The Early Pohl

by Frederik Pohl

  Inside—there were rows upon rows of slabs, many empty and waiting. But most were in use. At the head of each of them there was a mind machine, like the mind machine the Others used to read and mold thoughts in the tests for the Four and the Four, like the machine that Collard cannot wait to use on me. At the foot was a cylinder of crystal, and a box under each cylinder that droned and pulsed. And in the space between, on each slab, there lay the figure of a girl of the Four and the Four.

  A hundred of them at least there were, in this one room. There are four each year, and the pick of Earth's young girls for a quarter of a century lay somnolent on plastic, molded slabs there before us.

  Many of them were no longer beautiful. Some were no longer human.

  Each cylinder of crystal at the slab-foot was filled with a bluish red fluid that was blood, and each cylinder had two flexible crystal tubes running out from it, sinking themselves at the ends into the flesh of the girls. That was what gave life to the girls who had been of the Four and the Four. That and nothing else, for they were unmoving, rigid. The eyes of each girl were closed, and only slowly did their bosoms rise and fall; only slowly did the pale veins pulsate in their throats.

  The Other gestured, and we carried the girls in, put them on empty slabs at the end of the long row. We left them there, and another of the masters came in and opened a case that held sharp steel knives. He took one out, slowly, carefully, and walked over to the slabs with their new occupants. At the door Collard paused, turned, looked back. The little muscles under his cheeks were quivering and his jaw was rigid.

  I touched his arm. He looked at me uncomprehendingly, then turned and walked out with the rest of us.

  Two more of the Others passed us going in.

  I did not look back to see what they did. But they wore mind-reading crowns, and I believe they were going already to tap the reservoir of knowledge we had brought them.

  That first thing sowed a seed of doubt in Collard, It did not in me, for I was and still am aware that humans, even those of the Four and the Four, live only by the tolerance of the Others and at their disposal. Still, it was—not pleasant.

  What hurt even me, and what turned Collard into the wretched creature of rebellion that he is now, was something that happened only slowly and took a long time to penetrate. It came to us gradually that we had done our job. We were no longer necessary. That for which we had been chosen and trained had been accomplished, and we were through.

  Oh, the Others gave us work to occupy us. I tended a machine in a great hall where a thousand wheels revolved and shifted direction. It was work that was pleasant, and it was necessary for someone to do it, for even the best machine must have a brain to back it up.

  Collard had work, too. With delicate, tiny spectroscopes and other miraculous tools he had to sort and analyze specimens of minerals from the deep subsurface regions of their own planet that the Others were still exploring. A machine could have done Collard's job, but there was no machine. And there were too few samples to warrant constructing one, while a human could do the work.

  Those two who had come with us had work also. And we met more than a score of other men in that city to which we were taken, a short distance from the crypt where the dead-alive girls lay on their plastic slabs, their minds open to the probing of the Others. Only a little more than a score of men were there, though, and they could not tell us what had happened to the men who were missing.

  Our jobs kept us busy. But they were—unsatisfactory. What we did could have been done by anyone on the human Earth.

  Those who had been on the green planet for the longest time showed clearly that they had realized their unimportance, and were hurt by it. There were lines in their faces, bleakness in their eyes.

  They would not talk much, those who had been longest on the green planet. Not to me. But Collard was with them whenever he and they were not working. Always they were talking in low tones that became silent when I came near.

  A dozen weeks, in the green world's time, that went on. Collard spoke to me hardly at all, though often I saw him watching me as though he were about to say something. He never did.

  Then he disappeared.

  Five of the older men went with him. They walked out of our living quarters to work—and never returned.

  The Others came around several times then to look us over, murmuring and clicking to themselves in their incomprehensible tongue. And I saw that other men were beginning to show lines curving around the corners of their eyes, to keep silent and look watchfully at everything that went on. For days it was clear that the Others were giving us unwonted attention. Wherever I went there were always one or two of them somewhere about, working at something but looking at me from time to time, almost speculatively, almost with apprehension. From the men I quartered with, I learned that they had the same experience. I could not understand—

  Then I saw Collard again.

  I was walking to work, as the Others preferred us to do. We could have flown by the telekinetic mind power our crowns gave us, but they thought it better that we walk always, to prevent our muscles from atrophying through disuse. My way lay by the great mausoleum where slept the girls of the Four and the Four, ready for the giving of information when the Others wanted it.

  I had been resting for a while, an hour or two. It had been the first time in several days. It was about an hour before dawn. Still dark, I could nevertheless see a hint of the pure white rays of the green planet's sun silhouetting the mountains on the horizon, twenty miles away. I looked at them, without much interest. . . .

  Then abruptly I did become interested. Half a dozen flickering, dodging black spots, winking with faint white flame now and again like monstrous fireflies, spun about in the sky somewhere between the mountains and me. As I watched they grew larger, bearing down on me at great speed. They were humans like myself. The lights they bore were the streams of force from their crowns, surging out as they drove themselves up in great bounds, then fell freely forward until they lost momentum and drove up again. They dared not, of course, use the full thrust of their crowns in the atmosphere.

  What were five men doing, flitting about the sky in such haste, using their crowns against the wishes of the Others?

  I watched. They drove on till they were directly overhead, then dropped at the end of one of their sweeping parabolas until they were almost on the ground. A faint thread of white flame leaped out from the outstretched arm of each, and they gently touched ground.

  Quickly they scattered out, running. Three of them made for the great building that housed the unconscious girls, shining in the star-glow dead ahead. Another stood where he was, staring around, dragging a thing from his belt that looked weaponlike, sinister. The fifth came pelting madly in my direction.

  He saw me then and brought up short. "Symes!" he said.

  It was Collard. I was speechless. I saw that he was holding one of the weapons. It was a blaster like those carried by the deputies of the Others on Earth, but larger and much more deadly-looking, glinting evilly in the starlight. It was not pointed at me, but dangled slacky from his hand. What does he need one of those for? I wondered. In his crown lay the seeds of greater destruction than a blaster could wreak. It did not occur to me that, against the Others who constructed them, the crowns were impotent. . . .

  "Symes," he said. "Symes, I'm glad to see you. Are you one of us?"

  "One of you?" I repeated. "I don't—"

  His face fell. "I see," he said slowly. "I thought for a moment—Well, it was absurd. Symes," he said, and his hand swung up with the blaster leveled at me, "I'm going to have to inconvenience you. Take off your crown! And don't try to blast me with it—the gun will go off!"

  Well, I know I should have made the effort. My life is nothing—much less than nothing, compared with what I might have saved had I hurled the destroying force of my intellect at Collard in that moment, I might have saved an empire if I had dared. I am willing to die at the command of the least of the
Others, for any reason they care to give or for none. I should have died then, by willing Collard out of life and letting his weapon annihilate me. But I hesitated.

  And then it was too late, for the other human with a gun had seen us, and came running up. With the two of them there I could not destroy either, for their crowns reinforced each other, made them invulnerable to my lone will.

  Unwillingly, I reached up and took the crown from my head, handed it to Collard.

  He stared at me a second, and his eyes held a hint of that curious expression I had seen there before that meant that he held a strange regard for me, would not willingly do me harm if he could avoid it. He was clearly speculating, coming to a decision. Then the light died out of his eyes and he dropped my crown abruptly to the ground, stamped it savagely into disintegration with one heavy foot.

  I must have cried out, for Collard said swiftly, "This is too important, Symes. I can't take a chance that you might get the crown back. You've been indoctrinated too thoroughly, believe too firmly in the righteousness and perfection of the masters. You wouldn't believe me, even though I proved to you what I can prove. Even though I showed you that the Others are not the protectors and benevolent friends of humanity—but tyrants who plan to destroy us!"

  I laughed, but there was no humor in this thing. Collard was dangerous and insane. I said sharply, "Don't be a fool, Collard. What you say is a lie, and I must report you for it. But even if it weren't, what difference would it make? The Others—"

  "The Others are glorious and their will is beyond question," Collard finished for me. "Whatever they wish must be. . . . I knew it would do no good."

  The other man, who had been watching us intently, said, "We're wasting time, Collard. They'll be ready soon, and the ship will be here."

  Collard nodded. Still to me, he said, "You'll have to come with us, Symes. Either that, or I'll kill you now. I don't want to do that."

  His eyes were hard as the vacuum between the stars, and I did not want to die. There might come a chance. . . .

  "All right," I said. "I'll come along. Where?" There was no point in arguing with him, since he was mad.

  With the gun he gestured toward the building ahead where slept the girls. To the other man he said, "Stay here. I don't think there will be any trouble. They must be nearly ready by now."

  I walked ahead of him to the building. We went inside, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the soft light inside, after the darkness of the night without. Then I saw that which was horrible.

  A group of Others, three of them, stood in awful silence by the wall, facing it, their backs covered by a human with a blaster. The other two men were working busily at the blood-tanks that fed the unconscious maidens, opening them at the top and pouring into each a few drops of fluid from a crystal flask. Not all of the girls were so treated, the older ones being spared.

  When they had finished this strange procedure, having doctored the plasma of forty maidens or more, they returned swiftly to the first. Not a glance did they spare for Collard or me, beyond a single incurious look as we entered. They must have had full confidence in him and his judgment, and they were obviously working against time. They totally ignored the savage, silent backs of the three Others.

  One of the two raced into another chamber, returned wheeling a portable machine whose purpose I could not guess. Quickly I learned, though, for he dragged a tube ending in a sort of funnel from the interior of the machine, pressed it to the face of the first maiden in line.

  His companion took a quick glance at the color of the blood-fluid in the tank—which was reddening, becoming more like the blood of a normal human—then leaped to the head of the slab and, with an abrupt motion, jerked the ends of the tubes from where they were imbedded in the girl's pale shoulders!

  I might have jumped forward—I must have started involuntarily, and perhaps I cried out. It was too horrible, almost blasphemous! But Collard said sharply, "Hold on!" and I felt the muzzle of his blaster thrust into my back. I slumped back, knowing that this was not the time. I prayed that the Others beside the wall, with their superhuman senses, would know that I was not of this terrible conspiracy, that I was determined to do what I could to bring Collard and the others to punishment.

  I saw at once what the wheeled machine was for. Just as the one human tore the blood-tubes from the girl's flesh, the other touched a stud on the machine, and it began to sigh and pulse rhythmically. I saw the girl's breasts rise and fall, spasmodically, then more regularly. The first man had a finger on her pulse, and after a second he nodded. They stopped the machine, wheeled it to the next girl, repeated the process.

  It was frightful. Blasphemous. The Others, in their wisdom, had brought these maidens from Earth, with a mind full of knowledge in each, knowledge that they wanted and so should have. Here were members of the most sacred body of humans ever to exist—the Four and the Four, chosen by the Others to bring this knowledge to them—deliberately destroying the fruits of the mission for which they had been selected! My mind reeled; I thought desperately of a million things I might do to stop this madness. But there was nothing, not yet.

  The awakened girls were sitting up, walking around, with dazedness in their eyes. They seemed afraid, but not of the two men who had awakened them. Always and always their looks went to the Others standing by the wall, motionless as three statues, even their fat-wings ceasing to ripple. There was terror in the eyes of the girls when they saw the Others, naked and unashamed terror.

  I wondered at the Others, standing there so still. It was incredible that they should not make an effort to halt what was going on.

  The timing of the renegades was splendid. What they had been given by the Others in the way of keen intellect and sharp sense, they put to full use in their revolt. Just as the last of the treated maidens was awakening there came a soft purring from overhead. I looked out the door just in time to see a great robot-operated cargo ship lowering itself gently to the ground on its jets. The cargo hatch swung open, and a man jumped out, came running over. The guard Collard had left came running too, and all five of the renegade humans—all but the one who guarded the Others and kept a watchful eye on myself—began herding the bewildered girls into the yawning hatch of the ship.

  They were all in, and so was I, and so were the renegades, except for the one who guarded the three Others and was backing toward us watchfully, gun in hand, when—

  The Others struck!

  That was what the three masters had been doing, so stiff and rigid there against the wall. That was what had been their weapon and defense.

  The brains of the Others are mighty. Without the aid of the crowns, with only the inborn intellect they possess, they can by a tremendous effort of will communicate directly, mind to mind, among themselves. It is a hard thing for even them, and it requires a concentration impossible except under the urgency of a great crisis.

  They had done it—had summoned help!

  Far above us, a cloud of wan stars appeared in the sky, so high that they were not even pinpoints but merely a blending glow of light. Collard, standing in the hatch, saw them first. It took a second for him to realize what they were; then he acted at top speed.

  He shouted to the man backing toward us, who spun immediately and dashed into the ship. Collard swung the hatch shut and at once the man who had usurped the place of the robot pilot touched the cams that sent the ship into the sky. Vertically up for a couple of seconds, then flashing forward at immense speed, we fled.

  "Zip-ships!" Collard yelled. "A whole flock of them—and they're diving down on us, trying to crash us! We'll have to get out of here!"

  The ship was traveling at an incredible pace already, the plume of the rocket jets behind us stretching back for half a mile. And our speed was growing rapidly as the man at the controls ruthlessly jammed on every erg of power. But through the transparent skyport overhead I could see other jets flashing brighter as the robot pilots of the massed ships that followed swerved their c
ourse, arced around to follow us as we streaked along. They had the advantage of altitude; gravity was helping their straining jets to beat our speed—but we had a human brain to direct our ship. I cursed the man at the controls, planned a thousand ways to reach him and crash the stolen ship into the ground. But there was always the blaster in the hand of the guard, and it was pointed at me.

  Collard tore his eyes from the ships that raced down on us from overhead and leaped to the side of the man at the controls. He spoke urgently, gesticulating, and the man nodded. A quick gesture of his hand on the levers, and our ship spun end-over-end, looped up and over and was backtracking in a split second. Again he touched the lever, and the ship spun about in a quarter turn, always going up. The robot mechanisms could never quite keep up to his hair-trigger reactions; each maneuver brought us up a little higher, then a little lower and farther behind. The ship reeled and bucked till I found my hard flesh bruised from being jolted against the unyielding walls, and always we were nearer to safety.

  We had run a full circle, and were back above the sleep-palace again, plunging in the direction of the city of the Others when a new flight of ships appeared dead ahead, arrowing at us. Their jets were invisible now, in the gathering light of day, and only the dawnlight glinting off their polished hulls revealed them. Collard spun around and saw more ships behind, and still another flight racing over the horizon at us from one side.

  We had a moment's grace, until the flights of robot-planes should coalesce. Then it would end.

  With exultation I saw the inevitability of our destruction, without fear for my own life, which was surely doomed. But Collard saw what was ahead too—and Collard acted.