Complete Venus Equilateral (1976) SSC

by George O. Smith

  They stood Towle up, rang and waited for a guard, and then saw the man off under the guard’s eye.

  And Don Channing said to Walt Franks: “Until we find a medium of exchange, there’ll be the devil to pay and no pitch hot.”

  Walt nodded. “I’m glad we’re out here with our little colony, instead of where lots and lots of people can come storming at the gates demanding that we do something. Hope Keg Johnson is holding his own at Fabriville.”

  -

  It was a growling mob that tramped across the desert toward Fabriville. A growling, quarreling mob, which fought in its own ranks and stole from its own men. A hungry, cold, and frightened mob, which followed a blustering man named Norton, who had promised them peace and plenty if they did his bidding. His law did not include sharing among themselves, and so men fought and stole food and clothing and women.

  Had the mob been anything but a shaggy, travel-weary band, Fabriville might have been wiped from the face of Mars.

  It swept forward without form and like an ocean wave, it laved against the cyclone fencing that surrounded that part of Fabriville, and was repulsed. A determined, well-fed band would have crushed the fencing, but this was a dispirited mob that would have sold its leader for a square meal and would have worked for the promise of a second meal in a row.

  Keg Johnson came to the edge of Fabriville in a medium-sized tank that could withstand the entire mob to the last man. He ran the tank out of the gate and right to the edge of the mob, which shrank back to permit the thundering monster to pass. He stopped the tank and stood up in the top turret and spoke.

  A built-in amplifier carried his voice to the edge of the mob.

  “Who is your leader?”

  Norton came forward boldly. “I am.”

  “What do you intend?”

  “We want a haven. We are cold and hungry and needy.”

  Johnson nodded. “I can see that,” he said dryly. “How did you collect this gang?”

  “Most of this outfit were caught in the crash. Their incomes did not permit them to buy duplicators, and their friends were too busy running up their money to hand any out.”

  “Fine friends.”

  “And in the smaller cities, the attendants at the power stations left. There are a horde of dead towns on Mars today. That’s why we have come here. We know that Fabriville is self-sufficient. We intend to join you.”

  “Sorry,” said Keg. “We have no openings.”

  “We’ll join you by force, if need be.”

  “Want to try it?” asked Keg, patting the twin 105-mm short rifles that looked out over the mob.

  No answer for a moment.

  “I’ll try appealing to your better nature,” said Norton softly. “Shall we starve and shiver while Fabriville eats and is warm?”

  “How willing are you to take part?” asked Keg.

  “Name it.”

  “Then listen. We need a more sturdy fence around Fabriville. We have the materials—who hasn’t?—but we haven’t the manpower. Get your mob to run up this fence, Norton, and I‘ll see that you are paid by giving each and every man a household-size duplicator complete with a set of household recordings. Is that a deal?”

  Norton smiled wryly. “And what good is a duplicator with no place to plug it in? The power stations are down all over Mars.”

  “In building this fence,” said Keg, “you are working out the value of the duplicators. Now look, Norton, in order to make this thing tick, I want to know whether you and your motley crew are honest. There are enough of you to man every vacant power station on Mars. If you, as leader of this gang, will see to it that the stations are manned and running every minute of the day, I’ll see that you are given the benefits of Fabriville’s more massive duplicators. That means fliers, and equipment of that size, Norton. Are you game?”

  “What are you getting out of this?” Norton asked suspiciously.

  “No more man you. I can eat only so much. I can wear only so much. I can use only so much. But it is my pleasure to run things, and I like to do it. Therefore, I shall run things until people decide that they want another man to run things. Until that date, Norton, you’ll answer to me.”

  “And if I do not kowtow?”

  “You don’t have to. No one is going to kill you for spitting in my eye. But if you have sense, you’ll see that working my way will ultimately bring you more reward than going on as an unruly mob. Replace me if you can, Norton, but remember that it cannot be done by force. I have too many real friends out across the face of Mars, who won’t let me be shot to pieces. I’ve done them the same service I’m doing you. Take it or leave it.”

  “Why can’t we remain?”

  “We have thirteen thousand people in Fabriville. To take on another ten thousand would complicate our work system to the breaking point. We’re running pretty close to chaos as it is, and we couldn’t take more. If you’ll set up the power stations and start small communities at those points, you’ll all be better off.”

  “And what do I get for all this?”

  “Nothing. You‘ll be fed and clothed and housed. That’s all that any of us are. Men out there are all the same, Norton. No one has a dime. They’re all bankrupt. There isn’t one of them that can buy a thing—even if the stores were open. But not one of them is starving, and not one of them is going unclothed, and not one of them is going without the luxuries of life, except for those communities of which you speak. Take life to them, Norton, and you’ll be the ultimate gainer.”

  “Why do they remain?” Norton wondered.

  “The duplicator will run on direct current,” said Keg. “They just have a set of fully charged batteries recorded. They have a set in spare. When battery one runs down, battery two takes its place, and the first thing run off is a spare battery number three, and so on. The exhausted batteries are dumped into the matter bank and reconverted. But it is not a real luxury, running on batteries. They need the high power that your stations will deliver. They need the telephone and the radio which your men can maintain. Go and seek the officials of the various companies, and tell them what you want to do. Work at it, Norton. There will be a lot of men in your gang that would rather do something else. Eventually you will be able to release them to do the jobs they’re best fitted for. Until we get a medium of exchange, it is a job proposition. I’ll add this inducement: the medical service of Fabriville is yours—providing that you and your men will work with us.”

  Norton thought for a moment. “Done,” he said shortly. “Can you give us warmth and food until we take care of the details?”

  “That we can.”

  A stilted monster ran out from Fabriville under its own power. Four great girdered legs supported a housing the size of a freight car, and the legs moved on small tractor threads. Out it came, and it paused just outside the gate. A faint violet glow emerged from the bottom of the housing, and the whirling-skirling of Martian sands obscured the vastness of the space between the legs of the monster machine.

  It moved again, and the original dust settled to disclose a very small but completely finished and furnished house. Around the encircling fence went the monstrous duplicator, and at each stop it dropped the carbon copy of the original house. Hour after hour it hummed, and when it completed the circle, Norton’s mob was housed, fed, and clothed.

  And Norton knew that the “fence-building” job was but a test for if the thing could build a house—

  -

  Venus Equilateral resounded and re-echoed from the force of the blast. It rocked, and precession tilted it away from its true north and south axial positioning.

  Men raced along the car-way to the blister laboratory and Channing led the wild rush.

  The blister was gone. A shaken Wes Farrell clung to a stanchion, his face white behind the spacesuit mask. They fished him out of the wreckage and took him inside.

  “What happened?” asked Don.

  “Was making artificial elements,” Wes explained. “Far outside of the Peri
odic Chart. I’d been stacking them over in a corner—they come in six-inch cubes, you know. But the last one—Bang!”

  Channing shook his head. “That’s dangerous,” he said solemnly. “If you had a six-inch cube of every known element, would you stack ‘em all side by side?”

  “It might be all right—until you came to putting phosphorus on top of a hunk of iodin,” said Walt.

  “There’s no reason to suppose that Wes didn’t get a couple of very active elements side by each. We know nothing of the extra-charted elements. We can make ‘em, but until we do, what can we know about them?”

  “Well, we didn’t lose the station,” said Walt. “And business is so punk that tossing the beams won’t harm us much; we’ll have to spend some time aligning the place again.”

  “We’re all here, anyway,” agreed Don, looking over the ruined blister laboratory. “But look, Wes, I think you’re running on the wrong gear. Anything that can be made with this gadget can be duplicated. Right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “What we need is a substance that will be stabilized under some sort of electronic pressure. Then it might come unglued when the matter-dingbat beam hit it. Follow?”

  Wes Farrell thought for a few seconds. “We might make an electronic alloy,” he said.

  “A what?”

  “A substance that is overbalanced as goes electrons. They will be inserted by concocting the stuff under extremely high electron pressure. Make it on some sort of station that has an intrinsic charge of ten-to-the-fiftieth electron volts or so; that’ll make queer alloys, I’ll bet. Then it can be stabilized by inter-alloying something with a dearth of electrons. The two metals will be miscible, say, when liquid, and so their electron balance will come out even. They are cooled under this stress, and so forth. When the disintegrator beam hits them, it will liberate the electrons and the whole thing will go plooey.”

  “Looks like a matter of finding the right stuff,” said Walt. “Don, what about running the station charge up, as Wes says?”

  “No dice. The station is too big. Besides, the charge-changing gear would be overworked all over the station to maintain the charge, once made.”

  “Take the Relay Girl out and try it, Wes.”

  “Come along?”

  “We don’t mind if we do,” grinned Walt, winking at Don. “There’ll be nothing didding about business until we get a medium of exchange.”

  -

  The Reverend Thomas Doylen speared Keg Johnson with a fishy glance and thundered: “ ‘A plague on both your houses!’ “

  Johnson grinned unmercifully. “You didn’t get that one out of the Bible,” he said.

  “But it is nonetheless true,” came the booming reply.

  “So what? Mind telling me what I’m doomed to eternal damnation for?”

  “Sacrilege and blasphemy,” exploded Doylen. “I came to plead with you. I wanted to bring you into the fold—to show you the error of your sinful way. And what do I find? I find, guarding the city, a massive facade of mother-of-pearl and platinum. Solid-gold bars on gates which swing wide at the approach. A bearded man in a white cloak recording those who enter. Once inside—”

  “You find a broad street paved with gold. Diamonds in profusion stud the street for traction, since gold is somewhat slippery as a pavement. The sidewalks are pure silver and the street stoplights are composed of green emeralds, red rubies, and amber topaz. They got sort of practical at that point, Reverend. Oh, I also see that you have taken your sample.”

  Doylen looked down at the brick. It was the size of a housebrick—but of pure gold. Stamped in the top surface were the words:

  -

  99.99% PURE GOLD.

  A SOUVENIR OF FABRIVILLE.

  -

  “What means all this?” stormed the Reverend, waving the brick.

  “My very good friend, it is intended to prove only one thing. Nothing—absolutely nothing—is worth anything. The psychological impact of the pearly gate and the street of gold tends to strike home the fact that here in Fabriville nothing of material substance is of value. Service, which cannot be duplicated, is the medium of exchange in Fabriville. Have you anything to offer, Reverend?”

  “The Lord saith: ‘Six days shall thou labor—’ You have destroyed the law, Johnson.”

  “That’s no law. That’s an admonition not to overdo your labor. He didn’t want us laboring seven days per. If He were running things under the present setup, He’d be tickled pink to see people taking it easy five days per week, believe me.”

  “Sacrilege!”

  “Is it? Am I being sacrilegious to believe that He has a sense of humor and a load more common sense than you and I?”

  “To speak familiarly—”

  “If I’ve offended Him, let Him strike me where I stand,” smiled Keg.

  “He is far too busy to hear the voice of an agnostic.”

  “Then He is far too busy to have heard that I mentioned Him in familiar terms. What is your point, Reverend? What do you want?”

  “A return to religion.”

  “Good. Start it.”

  “People will not come to church. They are too busy satiating themselves with the worldly goods and luxuries.”

  “Your particular private sect, like a lot of others,” said Keg Johnson harshly, “has been catering to the wishful thinking of the have-nots. That used to be all right, I suppose. You gave them hope that in the next life they could live in peace, quiet, and also in luxury, believe it or not. You call down the troubles of Hell upon the shoulders of the ambitious, and squall that it is impossible for a rich man to get ahead in Heaven. Nuts, Reverend. You’ve been getting your flock from people who have no chance to have the pleasure of fine homes and good friends. You’ve been promising them streets of gold, pearly gates, and the sound of angelic music. Fine. Now we have a condition where people can have those—worldly goods—right here on earth and without waiting for death to take them there. If you want to start a Return to Church movement, Reverend, you might start it by making your particular outfit one of the first to eschew all this palaver about streets of gold. Start being a spiritual organization, try to uplift the poor in spirit, instead of telling them that they will be blessed because of it. Don’t ever hope to keep your position by telling people that material made with a duplicator is a product of Hell, Devil & Co., because they won’t believe it in the first place and there won’t be anything manufactured by any other means in the second place.”

  “And yet you have all of Mars under your thumb,” scolded the Reverend Thomas Doylen. “Of what value is it to ‘gain the whole world and lose your soul’?”

  “My soul isn’t in bad shape,” responded Keg cheerfully. “I think I may have done as much toward lifting civilization out of the mire as you have.”

  “Sacril—”

  “Careful, Reverend. It is you that I am criticizing now, not God. Just remember this: people are not going to fall for a bit of salving talk when they want nothing. You promise them anything you like in the way of fancy embroidery, but they’ll have it at home now instead of getting it in Heaven. Give ‘em something to hope for in the way of greater intelligence, or finer personality, or better friends, and they’ll eat it up.

  “As far as having all of Mars under my thumb, someone had to straighten out this mess. I gave them the only thing I had worth giving. I gave them the product of my ability to organize; to operate under any conditions; and to serve them as I can. I’m no better off than I would have been to sit at home and watch the rest run wild.

  The Reverend flushed. “They wouldn’t listen to my pleas that they forsake this Devil’s invention.”

  “Naturally not. Work with this thing and you’ll come out all right. But you’ve got to revise your thinking, as well as the rest of the world has had to revise theirs, or you’ll fall by the wayside. Now good day, Reverend, and I wish you luck,”

  “Your argument may have merit,” said the Reverend, “though it is against the n
ature of things to fall in with any scheme without considerable thought.”

  “Think it over, then, and see if I’m not correct. I don’t expect any immediate change, though, until you find that your former doctrines do not fit the people’s wants now.”

  The Reverend left, and as the door closed a wave of pain swept through Keg Johnson’s body. He reached for the telephone painfully and put a call through for the doctor.

  “It’s here again,” he said.

  “O.K., Keg. You’re it.”

  “I’m licked, all right. Can I be back in seven days?”

  “Make it three days with no mention of work. In five days you can have official visitors for three hours. In seven you may be up and around the hospital. You’ll not be back there for eleven days.”

  “I’ll have to put it off.”

  “Put it off another day and you‘ll not be back at all,” snapped Dr. Hansen. “Take it or leave it!”

  “How do I pay?”

  “We’ll take it out of your hide,” said Hansen. “You’re under the same rules as the rest of us. You do your day’s work, and you receive the same medical blessing. Do you want to hoe the garden, or will you wash my car?”

  “I’ll wash the car.”

  “That’s what you say. Get over here in an hour—and bring Linna with you.”

  “What for?”

  “Someone’s got to drive—and it shouldn’t be you.”

  “That an order?”

  “Nothing else but. Official order from the Medical Council. You’ll play, or else we’ll have an intern take out that appendix.”

  Keg realized the sageness of the doctor’s order by the time he reached the hospital. He was doubled over with agony and they did not permit him to walk from the car to the front door, but came out and got him on a stretcher. He was whisked inside, leaving Linna to straighten out the details at the incoming desk.

  He went up to the operating room immediately, and the anaesthetic blacked him out from both pain and consciousness.

  -