“Yes, they’re strong enough,” Manning said.
“Damn,” the colonel said explosively. He paced the floor, a choleric red stain spreading upward from his throat. “That’s just like our doubledamned top echelon,” he said savagely. “It’s always the same, I tell you, Manning. They plan and decide and act wise as owls, so far above us they don’t even see us, but when the trouble comes—where are they? Damn It, where are they?”
Captain Manning shrugged. “They’re probably dead,” he said.
The colonel looked at him and then turned away, clenching and unclenching his fists. “I don’t understand you. I never have. I have never understood you younger men. You say a thing like that as you’d ask for a glass of water. You don’t care one way or the other, do you?” He wheeled suddenly, a beseeching, frightened look on his face. “It’s unnatural. None of you care.”
Captain Manning said quietly, “Well, there’s nothing much we can do anyway.”
“I suppose you’re right,” the colonel said dully. He turned away with a helpless shrug. “I—I’m going back to my room for a while.”
ALONE, Captain Manning checked the instruments again and then sat down and stretched his legs out comfortably. He found himself feeling sorry for the colonel. What had the old boy said? Unnatural. That was it.
Captain Manning smiled. He thought of a girl he had known in a math class when he was seventeen. Now, after nineteen grey and uneventful years, he could still remember her soft hair and slender, patient hands. Nothing had come of their brief friendship. He had gone off to communications school and hadn’t heard from her again. It hadn’t been too difficult. The ODC—Office of Diet Control—was by then treating all food with a sex repressive. Untreated food was available under prescribed circumstances, and there was, of course, a lively black market in it at all times. But most of the people didn’t need it, and didn’t want it in fact, for the pressures it released were more trouble than they were worth. Captain Manning wondered what had become of the girl. Nancy, her name was.
Human nature didn’t change, Captain Manning knew, because it didn’t exist. What man became was the result of capricious circumstance.
He checked the equipment again, studying sector N’s dark panel in particular. It still didn’t seem possible that N was gone. What all-destructive weapon had the enemy discovered? And how had his side overlooked it?
A weak cry from the corridor made him start. He hurried out and found Colonel Hewitt slumped on the floor clutching his breast with both hands.
“Heart,” he gasped. “Medicine . . .”
Captain Manning ran down the corridor to the colonel’s room, grabbed a bottle of tablets and a glass of water from the bedside table, and then hurried back to where the old man lay moaning.
He got a tablet into his mouth and forced water in after it. The colonel choked once and Captain Manning thought he was done for. But the stimulant caught hold in time. The breathing came easier.
“I’ll help you to your room,” Captain Manning said.
Later, Manning returned to the communications room. He didn’t think the old man would last long. He was comfortable but nothing else could be done for him. Automatically, he checked the instruments and message panels. K, L, Y, and N were still out. M’s signal was flashing methodically.
Captain Manning stared at it for a few seconds, frowning. Why, if the enemy were victorious, hadn’t he knocked out M? The enemy couldn’t ignore M. That would be against the law, the law of total war, which meant total destruction.
He walked over to the short-wave set and put a tentative hand on one switch. The idea of sending a signal to the enemy was curiously exciting. He smiled for a few seconds for no particular reason, and then flipped the switch that put it in action.
The enemy would get the signal instantly and locate the section almost as quickly. But Captain Manning didn’t care.
He put a headset on and sat down before the radio. In a clear voice he gave his position, call letters and identification. Then he said, “Come in, please. Standing by.”
THE ROOM was quiet and still.
Captain Manning sat motionless, waiting for the enemy’s answer. But no answer came. He repeated the message three times and then, frowning, removed the headset and got to his feet. For a few moments he paced the floor indecisively. Into all sectors of the earth and to all stations on land, sea or in the sky, the messages from the panels and radio were being sent; and there was no answer. The world was still as death. Only M, the robot, was responding.
Suddenly, Manning turned and hurried into the adjoining room. Facing the director screen he wondered why this hadn’t occurred to him immediately. He set the gauges, and snapped on the switch, and then raised his eyes as the indicator needle began a slow sweep of the screen.
There was no response from N. None from Y, L, or K. Fascinated, he watched the needle enter the enemy quadrant, and when he glanced at the gauges he felt a definite physical shock. There was no response from the enemy regions.
Everyone must be dead. The more he thought about it the more plausible it seemed. Probably N had launched a gigantic counter-attack in its own death throes, or maybe the two antagonists had simultaneously discovered the ultimate in destructive agents, and simultaneously unleashed it on each other.
Manning turned off the detector. The idea that the war was over, that everyone was dead struck him as preposterous. And slightly amusing.
Later, he looked in mi the colonel and found the old man resting quietly.
“Nothing is happening,” he said. He didn’t want to disturb him with what he’d learned.
“It’s all over,” the colonel said wearily. “If they aren’t answering, it’s because there’s no one alive to answer. They’re all dead.”
Manning didn’t answer.
The colonel was silent for several moments and then he began to speak of his wife in a calm, lucid manner. He talked of how well she looked in blue frocks, and how well she drove a car, and how their home seemed to brighten up when she came in. Manning, bending low over the old man, saw that his eyes were blank and unseeing. Two hours later the colonel went into a coma and died without regaining consciousness.
Manning injected preservative fluid into the body at several points and then went out and closed the door behind him. He felt no regret at the colonel’s death, but only a slight relief that the old man had gone without knowing the final pointlessness of the war to which he had given his life.
Now, Manning thought with a faint smile, he was the last man on earth. He walked back to the communications center feeling that it was a pointless distinction.
FOR TWO DAYS he followed his regular schedule because he had nothing else to do and habit was strong. The hours passed uneventfully. It wasn’t until the start of the third day—when the ration machine stopped working—that he knew he couldn’t live indefinitely in this underground retreat.
Manning hadn’t been trained to operate or repair the ration machine, his knowledge about it was theoretical. He understood that air, water and infra-red rays were transformed in some manner into tablets that supplied ninety per cent of the body’s needs. But the colonel, who had taken a special six-month course in the maintenance of the machine, had been responsible for its operation and always kept it functioning flawlessly.
Also Manning noticed that he had begun to perspire, which meant that the air-conditioning unit was not functioning properly. He looked into that trouble and was able to fix it—it was only a stuck valve, fortunately—but had the difficulty been more serious he would have been helpless.
The situation was wryly amusing. He had lived his entire sentient life with the conviction that machines served him; yet, in reality, the opposite was true.
There were many things Manning knew about his specialty, communications; but his knowledge wasn’t general, and he knew that he’d have to go above ground if he wanted to survive.
Once that thought occurred to him he was filled with a strange exc
itement. It wasn’t survival that mattered so much, but he wanted to see the sun and sky, to be above ground once more.
He made the preparations hastily. Impregnated clothing, a Geiger watch, helmet, pistol, and a bottle of rations. That was all. But once he was ready to go above, he paused, suddenly nervous. He couldn’t shake off a lifetime of conditioning so quickly. Above was the arena, the deadly battleground he had been taught to fear. Open spaces, plateaus and meadows were the common symbols of his nightmares.
But now there was nothing to fear, he thought, reasoning the matter calmly. Now there was nothing above to hurt him. Everyone was dead. Yet Manning was still uneasy. Finally, he walked back to the detector screen, determining to make sure that there was no evidence of human life in the area.
He snapped on the switch and watched the indicator needle begin its circle. His jittery feeling passed as all the gauges remained at zero. Then, suddenly, there was a response. A tiny, one-unit response. Manning bent over the gauge, hardly believing his eyes. But, yes, it was true. One human being still lived. It couldn’t be his own impulse the machine was responding to, he knew. The detector had an automatic correction for its operator. Somehow he had missed this response in his last check.
Excited, he turned to a directional gauge and plotted the position of the impulse on a grid. He made a pin-point calculation and saw that this last remaining human being was in the immediate area, not more than half a mile from the entrance of the tunnel Manning would use in going above.
For several seconds he stood thinking about this person who had somehow escaped the universal destruction. Friend or foe, man or woman, he had no way of knowing. But he began to feel a curious, happy anticipation as he hurried back to the elevator.
By himself Manning knew he could do little but prolong his own life. But as he shot upward he thought that, with another human being to work with, it could be different. Together they might find a habitable area and, pooling their knowledge, work out some sort of free, safe existence. They could stay above the ground permanently, perhaps, and build shelters and learn how to farm the land.
THE HEAVY leaden door swung outward with a protesting creak and Manning stepped into sunlight, pale, golden-yellow, autumn sunlight. He stood still, feet rooted in the velvety gray ash that covered the ground, and stared upward at the cold cloud-flecked sky.
They hadn’t destroyed the sky, he thought. Probably because they “hadn’t known how. Had they found a way to sunder it, to smash it and reshape it in the form and color of death, then nothing could have saved the sky.
On all sides of him the earth rolled away in waves of dry, flaky ash, with here and there fragments of buildings jutting up like the masts of sunken ships. The Geiger counter indicated that the area was safe, so he removed his helmet and let the wind blow against his face. He remembered the Englishman, Blinn, then, who couldn’t imagine the wind, couldn’t understand its inconstancy.
Manning turned slowly, looking for a human figure. But he saw no one. The horizons were desolated, unbroken. Then Manning saw a hill in the distance and set off for it with rapid strides, thinking that from there he would have a view for miles.
He topped a shallow rise after walking about fifty yards and saw a figure coming toward him, a man trudging up the incline, his head bowed, his arms working jerkily, tiredly. Manning threw himself down with the speed of a frightened animal. The man hadn’t seen him. His heart was hammering painfully and the dry taste of fear was on his tongue. Why was he trembling? Why was he afraid? He asked himself the questions in a black panic. This man was like himself, a brother. He was the one Manning had come up to meet. The one he had happily hoped to live with in harmony.
Inching forward, he peered down from the crest of the hill. The climbing man had his helmet slung over his back and his curly blond hair glinted in the sunlight. Manning could see his insignia on a shoulder patch: Sector N, air arm.
Manning instinctively controlled his breathing while watching the climbing man and now, as he backed down from the crest of the rise, his movements were stealthy and silent. His fingers fumbled under the gray ash and found a smooth rock.
Gripping it, he suddenly noticed how perfectly the hand and the rock complemented each other. They were made to go together, he thought with excitement. The hand, so clumsy with a book or a flower, was transformed by a rock into an instrument of grace and meaning.
Now he heard the man’s laboring footsteps in the terrible stillness, and the fear caught at his throat again, almost cutting off his breath.
The man was close now, about ten feet from the crest, Manning judged. Eight . . . six . . . four.
Manning leaped to his feet and drew back the rock in one savage, coordinated motion.
The man cried, “God!” in fright and bewilderment, and threw out his hands in an instinctive gesture.
Manning saw the terror-twisted, boyish face, the blond, curling hair, damp with sweat near the scalp, and the thick lashes over the blue eyes. He shouted hoarsely and hurled the rock with all his strength. It struck the man squarely on the forehead and he fell backward, pressing both hands to his bleeding face and crying out
Manning walked down the Incline to where the man lay sprawled, and saw that the frontal area of his skull was fractured. Slender splinters of bone pressed through the flesh and blood darkened the ash under the man’s head.
He straightened slowly, the fear and tension gone now, his body trembling weakly. He felt drained and empty. This murder had been fantastic, incredible, he realized.
For several minutes he stared at the still figure of the young man. Then his lips twisted bitterly. No, It hadn’t been fantastic. It had been inevitable, fitting and typical.
He stood In the lonely silence staring at the desolate sweep of the earth broken only by the fragments of shattered buildings.
This was peace, he thought. The only possible peace.
Manning walked aimlessly toward the hill in the distance, his feet kicking up clouds of flaky ash, and as he walked he was unaware that his hand was fumbling slowly, inevitably, for the pistol at his waist.
WHOM THE GODS DESTROY
First published in the March 1951 issue of Amazing Stories.
A tiny black tube was the force behind Kirkland’s evil powers. But he forgot that machines can have no loyalty—and today’s master can be tomorrow’s slave.
CHAPTER I
HE WAS a big man, big all over, with a high rounded forehead, coffee-colored hair, and startlingly pale eyes that bulged slightly in their sockets.
He stood at the reception desk in the expensively decorated office and stared intently at the pretty brunette behind the switchboard.
“The name is Kirkland, John Kirkland,” he said in a controlled but unmistakably angry voice. “When may I see Mr. Trelawny? I’ve been waiting three hours.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Kirkland. There are still half a dozen others ahead of you, and this is Mr. Trelawny’s busy day.” The receptionist was accustomed to brushing off people of all types, and she usually did it with icy dispatch; but something about Mr. Kirkland’s bearing, something in his bulging hypnotic eyes, made her soften her voice.
Kirkland strode back to his chair and sat down. There were nine others waiting in the long outer office, and most of them carried brief cases or bulging Manila folders. From where Kirkland sat, the inverted letters on the glazed doorway read: STNEMT-SEVNI. Investments, thought Kirkland bitterly. From what he’d seen so far, Trelawny invested in nothing but other people’s time.
He lit a cigarette to curb his impatience and anger: and as he did he saw that a button was hanging loose from his sleeve and that the edge of his cuff was frayed. A muscle jerked in Kirkland’s jaw; he pulled the button off and put it away hastily in his vest pocket. He could sew it back on tonight. Kirkland hated being shabbily dressed, hated being treated as a person of no consequence, and now, as he thought about the button and his frayed cuff, the anger flowed up in him, hot and strong, and he twisted his big
hands together and cursed under his breath.
The man beside him looked up from his paper. He said: “It is a long wait, yes?”
Kirkland turned and saw another of life’s rabbits: a small, anxious-looking man, with scanty hair, a lined forehead, and a weak, indecisive mouth. He wore a shiny blue suit, and his pinch-nez glasses and gold watch chain gave him an old-fashioned appearance, like a picture one might find in a dusty album.
“Yes, it’s a long wait,” Kirkland said, and put a note of finality into his tone to discourage conversation.
It didn’t get across to the little man. “My name is Rilke, Dr. Johann Rilke. I have something very interesting to show Mr. Trelawny if he will ever see me.” There was a foreign flavor to his words. Mid-European, Kirkland guessed.
“We all have, or think we have,” Kirkland said. “That’s why we’re here.”
“That is so, of course,” Dr. Rilke said, hasty in his agreement.
THE BRUNETTE receptionist looked up from her switchboard. “Mr. Trelawny will not be able to see anyone else today. He asked me to thank you for your patience, and to forgive him for not being able to fit you all into his schedule.”
Kirkland got wearily to his feet. Another day wasted. Another day of not even being able to talk to Trelawny, to show him his plans for new developments in plastics.
He walked to the elevators with the rest of the men, but keeping apart from them. They were trusting, hopeful fools, all destined for failure; but he was different. He needed only one break, one bit of luck, and his natural superiority would quickly assert itself, quickly send him ahead of the miserable people who now stood in his way.
In the street he found Dr. Rilke at his side. “Perhaps you would have a cup of coffee with me?” the doctor said.
Kirkland had precious little money. If he could stick the doctor for an order of toast with the coffee it would do for supper.
Collected Fiction (1940-1963) Page 267
