Masters of Evolution

by Damon Knight

  “All right with me,” said the redhead, grinning more widely than before.

  There were self-appointed time-keepers and starters, too. When Alvah, in the runabout, and the redhead, on his monster, were satisfactorily fined up, one of them bellowed,

  “On y’ marks—Git set …” and then cracked a short whip with a noise out of all proportion to its size.

  For a moment, Alvah thought Swifty and his horrid mount had simply disappeared. Then he spotted them, diminished by perspective, halfway down the course, and rapidly getting smaller. He slammed the power bar over and took off in pursuit.

  Around the first turn, it was Swifty, with Alvah nowhere. In the stretch, Alvah was coming up fast on the Outside. Around the far turn, he was two monster lengths behind and, in the stretch again, they were neck and neck. Alvah kept it that way for the next two laps and then gradually pulled ahead. The crowd became a multicolored streak, whirling past him. In the sixth lap, he passed Swifty again—in the eighth, again—in the tenth, still again—and when he skidded to a halt beyond the finish post, fluttering its flags with the wind of his passage, poor old Swifty and his steaming beast were still lumbering halfway down the stretch.

  “Now, friends,” said Alvah, triumphantly mounting the platform again, “in a moment, I’m going to tell you how you, yourselves, can own this wonderful runabout and many marvels more—but first, are there any questions you’d like to ask?”

  Swifty pushed forward, grinless, looking like a man smitten by lightning. “How many to a get?” he called.

  Alvah decided he must have misunderstood. “You can have any number you want,” he said. “The price is so reasonable—but I’m going to come to that in a—”

  “I don’t mean how many will you sell. How many calves, or colts, or whatever, is what I want to know.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement. This, it would seem, was what everybody wanted to know.

  Appalled, Alvah corrected the misapprehension as quickly and clearly as he could.

  “Mean to say,” somebody called, “they don’t breed?”

  “Certainly not. If one of them ever breaks down—and, friends, they’re built to last—you get it repaired or buy another.”

  “How much?” somebody in the crowd yelled.

  “Friends, I’m not here to take your money,” Alvah said. “We just want—”

  “Then how we going to pay for your stuff?”

  “I’m coming to that. When two people want to trade, friends, there’s usually a way. You want our products. We want metals—iron, aluminum, chromium—”

  “Suppose a man ain’t got any metal?”

  “Well, sir, there are a lot of other things we can use besides metal. Natural fruits and vegetables, for instance.”

  The slack-faced yokel in the first row, the one with the basket under his arm, roused himself for the first time. His mouth closed, then opened again. “What kind?”

  “Natural products, friend. You know, the kind your great-granddad ate. We use a lot every year for table delicacies, even—”

  The yokel came halfway up the platform stair. His gnarled fingers dipped into the basket and came up with a smooth red-gold ovoid. He shoved it toward Alvah. “You mean,” he said incredulously, “you wouldn’t eat that?”

  Gulping, Alvah becked away a step. The Muckfoot came after him. “Raise ‘em myself,” he said plaintively, holding out the red fruit. “I tell you, they just the juiciest, goodest— Go ahead, try one.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Alvah said desperately. “I’m on a diet. Now if you’ll just step down quietly, friend, till after the—”

  The Muckfoot stared at him, holding the fruit under Alvah’s nose “You mean you won’t try it?”

  “No,” said Alvah, trying not to breathe. “Now go on back down there, friend—don’t crowd me.”

  “Well,” said the Muckfoot, “then durn you!” And shoved the disgusting thing squashily into Alvah’s face.

  Alvah saw red. Blinking away a glutinous film of juice and pulp, he glimpsed the yokel’s face, spread into a hideous grin. Waves of laughter beat about his ears. Retching, he brought up his right fist in an instinctive roundhouse swing that clapped the yokel’s grin shut and toppled him over the platform rail, basket, flying fruit and all.

  The laughter rumbled away into expectant silence. Alvah fumbled in his kit for tissues, scrubbed a wad of them across his face and saw them come away daubed with streaky red. He hurled them convulsively into the crowd and, leaning over the rail, shouted thickly, “Lousy- stinking filthy Muckfeet!”

  Muckfoot men in the front ranks turned and looked at each other solemnly. Then two of them marched up the platform stair and, behind them, another two.

  Still berserk, Alvah met the first couple with two violent kicks in the chest. This cleared the stair, but he turned to find three more candidates swarming over the rail. He swung at the nearest, who ducked. The next one seized Alvah’s arm with both hands and toppled over backward. Alvah followed, head foremost, and landed with a jar that shook him to his toes.

  The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground surrounded by upward of twenty thick seamless boots, choking on dust, and getting the daylights methodically kicked out of him.

  Alvah rolled over frantically, climbed the first leg that came to hand, got his back against the platform and, by dint of cracking skulls together, managed in two brisk minutes to clear a momentary space around him. Another dim figure lunged at him. Alvah clouted it under the ear, whirled and vaulted over the rail onto the platform.

  His gun popped out into his hand.

  For just a moment, he was standing alone, feeling the pistol grip clenched hard in his dirt-caked palm and able to judge exactly how long he had before half a dozen Muckfeet would swarm up the stair and over the rail. The crowd’s faces were sharp and clear. He saw Artie and Doc Bither and Jake, his mouth open to howl, and he saw the girl, B.J., in a curious posture—leaning forward, her right arm thrust out and down. She looked as if she had just thrown something.

  Alvah saw the gray-white blur wobbling toward him. He tried to dodge, but the thing struck his shoulder and exploded with a papery pop. For an instant, the air was full of dancing bright particles. Then they were gone.

  Alvah didn’t have time to wonder about it. He thumbed the selector over to Explosive, pointed the gun straight up and squeezed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  There were two Muckfeet half over the rail and three more coming up the stair. Incredulous, still aiming at the air, Alvah tried again—and again. The gun -didn’t work.

  Three Muckfeet were on the platform, four more right behind them. Alvah spun through the open door and slapped at the control button. The door stayed open.

  The Muckfeet were massed in the doorway, staring in like visitors at an aquarium. Alvah dived at the power bar, shoved it over. The floater didn’t lift.

  “Holly! Luke!” called a clear voice outside, and the Muckfeet turned. “Leave him alone. He’s got enough troubles now.”

  Alvah was pawing at the control board.

  The lights didn’t work.

  The air-conditioner didn’t work.

  The scent-organ didn’t work.

  The musivox didn’t work.

  One of the Muckfeet put his head in at the door. “Reckon he has,” he said thoughtfully and went away again. Alvah heard his voice, more faintly. “You do something, B.J.?”

  “Yes,” said the girl, “I did something.”

  Moving warily, Alvah went outside. The girl was standing just below the platform, watching as the Muckfoot men filed down the stair.

  “Your he said to her.

  She paid him no attention. “Just one of those things, Luke,” she said.

  Luke nodded solemnly. “Well, the Fair don’t come hut once a year.” He and the other men moved past her into the crowd, each one acquiring a train of curiosity-seekers as he went. The crowd began to drift away.

  A familiar voice
yelped, “Ride’m out on a razorback is what I say!”

  A chorus of “Now, Jake!” went up. There were murmurs of dissent, of inquiry, of explanation. “Time for the poultry judging!” somebody called, and the crowd moved faster.

  Alvah went dazedly down and climbed into the runabout. He waggled its power bar. No response.

  He tore open his kit and began frantically hauling out one glittering object after another, holding each for an instant and then throwing it on the ground. The razor, the heater, the vacuum cleaner, the sonotube, the vibromasseur.

  Swifty rode by, at ease atop his horse-lynx-camel-horror. He was whistling.

  V

  The crowd was almost gone. Among the stragglers was Jake, fists on his pudgy hips, his choleric cheeks gleaming with sweat and satisfaction.

  “Well, Mister High-and-Mighty,” he called, “what you going to do now?”

  That was just what Alvah was wondering. He was about a thousand miles from home by air—probably more like fifteen hundred across-country. He had no transportation, no shelter, no power tools, no equipment. He had, he realized with horror, been cut off instantly from everything that made a man civilized.

  What was he going to do?

  Manager Wytak had his feet on the glossy desktop. So did the Comptroller, narrow-faced old Mr. Creedy; the Director of Information, plump Mr. Kling; the Commissioner of Supply, blotched and pimpled Mr. Jackson; and the porcine Mr. McArdle, Commissioner of War. With chairs tilted back, they stared through a haze of cigar smoke at each others’ stolid faces mirrored on the ceiling.

  Wytak’s voice was as confident as ever, if a trifle muted, and when the others spoke, he listened. These were not the hired nonentities Alvah had seen; these were the men who had made Wytak, the electorate with whose consent he governed.

  “Jack,” said Wytak, “I want you to look at it my way and see if you don’t think I’m right. It isn’t a question of how long we can hold out—when you get right down and look at it, it’s a question of can we do anything.”

  “In time,” said Jackson expressionlessly.

  “In time. But if we can do anything, there’ll be time enough. You say we’ve got troubles now and you’re right, but I tell you we can pull through a situation a thousand times worse than this—if we’ve got an answer. And have we got an answer? We have.”

  Creedy grunted. “Like to see some results, Boley.”

  “You’ll see them. You can’t skim a yeast tank the first day, Will.”

  “You can see the bubbles, though,” said Jackson sourly. “Any report from this Gustad today, while we’re talking about it?”

  “Not yet. He was getting some response yesterday. He’s following it up. I trust that boy—the analyzers picked his card out of five million. Wait and see. He’ll deliver.”

  “If you say so,^Boley.”

  “I say so.”

  Jackson nodded. “That’s good enough. Gentlemen?”’ In another soundproof, spyproof office in Over Manhattan,

  Kling and McArdle met again twenty minutes later.

  “What do you think?” asked Kling with his meaningless smile.

  “Moderately good. I was hoping he would he about Gustad’s report, but of course there was very little chance of that. Wytak is an old hand.”

  “You admire him?” Kling suggested.

  “As a specimen of his type. Wytak pulled us out of a very bad spot in ‘39.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And he has had his uses since then. There are times when brilliant improvisation is better than sound principles —and times when it is not. Wytak is an incurable romantic.”

  “And you?”

  “We,” said McArdle grimly, “are realists.”

  “Oh, yes. But perhaps toe are not anything just yet. Creedy is interested, but not convinced—and until he moves, Jackson will do nothing.”

  “Wytak’s project is a failure. You can’t do business with the Muckfeet. But the fool was so confident that he didn’t even interfere with Gustad’s briefing.”

  Kling leaned forward with interest. “You didn’t… ?”

  “No. It wasn’t necessary. But it means that Gustad has no instructions to fake successful reports—and that means Wytak can’t stall until he gets back. There was no report today. Suppose there’s none tomorrow, or the next day, or the next.”

  “In that case, of course … However, it’s always as well to offer something positive. You said you might have something to show me today.”

  “Yes. Follow me.”

  In a sealed room at the end of a guarded corridor, five young men were sitting. They leaped to attention when Kling and McArdle entered.

  “At ease,” said McArdle. “This gentleman is going to ask you some questions. You may answer freely.” He turned to Kling. “Go ahead—ask them anything.”

  Kling’s eyebrows went up delicately, but he looked the young men over, selected one and said, “Your name?”

  “Walter B. Limler, sir.”

  Kling looked mildly pained. “Please don’t call me sir. Where do you live?”

  “CFF Barracks, Tier Three, McCormick.”

  “CFF?” said Kling with a frown. “McCormick? I don’t place the district. Where is it?”

  The young man, who was blond and very earnest, allowed himself to show a slight surprise. “In the Loop,” he said.

  “And where is the Loop?”

  The young man looked definitely startled. He glanced at McArdle, moistened his lips and said, “Well, right here, sir. In Chicago.”

  Kling’s eyebrows went up and then down. He smiled. “I begin to see,” he murmured to McArdle.

  It cost Alvah two hours’ labor, using tools that had never been designed to be operated manually, to get the inspection plate off the motor housing in the floater. He compared the intricate mechanism with the diagrams and photographs in the maintenance handbook. He looked for dust and grime; he checked the moving parts for play; he probed for dislodged wiring plates and corrosion. He did everything the handbook suggested, even spun the flywheel and was positive he felt the floater lift a fraction of an inch beneath him. As far as he could tell, there was absolutely nothing wrong, unless the trouble was in the core of the motor itself—the force-field that rotated the axle that made everything go.

  The core casing had an “easily removable” segment, meaning to say that Alvah was able to get it off in three hours more.

  Inside, there was no resistance to his cautious finger. The spool-shaped hollow space was empty.

  Under Motor Force-field Inoperative the manual said simply: Remove and replace rhodopalladium nodules.

  Alvah looked. He found the tiny sockets where the nodules ought to be, one in the flanged axle-head, the other facing it at the opposite end of the chamber. The nodules were not there at all.

  Alvah went into the storage chamber. Ignoring the increasingly forceful protests of his empty stomach, he spent a furious twenty minutes locating the spare nodules. He stripped the seal off the box and lifted the lid.

  There were the nodules. And there, appearing out of nowhere, was a whirling cloud of brightness that settled briefly in the box and then went back where it came from. And there the nodules weren’t.

  Alvah stared at the empty box. He poked his forefinger into the cushioned niches, one after the other. Then he set-the box down with care, about-faced, walked outside to the platform and sat down on the top step with his chin on his fists.

  “You looked peaked,” said BJ.‘s firm voice. Alvah looked up at her briefly. “Go away.”

  “Had anything to eat today?” the girl asked. Alvah did not reply.

  “Don’t sulk,” she said. “You’ve got a problem. We feel responsible. Maybe there’s something we can do to help.”

  Alvah stood up slowly. He looked her over carefully, from head to toe and back again. “There is one thing you could do for me,” he said. “Smile.”

  “Why?” she asked cagily.

  “I just wanted to see your fan
gs.” He turned wearily and went into the floater.

  He puttered around for a few minutes, then got cold rations out of the storage chamber and sat down in the control chair to eat them. But the place was odious to him with its gleaming, useless array of gadgetry, and he went outside again and sat down with his back to the hull near the doorway. The girl was still there, looking up at him.

  “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry about this.”

  The nutloaf went down his gullet in one solid lump and hit his stomach like a stone. “Please don’t mention it,” he said bitterly. “It was really nothing at all.”

  “I had to do it. You might have killed somebody.”

  Alvah tried another bite. Chewing the stuff, at any rate, gave him something to do. “What were those things?” he demanded.

  “Metallophage,” she said. “They eat metals in the platinum family. Hard to get them that selective—we weren’t exactly sure what would happen.”

  Alvah put down the remnant of nutloaf slowly. “Who’s ‘we’? You and Bither?”

  “Mostly.”

  “And you—you bred those things to eat rhodopalladium?” She nodded. .

  “Then you must have some to feed them,” said Alvah logically. He stood up and gripped the railing. “Give it to me.

  She hesitated. “There might be some—”

  “Might be? There must be!”

  “You don’t understand. They don’t actually eat the metal —not for nourishment, that is.”

  “Then what do they do with it?”

  “They build nests,” she told him. “But come on over to the lab and we’ll see.”

  At the laboratory door, they were still arguing. “For the last time,” said Alvah, “I will not come in. I’ve just eaten half a nutcake and I haven’t got any food to waste. Get the stuff and bring it out.”

  “For the last time,” said B.J., “get it out of your head that what you want is all that counts. If you want me to look for the metal, you’ll come in, and that’s flat.”

  They glared at each other. Well, he told himself resignedly, he hadn’t wanted that nutloaf much in the first place.