Futures Past

by James White

  This one had some highly pertinent and testy remarks to make before he, too, left for home.

  Watching a greatly chastened Silverman and Mercer preparing the Hannibal for takeoff, Davies remembered a few of the alien's remarks and felt his face burning with shame. When he spoke he was simply thinking aloud rather than explaining what had happened to the two officers; they must have a good idea already.

  He said: "We were right in assuming that the communicator left by the aliens was meant to send a distress signal. But it was supposed to operate when a certain type of radiation reached its receptor—the radiation emitted by a suddenly unstable sun. It was an automatic fire alarm of a type placed in all inhabited solar systems—with or without the knowledge of the inhabitants—whose purpose was to summon help in the form of transports from all over the galaxy to evacuate the system threatened with destruction. In effect, we broke the glass and pulled the handle without realizing what we were doing...."

  Davies fell silent. In his mind's eye he was still seeing that vast array of ships. And the mental picture was mixed up somehow with a dream he had had as a child—and had shared with so many other children of his age at that time. Only now the ambition was not just for himself alone but for his whole race.

  Will we ever, he wondered, grow up and drive fire engines like that?

  DYNASTY OF ONE

  THE throne room was vast, the empty throne itself a golden speck glowing against the somber background drapes. Diminishing perspective made a blood red pyramid of the processional carpet, which seemed to stretch for miles. Tate thought that a moving way would have been easier on his suddenly shaky legs, but that would have been an offense against tradition. Thirty-seven times he'd gone though this, and a lot of traditions had grown in those four hundred odd years which he wanted to uphold. Especially as this time might be his last.

  He couldn't win forever.

  You're getting old, Tate told himself wryly as he stepped across the threshold, then everything else was driven from his mind as the fanfare crashed out and Harwood went into his eulogy. Tate felt his scalp begin to prickle in spite of himself; the court psychologist was good.

  "... Emperor of the Dominions of Myra; the Protectorates, Dependencies, and Mandated Territories of Fomulhaut, of Cregennsil, and of Dubh; Lord of the Magellanic Hosts ..."

  Stern and declamatory, the voice reached into the very bones. Subsonics were responsible for that effect, just as the subtle use of thought amplification put the non-humans in the audience chamber into a similar state of suggestion. As a result, the long and imposing catalogue of titles sounded neither flamboyant nor exaggerated, but a true and stirring account of his powers and achievements. According to Harwood, the starclouds of Andromeda were a saintly nimbus around his brow, and in his strong hands he held the life and destiny of every intelligent being in the Empire.

  The court psychologist's voice became sterner yet with the implication that those mighty hands could punish as well as protect, then it went on: ". . . Saviour of Helgach; Defender of . .."

  Helgach, Tate thought as he paced, outwardly calm and unafraid, between twin rows of beings who bowed low at his passing—or if physically incapable of that form of obeisance, twisted or twitched their respect in some other way. It had happened two hundred years ago, but he still felt guilty about Helgach. And he would feel much worse about it in a few minutes. It was a terrible thing to wipe out a race, to cut the teeming population of a planet down to a mere handful, but he had done just that.

  The population of Helgach had been close to four billion. One hundred thousand had survived, thanks to his direct, forceful, and blindly stupid handling of the situation. Now, as befitted the representative of his most fanatically loyal system, Helgach's ambassador occupied a coveted position barely four yards from the throne. Racial memory could be extremely short at times.

  The great voice filling the chamber began to quicken, and Tate was aware that he had almost reached the throne. He made the traditional pause to inquire of the Helgachian ambassador the number of that worthy's offspring, then he mounted the low dais and turned.

  ". . . The Just, the All-powerful, the All-knowing, His Celestial Majesty, Tate the First!"

  He sat down.

  Nobody moved, anywhere. This was no ordinary function, where he granted audiences or issued the decrees which could alter the destiny of whole stellar systems. This was the time when he had to prove his fitness to rule, or die. In utter silence he pressed one of the two studs set in the arm of his throne, and tried to relax as golden bands of beautifully worked metal closed around his limbs, chest, and head, holding him rigid.

  Craig, his Chief Adviser, moved quickly to face him; Craig the ascetic, the intellectual, and almost, the fanatic. The young man's mouth was a stern and silent line, his features carefully neutral, but he was trying to say so much with his eyes that Tate had to look away. Craig was also Heir Apparent.

  As he thought of the mass of electronic equipment hid- den by the drapery behind the throne, with its point of focus his rigidly held head, Tate felt vaguely uneasy. It was so sensitive, so delicate; so many things could go wrong. Just how badly did Craig want to be immortal. Could the other be so stupid as to think ... ?

  But no—Craig had trained hard for just the merest chance of attaining kingship, and must certainly know that there were no shortcuts. Disgusted with himself, Tate forced the suspicion out of his mind. That sort of thing invariably happened before a treatment. It was a mental stalling for time, and he would have to curb that failing or soon find himself backing out. Not too obtrusively, he pressed the second button on his chair arm. Immediately,, Craig turned.

  "The King," he said gravely, "is dead."

  Before he'd finished speaking, Tate was fighting for his life.

  When given before the age of forty and renewed every twenty years, the Immortality Treatment prevented the disease of senility and death from occurring in life based on the carbon series of compounds—which meant practically all forms of life. There were thousands of dogs, cats, and monkeys to prove that it worked. But in beings of higher intelligence—human or otherwise—it did not work at all, unless the being in question was mentally very, very tough.

  The radiation which stimulated the regenerative centers produced other effects as well, some of them good, others quite fatally bad. The treatment increased the I.Q., and gave to the mind a perfect, eidetic memory. It also, for the few seconds duration of the treatment, so intensified the effect of what had come to be called the "area of conscience" that any being having sufficient intelligence to base his actions on a moral code had to take three seconds of the most frightful psychological torture ever known. He had to live with the cruel, debased, and utterly nauseous creature that was himself.

  Many preferred to die rather than take three seconds of it. Most had no such choice—their life force was obliterated with the first, savage blast of self-knowledge.

  This secondary effect of the treatment was experienced as a complete reliving of the past, with each incident diamond-sharp in visual, auditory, and tactile sense recall. But not only that. The mind was given a terrifying insight into the end results of that being's most trivial-seeming actions. Unthinking words or gestures made over the years and forgotten, when blown up by the triple stimulus of perfect memory, increased I.Q., and a hypersensitive "conscience" became lethal as a suicide's bullets. The mind just could not take such an overwhelming blast of self-guilt, even for the three seconds, so it, and the body containing it, died.

  Only one person had successfully undergone the Immortality Treatment.

  Tate, though he had lived—with thirty-seven previous treatments—for seven hundred and sixty-eight years, still took only three seconds. And there was no blurring or telescoping of events. Each incident was complete, and though it occupied only microseconds of time, each bore its charge of guilt potential.

  Tate had been lucky in his early years. Working constantly with his father on the circum-Pluto biolog
ical lab, his life had been one bright, long dream of helping mankind toward its destiny—and he had somehow escaped doing too many of the things which he might have suffered for later. That shining altruism remained after his father had discovered and administered the first Immortality Treatment to him and his increased I.Q. enabled him to coordinate the development of the hyper-drive which gave man the stars. It was dulled considerably when his father and a large number of other eminent men died while undergoing the Treatment, but it grew quickly bright again.

  A solitary immortal man was in a peculiarly good position to make his dreams become reality.

  Seven Treatments and one hundred and forty-two years later, when the first wave of Earth colonists impinged on a non-human civilization, he was able to avert what looked like certain war. Ten years later the Earth was part of a Federation embracing five solar systems, and he was its chief adviser. When the Federation grew to eight, ten, then fifteen solar systems, he decided that something stronger than a president was needed to keep the unwieldy mass from falling apart. There were surprisingly few objections when he created himself Emperor, and the Federation his Empire.

  Then, in his four hundred and second year, had come Helgach.

  He had meant it to be a great and magnificent gesture —a miracle of cooperation and coordination that should bind the Empire even more tightly together. But the denizens of Helgach were subtly different from the octopoids inhabiting similar worlds within the Empire, and he should have realized that. But he'd had to act so fast...

  Tate relived that mad dash at the head of the greatest fleet of starships ever known to the Helgach system, the shock tactics which tore the natives from their homes and cities before they half-realized that anything was amiss, and he felt again the almost palpable hatred that struck him because there had been no time to explain. And he felt proud—justifiably, he thought—at thus getting the last of the Helgachians away before their suddenly unstable sun blew itself up. But his too-perfect memory was bringing back things which he should have noticed; small indications which could have averted the disaster to follow. If he hadn't been so busy patting himself on the back he might have suspected that the suspended animation tanks were not perfectly suited to their occupants, and he would not have arrived at New Helgach—after a trip half across the galaxy—with a fleet filled with decomposing corpses.

  Little over a hundred thousand Helgachians had survived to repopulate their new plant. It was, therefore, much more than politeness that made Mm inquire the number of the native ambassador's sons.

  Tate was sorry about Helgach, desperately sorry. But that did not ease the crushing sense of guilt he felt over it. And each time he went through a treatment, that killing pressure returned in full force. The murdered population of a world rose up and cried for his blood. In previous treatments he had barely held his agony-torn mind together, and his luck, he knew, couldn't last. One of these times—maybe this time—he would prove that he was only a mortal man after all.

  To live forever you had to fight for life. Tate had long-term plans and projects that he desperately wanted to see to completion. They, together with the other more or less good things he had already done, kept the ripped and tattered rag that was his mind in one piece. But he was getting tired of the struggle—tired, and terribly, achingly lonely. His constantly increasing I.Q. cut him off from all other beings, though he pretended that it didn't, and made it so frighteningly easy to be cruel through sheer thoughtlessness. And those thoughtless acts had to be paid for at the next Treatment, and with a shocking rate of interest.

  There were other things, but Helgach was the worst. Helgach was a white-hot spear that stabbed and gouged at his mind, then returned to stab again. In vain he writhed and screamed in mental agony for it to stop, that it hadn't been his fault and he had been acting for the best. It was always there. Four billion beings dead. Through negligence. His.

  Suddenly his thoughts seemed to dissolve and fly apart, then slowly and painlessly to collect themselves and trickle back into his brain. Tate opened his eyes.

  "The King is dead," his Chief Adviser was repeating; then triumphantly, "Long live the King!"

  Craig turned, beaming widely, but with concern and sympathy in his eyes. The crowd and the royal trumpeters were making it impossible for his voice to be heard; he mouthed, "You'll be told officially later. Two Helgachians have successfully undergone the Immortality Treatment!"

  Somehow Tate endured an hour of congratulations and renewed vows of loyalty, but his mind was far away. If two non-humans could become immortal, he told himself, then everyone could do it. He must live on now, because the news meant two things: he was no longer alone, and the dream he had had for centuries looked like it was coming about. He sighed and had to blink his eyes.

  The trappings of royalty and empire that were necessary to hold the variegated and often quarrelsome children of the galaxy together would soon become superfluous. The children were slowly growing up. One day their ethical standards would be so high that they would have nothing to fear from the Treatment, and the galaxy would at last be populated with truly civilized beings. Meanwhile, if Tate expected to see that day, he would have to live the life of a saint, and be very very careful not to do any of the petty little things which could so easily kill him during treatment. He had to live now.

  He came fully out of his daydream only as he was leaving the great audience chamber. The trumpeters—live on this occasion instead of being recorded—were having a wonderful time, and almost drowning out the din of whistling, chirping, and cheering from the beings in the room. Somewhere, someone began to chant. Quickly others took it up. It became thunderous, ground-shaking. The last great fanfare paled into insignificance.

  "Long live the King!"

  Tate, the Wise, Merciful, Just, and well-loved Father whose benevolent tyranny forced a galaxy to live together in peace, nodded once gravely in acknowledgment. "You bet," he swore silently to himself, "You bet I will."

  OUTRIDER

  IN a glide that was only a few degrees off level flight the ship slid into the tenuous upper reaches of the atmosphere. The thin, practically nonexistent air, made an almost solid thing by its tremendous speed of passage, tore at the gaping holes and ragged-edged projections in the once-streamlined hull, shaking the whole ship with a continuous, bone-jarring vibration. Rapidly the dull red glow of air friction grew along the leading edges of its gliding wings, on its blunted nose, and patchily about the torn and buckled plates that had once concealed the ship's radio, radar, and direct vision periscopic installations. Fearfully, like a great silver fish forced into exploring the depths of some strange and deadly ocean, it lowered itself cautiously into the Earth's atmosphere.

  It had to land, and quickly. But its fear and hesitancy was understandable—the ship was deaf, dumb, and blind...

  Gregg awoke with the dying echoes of one mighty gonglike note ringing in his ears, and to the sight of the ceiling rushing at him. The ceiling, after approaching to within six inches of his face, receded just as quickly, and the echo was abruptly drowned by sharp, urgent blasts of the multiple puncture signal. For an instant he lay too shocked to move, while the spring cables of his acceleration hammock—super efficient in the absence of gravity —flung him backwards and forwards across the compartment with a violence that made him sick and dizzy.

  This, he thought crazily, is what the business end of a yo-yo feels like. Then the meaning of the signal registered.

  Spacesuit!

  Frantically he unzipped himself from the madly-oscillating hammock and kicked free. He skidded off one wall and stopped—violently—against another. The compartment's entrance where the spacesuit hung seemed to be miles away.

  Five seconds later, as he was struggling with the top half of his suit and sweating because of the time it was taking, the alarm siren changed to the long-short-long pattern that meant No Immediate Danger. An indicator light above the door—placed there in case there should be no air to carry the s
ound of the hooter—flickered out the same information. Infinitely relieved, Gregg did the suiting-up operation with less haste, biting his lip several times at the pain shooting through his arm and shoulder.

  Good thing the ship wasn't losing air fast, Gregg thought, or he'd be a very dead duck by this time. When his hammock had catapulted him against the wall he'd taken a bad crack on the elbow. It had slowed him down at a time when every second might have counted.

  Only when he was encased in the suit and at least temporarily safe did he begin to wonder what exactly had happened to the ship. Gregg had an overwhelming urge to head for the control room and find out the worst direct from Captain Ferguson. But doing that, he knew, wouldn't be very bright. In an emergency like this, ship's personnel were required to remain at their posts and report conditions in their vicinity so that the captain could get the overall picture. If Gregg went barging into the control room now, asking questions and offering assistance when the duty officers were up to their ears checking damage reports, he'd no doubt be told where to go—his assistance and himself both. He'd better obey the rules.

  Carefully avoiding the still-vibrating hammock, Gregg kicked himself toward the intercom set on the wall. He plugged in his helmet lead and tried to keep his voice steady as he said: "This is Gregg, in Storage Compartment 2, to Control..."

  He stopped then, aware by the absence of crackle in his headphones that the set was dead.

  Gregg forced down the surge of panic which rose in him. A dead communications set, he told himself reassuringly, didn't necessarily mean that the control room was wrecked; the collision may merely have loosened an already faulty connection in the wiring somewhere, or some other simple explanation like that. . . . With an effort, Gregg made himself stop his wild and senseless speculations, and tried to take stock.

  He was traveling on the express passenger liner Wallaby enroute from Mars to Earth. But not for him was the main saloon with its tasteful decor, its soft music, and its almost-constant film shows. As a company employee traveling at a fraction of the fare paid by ordinary passengers, an acceleration hammock rigged in an empty storage compartment was good enough for him. He'd been left to the contemplation of the beautiful symmetry of a rivet-studded bulkhead, and to try, if the constant two and a half G's acceleration would allow him, to sleep."