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

by Various

  Eyeing the opulent nudes, she giggled and said, "Don't they look awfully--plain? I mean, women with only two breasts!"

  "Well--yes," he said. "If you want to take that angle."

  "Idiot!" she said. "Honestly, darling, you're the strangest sort of man to be a World Chancellor."

  "These are strange times," he told her, smiling without mirth, though with genuine affection.

  "Suppose--just suppose," she said, turning the pages slowly, "biology should be successful in stabilizing the species again. Would they have to set it back that far? I mean, either we or they would feel awfully out of style."

  "What would you suggest?" he asked her solemnly.

  "Don't be nasty," she said loftily. Then she giggled again and ruffled his hair. "I wish you'd have it dyed one color," she told him. "Either black or gray--or why not a bright puce?"

  "What's for dinner?" he asked, adding, "If I can still eat after that."

  * * * * *

  The regional vice-chancellors were awaiting him in the next-to-the-innermost office when Bliss arrived at World Capital the next morning. Australia, Antarctica, Patagonia, Gobi, Sahara-Arabia--they followed him inside like so many penguins in the black-and-white official robes. All were deathly serious as they stated their problems.

  Gobi wanted annual rainfall cut from 60 to 45 centimeters.

  Sahara-Arabia was not receiving satisfactory food synthetics--there had been Moslem riots because of pork flavor in the meat.

  Patagonia was suffering through a species of sport-worm that was threatening to turn it into a desert if biology didn't come up with a remedy fast.

  Antarctica wanted temperature lowered from a nighttime norm of 62° Fahrenheit to 57.6°. It seemed that the ice in the skating rinks, which were the chief source of exercise and entertainment for the populace, got mushy after ten p.m.

  Australia wanted the heavy uranium deposits under the Great Central Desert neutralized against its causing further mutations.

  For a moment, Bliss was tempted to remind his viceroys that it was not going to make one bit of difference whether they made their spoiled citizens happy or not. The last man on Earth would be dead within fifty years or so, anyway. But that would have been an unpardonable breach of taste. Everyone knew, of course, but it was never mentioned. To state the truth was to deny hope. And without hope, there was no life.

  Bliss promised to see that these matters were tended to at once, taking each in turn. This done, they discussed his making another whirlwind trip through the remaining major dominions of the planet to bolster morale. He was relieved when at last, the amenities concluded, the penguins filed solemnly out. He didn't know which he found more unattractive--Gobi's atrophied third leg, strapped tightly to the inside of his left thigh and calf, or Australia's jackass ears. Then, sternly, he reminded himself that it was not their fault they weren't as lucky as himself.

  Myra came in, her three eyes aglow, and said, "Boss, you were wrong for once in your life."

  "What is it this time?" he asked.

  "About that Martian ship," she repeated. "It just landed on the old spaceport. You can see it from the window."

  "For God's sake!" Bliss was on his feet, moving swiftly to the window. It was there--needle-nosed, slim as one of the mermaids in his private washroom, graceful as a vidar dancer. The entire length of it gleamed like silver in the sunlight.

  Bliss felt the premature old age that had been crowding upon him of late fall away like the wool of a sheep at shearing. Here, at last, was hope--real hope. After almost two and a half centuries of non-communication, the men of the infant planet had returned to the aid of the aging planet. For, once they saw the condition of Earth, and understood it, there could be no question of anything else.

  Mars, during the years of space-flight from Earth, had been the outlet for the mother planet's ablest, toughest, brightest, most aggressive young men and women. They had gone out to lick a hostile environment, they had been hand-picked for the job--and they had done it. The ship, out there in the poisonous Sahara, was living proof of their success.

  He turned from the window and went back to his desk. He said, "Myra, have their leader brought here to see me as soon as possible."

  "Roger!" she said, leaving him swiftly, gracefully. Again he thought it was too bad about her third eye. It had made it awfully hard for her to find a husband. He supposed he should be grateful, since it had made him an incomparably efficient secretary.

  The young man was space-burned and silver-blond of hair. He was broad and fair of feature and his body was tall and lean and perfect in his black, skin-tight uniform with the silver rocket-burst on the left breast. He stood at attention, lifted a gauntleted hand in salute and said, "Your excellency, Chancellor Bliss--Space-Captain Hon Yaelstrom of Syrtis City, Mars, bearing official rank of Inter-planetary legate plenipotentiary. My papers, sir."

  He stood stiff as a ramrod and laid a set of imposing-looking documents on the vast desk before Bliss. His accent was stiff as his spinal column. Bliss glanced casually at the papers, nodded and handed them back. So this, he thought, was how a "normal," a pre-atomic, a non-mutated human, looked. Impressive.

  Catching himself wandering, he pushed a box of costly smokes toward the ambassador.

  "Nein--no thank you, sir," was the reply.

  "Suppose you sit down and tell me what we can do for you," said Bliss, motioning toward a chair.

  "Thank you, sir, I prefer to stand," was the reply. And, when Bliss motioned that it was all right, "My mission is not a happy one, excellency. Due to overpopulation on Mars, I have been sent to inform the government of Earth that room must be made to take care of our overpopulation."

  "I see," Bliss leaned back in his chair, trying to read the situation correctly. "That may take a little doing. You see, we aren't exactly awash with real estate here."

  The reply was rigid and harsh. Captain Yaelstrom said, "I regret to remind your excellency that I have circled this planet before landing. It is incredibly rich in plant growth, incredibly underpopulated. And I assure your excellency that my superiors have not sent me here with any idle request. Mars must have room to emigrate."

  "And if we find ourselves unable to give it to you?"

  "I fear we shall have to take it, your excellency."

  Bliss studied the visitor from space, then said, "This is rather sudden, you know. I fear it will take time. You must have prospered amazingly on Mars to have overpopulated the planet so soon."

  "Conditions have not been wholly favorable," was the cryptic reply. "But as to time, we are scarcely in condition to move our surplus population overnight. It will take years--perhaps decades--twenty-five years at a minimum."

  Twenty-five years! That was too soon. If Captain Yaelstrom were a typical Martian, there was going to be trouble. Bliss recalled again that Earth had sent only its most aggressive young folk out to the red planet. He made up his mind then and there that he was somehow going to salvage for Earth its final half-century of peace.

  He said, "How many people do you plan to send here, Captain?"

  The ambassador hesitated. Then he said, "According to the computations of our experts, taking the population curve during the next twenty-five years into account, there will be seventeen million, three hundred thirty-two thousand five hundred--approximately."

  The figure was too large to be surplus, Bliss decided. It sounded to him as if humanity were about to abandon Mars completely. He wondered what the devil had gone wrong, decided this was hardly the time to ask. He offered Captain Yaelstrom a drink, which was refused, then asked him if he wouldn't like to wash up.

  To his mild surprise, the ambassador nodded eagerly. "I shall be grateful," he said. "You have no idea how cramped spaceship quarters can be."

  "I can imagine," said Bliss dryly. He led the way into the black-and-gold washroom, was amused at the slight but definite popping of ambassadorial eyes. Earth might be dying, he thought, but at least her destroyers would leave a heritage. He
motioned toward the basin with its mermaid taps and Captain Yaelstrom hesitated, then began pulling off his black gauntlets.

  Bliss thought of something. "You mentioned twenty-five years," he said. "Is that Martian time or Earth time?"

  "Martian time," said the ambassador, letting the water run over his hands.

  Twenty-five years, Martian time--a Martian year was 1.88 Earth years. Bliss exhaled and said, "I think perhaps we shall be able to come to an agreement. It will take a little time, of course--channels, and all that."

  The Martian held his hands in front of the air-drier. They were strong, brown hands with long, muscular fingers. Bliss looked at them and knew the whole story. For, like himself, Captain Yaelstrom had seven fingers on each. Man had done no better on Mars than he had at home. The reason for such a desperate move as emigration was all too clear.

  Captain Yaelstrom stood back from the bowl, then noticed the stall shower. He said, "What is this? We have nothing like it on Mars."

  Bliss explained its several therapeutic uses, then said, "Perhaps you'd like to try it yourself while I order us luncheon."

  "May I, excellency?" the Martian legate asked eagerly.

  "Go right ahead," said Bliss magnanimously. "It's all yours."

  * * *

  Contents

  THE AMBASSADOR

  By Sam Merwin, Jr.

  All Earth needed was a good stiff dose of common sense, but its rulers preferred to depend on the highly fallible computers instead. As a consequence, interplanetary diplomatic relations were somewhat strained--until a nimble-witted young man from Mars came up with the answer to the "sixty-four dollar" question.

  Zalen Lindsay stood on the rostrum in the huge new United Worlds auditorium on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain and looked out at an ocean of eye-glasses. Individually they ranged in hue from the rose-tinted spectacles of the Americans to the dark brown of the Soviet bloc. Their shapes and adornments were legion: round, harlequin, diamond, rhomboid, octagonal, square, oval; rimless, gem-studded, horn-rimmed, floral-rimmed, rimmed in the cases of some of the lady representatives with immense artificial eyelashes.

  The total effect, to Lindsay, was of looking at an immense page of printed matter composed entirely of punctuation marks. Unspectacled, he felt like a man from Mars. He was a man from Mars--first Martian Ambassador Plenipotentiary to the Second United Worlds Congress.

  He wished he could see some of the eyes behind the protective goggles, for he knew he was making them blink.

  He glanced down at the teleprompter in front of him--purely to add effect to a pause, for he had memorized his speech and was delivering it without notes. On it was printed: HEY, BOSS--DON'T FORGET YOU GOT A DINNER DATE WITH THE SEC-GEN TONIGHT.

  Lindsay suppressed a smile and said, "In conclusion, I am qualified by the governors of Mars to promise that if we receive another shipment of British hunting boots we shall destroy them immediately upon unloading--and refuse categorically to ship further beryllium to Earth.

  "On Mars we raise animals for food, not for sport--we consider human beings as the only fit athletic competition for other humans--and we see small purpose in expending our resources mining beryllium or other metals for payment that is worse than worthless. In short, we will not be a dumping ground for Earth's surplus goods. I thank you."

  The faint echo of his words came back to him as he stepped down from the rostrum and walked slowly to his solitary seat in the otherwise empty section allotted to representatives of alien planets. Otherwise there was no sound in the huge assemblage.

  He felt a tremendous lift of tension, the joyousness of a man who has satisfied a lifelong yearning to toss a brick through a plate-glass window and knows he will be arrested for it and doesn't care.

  There was going to be hell to pay--and Lindsay was honestly looking forward to it. While Secretary General Carlo Bergozza, his dark-green spectacles resembling parenthesis marks on either side of his thin eagle beak, went through the motions of adjourning the Congress for forty-eight hours, Lindsay considered his mission and its purpose.

  Earth--a planet whose age-old feuds had been largely vitiated by the increasing rule of computer-judgment--and Mars, the one settled alien planet on which no computer had ever been built, were drifting dangerously apart.

  It was, Lindsay thought with a trace of grimness, the same ancient story of the mother country and her overseas colonies, the same basic and seemingly inevitable trend, social and economic, that had led to the revolt of North America against England, three hundred years earlier.

  On a far vaster and costlier scale, of course.

  Lindsay had been sent to Earth, as his planet's first representative at the new United Worlds Congress, to see that this trend was halted before it led to irrevocable division. And not by allowing Mars to become a mere feeder and dumping ground for the parent planet.

  Well, he had tossed a monkey wrench into the machinery of interplanetary sweetness and light, he thought. Making his way slowly out with the rest of the Congress, he felt like the proverbial bull in the china shop. The others, eyeing him inscrutably through their eye-glasses and over their harness humps, drew aside to let him walk through.

  But all around him, in countless national tongues, he heard the whispers, the mutterings--"sending a gladiator" ... "looks like a vidar star" ... "too young for such grave responsibility" ... "no understanding of the basic sensitivities"....

  Obviously, he had not won a crushing vote of confidence.

  * * * * *

  To hell with them, all of them, he thought as someone tapped him on a shoulder. He turned to find du Fresne, the North American Minister of Computation, peering up at him through spectacles that resembled twin scoops of strawberry ice-cream mounted in heavy white-metal rims.

  "I'd like a word with you," he said, speaking English rather than Esperanto. Lindsay nodded politely, thinking that du Fresne looked rather like a Daumier judge with his fashionable humped back and long official robe of office.

  Over a table in the twilight bar du Fresne leaned toward him, nearly upsetting his colafizz with a sleeve of his robe.

  "M-mind you," he said, "this is strictly unofficial, Lindsay, but I have your interests at heart. You're following trend X."

  "Got me all nicely plotted out on your machine?" said Lindsay.

  Du Fresne's sallow face went white at this pleasantry. As Minister of Computation his entire being was wrapped up in the immensely intricate calculators that forecast all decisions for the huge North American republic. Obviously battling anger, he said, "Don't laugh at Elsac, Lindsay. It has never been wrong--it can't be wrong."

  "I'm not laughing," said Lindsay quietly. "But no one has ever fed me to a computer. So how can you know...?"

  "We have fed it every possible combination of circumstances based upon all the facts of Terro-Martian interhistory," the Minister of Computation stated firmly. His nose wrinkled and seemed to turn visibly pink at the nostril-edges. He said, "Damn! I'm allergic to computer-ridicule." He reached for an evapochief, blew his nose.

  "Sorry," said Lindsay, feeling the mild amazement that seemed to accompany all his dealings with Earthfolk. "I wasn't--"

  "I doe you weren'd," du Fresne said thickly. "Bud de vurry zuggedgeshun of ridicule dudz id." He removed his strawberry spectacles, produced an eye-cup, removed and dried the contact lenses beneath. After he had replaced them his condition seemed improved.

  Lindsay offered him a cigarette, which was refused, and selected one for himself. He said, "What happens if I pursue trend X?"

  "You'll be assassinated," du Fresne told him nervously. "And the results of such assassination will be disastrous for both planets. Earth will have to go to war."

  "Then why not ship us goods we can use?" Lindsay asked quietly.

  Du Fresne looked at him as despairingly as his glasses would permit. He said, "You just don't understand. Why didn't your people send someone better attuned to our problems?"

  "Perhaps because they felt Mars
would be better represented by someone attuned to its own problems," Lindsay told him. "Don't tell me your precious computers recommend murder and war."

  "They don't recommend anything," said du Fresne. "They merely advise what will happen under given sets of conditions."

  "Perhaps if you used sensible judgment instead of machines to make your decisions you could prevent my assassination," said Lindsay, finishing his scotch on the rocks. "Who knows?" he added. "You might even be able to prevent an interplanetary war!"

  When he left, du Fresne's nose was again growing red and the Minister of Computation was fumbling for another evapochief.

  * * * * *

  Riding the escaramp to his office on the one-twentieth floor of the UW building, Lindsay pondered the strange people of the mother planet among whom his assignment was causing him to live. One inch over six feet, he was not outstandingly tall--but he felt tall among them, with their slump harnesses and disfiguring spectacles and the women so hidden beneath their shapeless coveralls and harmopan makeup.

  He was not unprepared for the appearance of Earthfolk, of course, but he had not yet adjusted to seeing them constantly around him in such large numbers. To him their deliberate distortion was as shocking as, he supposed wryly, his own unaltered naturalness was to them.

  There was still something illogical about the cult of everyday ugliness that had overtaken the mother planet in the last two generations, under the guise of social harmony. It dated back, of course, to the great Dr. Ludmilla Hartwig, psychiatric synthesizer of the final decades of the twentieth century.