The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Sure I want ‘em kept down,” Muller snapped. “We’d better, if we know what’s good for us. You’ve seen the wild ones—they’re a bunch of animals. Nothing they’d like better than to tear a man apart and eat the pieces.”

  “On the other hand,” Reese put in thoughtfully, “the ones here in the outpost are docile.”

  Muller disparaged the point with a wave of the hand. “They don’t count,” he claimed. “They’re way off the main track. It’s the ones on the mainland that count. If we let them get smart, there’ll be no stopping ‘em. They’ll hunt us down. We’ll be the animals! If we don’t stop ‘em, they’ll chase us right out of the universe. Right now, we can stop ‘em. Later on it’ll be too late. So we’d better get at it. Right now.”

  He really believed it, Reese realized wonderingly. He meant every word of it.

  “Sigurd, I don’t agree,” Reese said slowly. He hoped he sounded reasonable. “In the first place, we conducted some personality experiments on them about twenty years ago. We took the offspring of wild floppers and raised them with our tame ones. They developed none of the... the bloodthirsty traits of their parents. So I’m sure that this ... this viciousness we see in them is a characteristic forced on them by their environment.”

  “Yeah?” Muller scoffed. “But the smart ones aren’t growing up here in the dome. They’re growing up out there —on the mainland.”

  Reese nodded. “True,” he admitted. “But before they could be any danger to us, they would have to develop a civilization—a technology. And one of the characteristics of a technological civilization is the ability of its people to control their environment. By removing the causes of their viciousness, they would also remove the need for being vicious. Also, I believe they have shown this same viciousness toward each other—to the point of cannibalism. But recently, I understand, some of them have taken to hunting in groups. They have discovered the advantages of cooperation. Don’t you think this shows a trend away from ... from animal savageness? Don’t you, Sigurd?”

  “You want to take a chance on it?” Muller challenged.

  “Taking that chance is the only honorable thing we can do,” Reese told him firmly.

  “Huh!” Muller snorted. “And how do you think they’ll look at us, once they get smart, with us sitting here not doing a thing to help ‘em? They’ll hate us. They’ll hate us like hell!”

  Reese hesitated, then shook his head. “No, Sigurd,” he decided. “The transition will be a slow, very gradual process. It will be all right to start helping them long before they could become a danger to us. Also, if they do become as intelligent as you say, they will probably understand that they could not have evolved to intelligence if we had tried to help them.”

  Muller snorted disgustedly. “You’re doing a lot of supposing,” he said. “Suppose you’re wrong? It’s the whole future of the human race you’re talking about, you know. That’s ... that’s us!”

  Reese nodded. “I know,” he admitted placidly. “Whatever we do—whatever we decide—it will be thousands of years before the consequences come. I rather imagine we’ll have been forgotten. That puts a terrible responsibility on us. We must try to do what is right.”

  “And on that basis you refuse to help them?” Hitchcock demanded. “Mr. Reese, I have never heard such a preposterous—!”

  So all his arguments and efforts at persuasion had failed. Reese slumped in his chair, his arms on the rests. He wondered what to do. Muller’s careful half-truths—Hitchcock’s stubborn ignorance—together they were too much to fight. He could do nothing. He was helpless. Defeat and frustration wearied him, and he felt a sick pity for all the intelligent floppers who would now never be born.

  It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair.

  But he did not say it. Thinking it to himself, he realized how futile it was to speak of fairness to these men. And besides, by what right could he ask for fairness—an ideal— from the real world?

  Of course it wasn’t fair. Nothing was ever completely fair in the real world, because the real world conformed to the physical laws, not the rules of sportsmanship and fair play. It was a hard, bitter thought to accept, but Ben Reese accepted it. As a scientist, he had to accept it no matter how he felt about it.

  And in that recognition, he saw, was the key—the way he could protect the floppers from both these men.

  He turned to his phone again. “You will excuse me, won’t you?” he requested politely as he punched the number combination. His hand trembled.

  Before either Hitchcock or Muller could nod their assent, someone answered the phone. “Clinic,” he said.

  “Nick?” Reese guessed. “This is Ben. Could you send up a couple of your boys?”

  “Sure,” the one identified as Nick consented. “But what—?”

  “Never mind,” Reese said quickly. “Just send them.” He broke the connection.

  “What’s the matter?” Muller wanted to know. “You feel sick?”

  Reese ignored the question. “I’ve changed my mind, Sigurd,” he said. “You can stay here.”

  Muller backed up a step. “Well, now, I don’t know,” he said warily. He scratched his beard. “I’ve been here a long time—”

  “But, Sigurd,” Reese urged. “We’re going to need you here—at least for the next year. All the information you’ve held back—”

  “It’s in my files,” Muller said. “You’ll find it, if you want it bad enough.” He moved toward the door. “I’m going to pack.” In a moment, he was gone.

  Reese smiled a complacent smile. “There’ll be no room for him in the ship,” he confided to no one in particular. He leaned forward. “As for you, Mr. Hitchcock... sit down, please. There’s one thing more I want to say.”

  Hitchcock paused uncertainly, then resumed his chair. “Let it never be said,” he declared, “that I will not hear all arguments.”

  Reese nodded, pleased. Everything would be all right if he could keep Hitchcock in his office until the boys came from the clinic. “Mr. Hitchcock,” he said, “in a sense, I’m very glad you came.”

  Hitchcock scowled.

  “For one thing,” Reese went on, “it was you who ... who brought out the fact that the floppers are developing intelligence. If you hadn’t come, Sigurd might have concealed it for years. Of course, Sigurd was hoping you’d help him to ... to wipe out the intelligent ones, but that is beside the point.”

  “Mr. Reese,” Hitchcock said sternly. “You cannot convince me that black is white.”

  “Oh, of course,” Reese agreed willingly. “But there are hundreds of shades of gray. The other reason I’m glad you came...” He spoke earnestly. “You’ve forced me to reexamine what we’re doing here—to ... to question the rightness of our doing nothing about the conditions in which the floppers live. It’s not an easy thing to be sure of.”

  “So you admit it!” Hitchcock pounced triumphantly. “You admit—”

  Reese silenced him with a gesture. “No,” he said firmly, “I do not admit it. I have come to the same conclusions I have always held. But now—because of you—I know why it is right.”

  “Impossible,” Hitchcock objected. “It is not right.”

  Ben Reese was very patient with him. He could afford to be patient—it used up time, while the boys from the clinic were coming.

  “You’re a very moral man, Mr. Hitchcock,” he said. “I’d be the first to admit it. But—unfortunately—a high moral sense isn’t enough. You see, Nature isn’t moral—it doesn’t conform to our concepts of right and wrong, and it isn’t limited to conditions where the right and wrong of a matter are easy to decide. There are times when an act that seems morally right can lead to... to something horrible. You cannot say a thing is morally right or wrong until you’ve considered the context in which it happens. And that, Mr. Hitchcock, is where your moral sense fails you.”

  “I do not need a scientist to tell me the difference between right and wrong,” Hitchcock stated stubbornly.

 
; Reese nodded pleasantly. “I expected you’d say that,” he admitted. “But you’re wrong. Until you know the consequences of an act, you cannot tell whether or not it is moral. And there are times—such as now—when a layman such as yourself does not understand the forces involved. When that happens, you cannot predict the consequences of an act.. Therefore, you cannot decide whether it is right or wrong.”

  “You’re wrong!” Hitchcock insisted. “The end never justifies the means! Never!”

  Reese didn’t deny it. He said, reasonably, “On the other hand, there are times when no other test applies—when all the possible courses of action look equally bad. And even when you can do something which seems absolutely right, you still have to think of the consequences. If the consequences are bad, the act itself must be bad. Or suppose there is a... a morally imperative goal which you can achieve only by doing things which any moral code would condemn.”

  Hitchcock was incredulous. “Such a thing could not happen,” he objected.

  “I am talking,” Reese said firmly, “about now. About the situation here. That is the problem we have been dealing with here, ever since this outpost was built—whether to help them—give them comfort and security—and destroy for all time their hope of ever becoming more than animals —or whether we should let nature take its course—allow many to die, and many more to suffer, so that some day their descendants can stand before us as equals.”

  He shrugged expressively. “We can do only one thing. We must balance the wrong which we know we are doing against the goal we are morally obliged to support. We must go ahead and... and try not to let our consciences upset us too much.”

  “If you must rationalize a thing,” Hitchcock stated, “it’s wrong. Good does not come from evil!”

  Reese shrugged helplessly. “We must do what we think is right,” he said practically. “And if our judgments are different from someone else’s, we must follow our own. We—”

  He broke off as the door opened. Two Floppers came in, wheeling a stretcher. Each one had a big red cross dyed in the fur on its chest.

  Reese pointed at Hitchcock. “That man is sick.”

  The Floppers advanced, their resilient feet rustling softly on the floor. Hitchcock, taken aback by Reese’s abrupt statement, thumbed his chest. “Me?” he wondered incredulously.

  The floppers came up, one on each side of him. They grabbed his arms close to the shoulder. Hitchcock yipped with surprise, turned his head, and found the solicitous, repulsive face of a flopper only inches from his own.

  With a strangled, terrified cry, he lunged from the chair. The floppers kept him from falling headlong on the floor. Wild-eyed, he struggled to get loose from them, but they held on. He kicked at them desperately. They dragged him backwards. His feet flailed the air.

  “Make them let me go!” he begged. “Make these filthy monsters let me go!”

  Reese sat back and relaxed. He was sorry he had to do this to the man, but it did somehow give him a pleasant feeling.

  It wasn’t, after all, as if Hitchcock was a really good man,

  “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he apologized. “They’ve been taught to take a sick man to the clinic. I couldn’t stop them now if I wanted to.” He spread his hands helplessly. “As I’ve said before, they’re rather stupid.”

  One of the floppers moved behind Hitchcock and held both his arms. The other flopper took an ampule from the pouch on its harness. Hitchcock stared at the shiny needle with the fascination of sheer terror. “Don’t let him!” he screamed. “Don’t let him! It’s murder!”

  The flopper peeled Hitchcock’s sleeve up and stabbed the needle into the fleshy part of his arm. Hitchcock uttered a faltering cry, shuddered, and sagged.

  “Oh, it’s only a mild sedative,” Reese assured him cheerfully. “We wouldn’t dare trust them with anything stronger. But you shouldn’t have struggled so much.”

  Hitchcock hung laxly in the flopper’s arms. His eyes had a glassy look. The floppers wrapped a blanket tightly around him. His mouth moved as if he was trying to speak, but no Words came out.

  “The ship is going to leave without you,” Ben Reese said. “I’m sorry about that, because I don’t think I’m going to enjoy your company for the next year. We’ll tell them... I think we’ll tell them you’re sick. A... a local disease—one we don’t want to spread on other planets. There aren’t any diseases like that, of course, but that doesn’t matter.”

  He was very apologetic about the whole thing.

  Hitchcock was making apoplectic noises now. “Outrage! Criminal! I’ll have the law on you!” For a man of firm moral fiber, some of his comments were remarkably unprintable.

  Ben Reese shrugged. “I’m afraid there isn’t any law here,” he apologized. “We didn’t need any, till you came along. I ... I’m sorry we have to do this to you, but—well, we can’t let you go back to Earth. You’d agitate to have our charter revoked and... and then you’d organize this gigantic interstellar aid program, and destroy the floppers’ only hope of ever being anything more than animals. We... we just can’t let you do that.”

  By this time, Hitchcock was wrapped in the blanket like a mummy. Gently, the floppers lifted him and laid him in the cradlelike stretcher. “You won’t get away with this!” he threatened wrathfully.

  The floppers fumbled deftly with the straps, securing him. Their digitless hands were remarkably dexterous. All Hitchcock could move was his head and his mouth.

  “Oh, we’ll have to let you go next year, of course,” Reese admitted. He wasn’t disturbed by the thought. “But that is a whole year away. We’ll have plenty of time to prepare the public for you. If we give them the whole truth now, I rather doubt they’ll be much impressed with your partial truths later on. I’ll send instructions about that to our business office on Lambda. Just to announce that the floppers are beginning to evolve should be a good start, and—”

  He smiled. He felt wonderful. Perhaps treating Hitchcock this way was lousy and unethical, but even Hitchcock himself would have to admit that—when everything was considered—it was definitely a moral act.

  The floppers began to wheel Hitchcock out of the room. Hitchcock was raving.

  “You can’t do this to me!” he protested. “You can’t!”

  “Really?” Ben Reese wondered innocently. He knew it was cruel, but the temptation was too strong.

  “Really, Mr. Hitchcock,” he said, “I must have proof.”

  * * * *

  EPILOGUE

  Slowly, the procession marched past the bier of the Dead One, who was nameless because he was dead, and who had been their leader. Each one, as he came to the bier, crouched low in obeisance, then moved on. The shaman stood over the bier, his pelt stained green to signify that he personified the Dead One. He acknowledged each obeisance by raising his arms.

  Shokk-elorrisch stood beside the bier, and he also acknowledged the obeisances, for he was the new leader in the Dead One’s stead. Already, he held the tool-stone in his hand, and he chanted the four harsh syllables: “My eyes shall find the path for your feet; my hand shall feed you and my pelt shall warm you; I am all of you; I give you my self.”

  This he spoke to each one who made obeisance to him, and each one responded: “Show me the path!”

  The procession shuffled on, and formed ranks beyond the bier. And when the last one made his obeisance, the three eldest-born from the Dead One’s body came forward. They lifted the vine-woven sling which cradled the Dead One. Flanked by Shokk-elorrisch on one side and the shaman on the other—all of them chanting: “You are all of us; your eyes saw the path; your hand fed us; your pelt warmed our bodies. We are grateful; we honor you; we sanctify the memory of you; we give you back to yourself!”

  Chanting this, their tread matched to the chant, they advanced to the edge of the cliff. There they stopped, and the cadenced rhythm of their chant broke with the cry, “We cast you out!” and they hurled the Dead One into the foaming sea. And the sons of the Dead
One and the shaman turned to Shokk-elorrisch. They made obeisance to him, and they said: “Show us the path!”

  But Shokk-elorrisch did not answer, nor did he show them any sign that he heard. Standing at the cliff edge, the wind rippling his pelt and the waves crashing on rocks far below, he faced out to sea and made obeisance to the Olympians who lived on the round mountain, there on the island that rose from the horizon—the Olympians, who never had to migrate in search of new hunting ground, and who watched from the boulder that floated like a cloud in the wind—who watched but took no part in the things they witnessed.

  And he wondered, even as he made obeisance to them, why they kept themselves aloof, and what was the source of their powers, and whether his people, too, could achieve those powers—to become the equals of those strange and enigmatic beings.

  And he wondered, too, would they teach him? Would they teach him if he went to that mountain—out there in the ocean? Would they permit him to learn the secret of their powers?