle scene, you'll find the following:

  "The combination [of attackers from both sides], plus the fact that the heavy armor was a little unwieldy, overbalanced him [the commander]. He toppled to the ground with a clash of steel as he and the carrier parted company.

  "Without a human hand at its controls, the carrier automatically moved away from the mass of struggling fighters and came to a halt well away from the battle."


  To be perfectly honest, it's somewhat of a strain on my mind to imagine anyone building a robot-controlled machine as good as all that, and then giving the drive such poor protection that he can fall off of it.

  One of the great screams from my critics has been occasioned by the fact that I referred several times to the Spaniards as "Earthmen." I can't see why. In order not to confuse the reader, I invariably referred to them as the "invading Earthmen," so as to make a clear distinction between them and the native Earthmen, or Incas, who were native to Peru. If this be treachery, then make the most of it.

  In other words, I contend that I simply did what any other good detective story writer tries to do--mislead the reader without lying to him. Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd," for instance, uses the device of telling the story from the murderer's viewpoint, in the first person, without revealing that he is the murderer. Likewise, John Dickson Carr, in his "Nine Wrong Answers" finds himself forced to deny that he has lied to the reader, although he admits that one of his characters certainly lied. Both Carr and Christie told the absolute truth--within the framework of the story--and left it to the reader to delude himself.

  It all depends on the viewpoint. The statement, "We all liked Father Goodheart very much" means one thing when said by a member of his old parish in the United States, which he left to become a missionary. It means something else again when uttered by a member of the tribe of cannibals which the good Father attempted unsuccessfully to convert.

  Similarly, such terms as "the gulf between the worlds," "the new world," and "the known universe" have one meaning to a science-fictioneer, and another to a historian. Semantics, anyone?

  In Chapter Ten, right at the beginning, there is a conversation between Commander Frank and Frater Vincent, and "agent of the Assembly" (read: priest). If the reader will go back over that section, keeping in mind the fact that what they are "actually" talking about are the Catholic Church and the Christian religion as seen from the viewpoint of a couple of fanatically devout Sixteenth Century Spaniards, he will understand the method I used in presenting the whole story.

  Let me quote:

  "Mentally, the commander went through the symbol-patterns that he had learned as a child--the symbol-patterns that brought him into direct contact with the Ultimate Power, the Power that controlled not only the spinning of atoms and the whirling of electrons in their orbits, but the workings of probability itself."

  Obviously, he is reciting the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. The rest of the sentence is self-explanatory.

  So is the following:

  "Once indoctrinated into the teachings of the Universal Assembly, any man could tap that power to a greater or lesser degree, depending on his mental control and ethical attitude. At the top level, a first-class adept could utilize that Power for telepathy, psychokinesis, levitation, teleportation, and other powers that the commander only vaguely understood."

  It doesn't matter whether you believe in the miracles attributed to many of the Saints; Pizarro certainly did. His faith in that Power was as certain as the modern faith in the power of the atomic bomb.

  As a matter of fact, it was very probably that hard, unyielding Faith which made the Sixteenth Century Spaniard the almost superhuman being that he was. Only Spain of the Sixteenth Century could have produced the Conquistadors or such a man as St. Ignatius Loyola, whose learned, devout, and fanatically militant Society of Jesus struck fear into the hearts of Protestant and Catholic Princes alike for the next two centuries.

  The regular reader of Astounding may remember that I gave another example of the technique of truthful misdirection in "The Best Policy," (July, 1957). An Earthman, captured by aliens, finds himself in a position in which he is unable to tell even the smallest lie. But by telling the absolute truth, he convinces the aliens that homo sapiens is a race of super-duper supermen. He does it so well that the aliens surrender without attacking, even before the rest of humanity is aware of their existence.

  The facts in "Despoilers of the Golden Empire" remain. They are facts. Francisco Pizarro and his men--an army of less than two hundred--actually did inflict appalling damage on the Inca armies, even if they were outnumbered ten to one, and with astonishingly few losses of their own. They did it with sheer guts, too; their equipment was not too greatly superior to that of the Peruvians, and by the time they reached the Great Inca himself, none of the Peruvians believed that the invaders were demons or gods. But in the face of the Spaniards' determined onslaught, they were powerless.

  The assassination scene at the end is almost an exact description of what happened. It did take a dozen men in full armor to kill the armorless Pizarro, and even then it took trickery and treachery to do it.

  Now, just to show how fair I was--to show how I scrupulously refrained from lying--I will show what a sacrifice I made for the sake of truth.

  If you'll recall, in the story, the dying Pizarro traces the Sign of the Cross on the floor in his own blood, kisses it, and says "Jesus!" before he dies. This is in strict accord with every history on the subject I could find.

  But there is a legend to the effect that his last words were somewhat different. I searched the New York Public Library for days trying to find one single historian who would bear out the legend; I even went so far as to get a librarian who could read Spanish and another whose German is somewhat better than mine to translate articles in foreign historical journals for me. All in vain. But if I could have substantiated the legend, the final scene would have read something like this:

  Clawing at his sword-torn throat, the fearless old soldier brought his hand away coated with the crimson of his own blood. Falling forward, he traced the Sign of the Cross on the stone floor in gleaming scarlet, kissed it, and then glared up at the men who surrounded him, his eyes hard with anger and hate.

  "I'm going to Heaven," he said, his voice harsh and whispery. "And you, you bastards, can go to Hell!"

  It would have made one hell of an ending--but it had to be sacrificed in the interests of Truth.

  So I rest my case.

  I will even go further than that; I defy anyone to point out a single out-and-out lie in the whole story. G'wan--I dare ya!

  (SECRET ASIDE TO THE READER; J. W. C., Jr., PLEASE DO NOT READ!)

  Ah, but wait! There is a villain in the piece!

  I did not lie to you, no. But you were lied to, all the same.

  By whom?

  By none less than that conniving arch-fiend, John W. Campbell, Jr., that's who!

  Wasn't it he who bought the story?

  And wasn't it he who, with malice aforethought, published it in a package which was plainly labeled Science Fiction?

  And, therefore, didn't you have every right to think it was science fiction?

  Sure you did!

  I am guilty of nothing more than weakness; my poor, frail sense of ethics collapsed completely at the sight of the bribe he offered me to become a party to the dark conspiracy that sprang from the depths of his own demoniac mind. Ah, well; none of us is perfect, I suppose.

  * * *

  Contents

  FIFTY PER CENT PROPHET

  By Randall Garrett

  That he was a phony Swami was beyond doubt. That he was a genuine prophet, though, seemed ... but then, what's the difference between a dictator and a true prophet? So was he....

  Dr. Joachim sat in the small room behind his reception hall and held his fingers poised above the keys of the rather creaky electrotyper on his desk. The hands seemed to hang there, long, slender, and pale, like two gulls frozen suddenly in their long swoop towards some precious tidbit floating on the writhing sea beneath, ready to begin their drop instantly, as soon as time began again.

  All of Dr. Joachim's body seemed to be held in that same stasis. Only his lips moved as he silently framed the next sentence in his mind.

  Physically, the good doctor could be called a big man: he was broad-shouldered and well-muscled, but, hidden as his body was beneath the folds
of his blue, monkish robe, only his shortness of stature was noticeable. He was only fifty-four, but the pale face, the full, flowing beard, and the long white hair topped by a small blue skullcap gave him an ageless look, as though centuries of time had flowed over him to leave behind only the marks of experience and wisdom.

  The timelessness of an idealized Methuselah as he approached his ninth centennial, the God-given wisdom engraved on the face of Moses as he came down from Sinai, the mystic power of mighty Merlin as he softly intoned a spell of albamancy, all these seemed to have been blended carefully together and infused into the man who sat behind the typer, composing sentences in his head.

  Those gull-hands swooped suddenly to the keyboard, and the aged machine clattered rapidly for nearly a minute before Dr. Joachim paused again to consider his next words.

  A bell tinkled softly.

  Dr. Joachim's brown eyes glanced quickly at the image on the black-and-white TV screen set in the wall. It was connected to the hidden camera in his front room, and showed a woman entering his front door. He sighed and rose from his seat, adjusting his blue robes carefully before he went to the door that led into the outer room.

  He'd rather hoped it was a client, but--

  "Hello, Susan, my dear," he said in a soft baritone, as he stepped through the door. "What seems to be the trouble?"

  It wasn't the same line that he'd have used with a client. You don't ask a mark questions; you tell him. To a mark, he'd have said: "Ah, you are troubled." It sounds much more authoritative and all-knowing.

  But Cherrie Tart--née Sue Kowalski--was one of the best strippers on the Boardwalk. Her winters were spent in Florida or Nevada or Puerto Rico, but in summer she always returned to King Frankie's Golden Surf, for the summer trade at Coney Island. She might be a big name in show business now, but she had never forgotten her carny background, and King Frankie, in spite of the ultra-ultra tone of the Golden Surf, still stuck to the old Minsky traditions.