Collected Fiction, page 620
Mart touched La Boucherie’s arm. The fat man turned to face him, still scowling, the red light burning in his deep-set eyes.
“I was a Leader,” La Boucherie whispered. “This thing threw me out!”
“Kennard—”
La Boucherie shook his head. He looked oddly surprised.
“I hated you, Mart,” he said. “For years I’ve hated you. And so many other things I’ve hated—the Leaders, and the Guardsmen with their arrogance and their confidence, and so many things. But I was wrong. I don’t hate you any more. Or anything else, except the machine. I never knew what to hate before. But now I know.”
And, without warning, La Boucherie laughed, spun on his heel, and charged out of the room.
OUTSIDE the building the Patrol planes were still circling on their never-ending round, under a dark, lowering ceiling of cloud. The rain beat down viciously. Mart got outside in time to see La Boucherie’s shadowy form plunge without a pause into the torrential downpour.
“Wait!” he shouted, and thunder rolled deeply, drowning his voice.
From above a spotlight flamed into being, finding La Boucherie and then losing him. The white disc swung in widening circles, seeking its quarry again. A fountain of geysering earth told of a dropped bomb.
“He’s insane!” Havers thought. “Insane, to run out of this haven, where the Patrol dared not drop its bombs, into the open where he is a clear target.”
Once more the searchlight found La Boucherie. The running man swerved, but the beam followed him. Other beams focused on the fugitive, and two more bombs dropped. La Boucherie staggered, caught himself, and Mart found himself running after La Boucherie. He did not quite know why. Perhaps he hated La Boucherie as much as the old Freeman had hated him. And certainly it was useless folly for Havers to throw his life away—a life that, by some miracle, might be useful to the Freemen later—but in that storm-blasted arena of wind and darkness and whirling lights there was no time for conscious reasoning. Mart Havers raced after the man he had hated for years, trying to save him from inevitable death.
The gale picked up La Boucherie and threw him thirty yards away. That was the only thing that saved his life momentarily. A bomb fountained where he had been, but now the searchlights were confused and darted about anxiously. So far none of them had touched Havers. Not that it mattered, for this was hopeless.
Yet he ran on.
Lightning made a pallid flame across the cloudroof. Both La Boucherie and Mart were clear targets in. its flare. Havers saw the bulky form ahead of him, saw it staggering on, one arm flapping uselessly, and saw the wreck of the Weather Patrol rocket plane just beyond.
As the ships dived from above and the bombs crashed down, La Boucherie flung himself into the cabin of the jet-plane.
“La Boucherie!” Havers screamed against the wind and the thunder. “Don’t try it!”
He was flung back by the concussion of a bomb. He lay dazed, half-conscious, until the beating of rain on his face brought him back to alertness. That, and something else—the deep, hoarse bellowing of jets.
Mart propped himself up on one elbow. What he saw froze him motionless. The rocket-plane was rising.
When an ordinary plane cracks up it cannot fly, since wings, motor, prop are all useless. But a rocket-ship cannot be immobilized as long as the rockets can be fired. La Boucherie sent the plane up.
Its jets could be fired, yes. But the controls were gone. It could not be guided. And La Boucherie was throwing full power into those roaring jets.
The Patrol ships dived, weapons blasting. But La Boucherie left them behind and below him in a matter of moments. The ordinary planes were too slow, and the Patrol jet jobs not maneuverable enough to hit him.
The rocketing plane, with its small wings, fled up toward the skies. Burning rockets made the blade of a flaming sword that stood for an instant above the storm-racked Earth.
Then lightning crackled from clouds to plane, and from plane to the ground.
Mart found himself on his feet, shouting, staring up, heedless of the blinding rain. He knew, now, what La Boucherie intended. Not insanity—not quite, though it meant suicide. La Boucherie had remembered the lessons in Weather Control Havers had given him. He had remembered the special equipment in this particular ship, the device for drawing lightning from static-heavy clouds. And Mart remembered, now, what the thinking machine had said—that it could be destroyed by high-voltage currents. A current from outside the protected building in which it stood.
Sword of flame stood still in the dark, thunder-ridden skies for an instant.
Sword of lightning crashed down, driving inexorably, instantly, through the massed Patrol ships.
Even above the storm the death scream of the thinking machine rose shrill and intense—ah unbearable, knife-edged whine that rose higher and higher—
And stopped.
But Mart Havers was looking up, to the fiery sword that was La Boucherie’s ship, out of control since before its take-off. It was turning now in the sky. The wavering blade of flame tipped, was level with the horizon, swung further.
Inverted, the sword dropped toward the Earth.
MART did not watch the end. Breathing in deep, racking gasps, he ran back toward the building. Once a Patrol ship dived toward him, but then he was almost at the threshold.
And across it.
His smash-gun was unholstered. He did not know what to expect now. But he intended to make sure that La Boucherie’s death had served its purpose.
He came into the room with the long table. The six Leaders were still seated in their chairs, the metal helmets still on their heads. The man La Boucherie had killed was slumped down, but the others sat upright, staring straight ahead.
Mart came closer, his gun ready. He reached out to touch one of the men.
The Leader toppled from his chair. His body struck the floor heavily.
He was dead.
So were the others, Mart saw. But they did not matter particularly, now. What mattered was the machine. That was the heart, the brain, of the Cromwellian rule, the heart of any future government that could use it, and inevitably be forced into the rigid, mechanical pattern that meant destruction for mankind.
The machine gave the right answers. That was true. Yet they were not entirely the right answers—not for human beings. Men and women, Mart thought, could never be broken down into mathematical formulae and their problems solved by such a method.
Man must fight his own battles. He has always done so, and he always will, or he will perish. Thus he grows stronger. The men of the Weather Patrol, battling the ancient foe, were not the helpless weaklings Cromwell machine-rule had made of the rest of the race. Man must fight his own wars—against the storms, and the blizzards and tidal waves of his dark, unknown destiny. But that fight he must fight with his own resources, or lose his ultimate destiny.
Mart crossed the room. He paused at a doorway and stared at what was left of the electronic-brain.
The man-made lightning had done its work efficiently. Even Havers, who was not a technician, saw that the machine would never operate again. It was wrecked.
He lifted the smash-gun, sure now that the barrier that had stopped a charge before would not stop it now. That distant humming had ceased. The machine was vulnerable—but it was dead.
He hesitated, and then slowly lowered the weapon.
“The world must see this,” he thought. “Otherwise they won’t believe. But I can show it to them, if I live. I can tell them they’ve been ruled by a machine, not by an infallible Cromwell Council of Leaders. Once they know the truth they will seek their own destiny!”
* * * * *
The rookie pilot and the old hand stood near their jet-plane, waiting for their takeoff signal. A turmoil of thick clouds hung dully overhead. Once the low roaring of a supersonic job drifted down the wind.
“Almost time,” the old hand said. “Cigarette?”
The rookie didn’t answer. He was staring across the airstrip toward Administration.
The other man grinned.
“First time you’ve met Havers?” he asked. “Well, it won’t be the last. You never know when he’ll pop up at some outpost and make a check. He’s been doing that for over twenty years now, and I’ve never seen him let down yet.”
“Even outposts like this!” the rookie said half-wonderingly.
“Today’s outpost is tomorrow’s city. We keep pushing the frontiers forward. You were just a kid when the Cromwells were smashed, weren’t you? There weren’t any frontiers then. Exploration was forbidden. But now it’s different.”
The old hand shaded his eyes from a gleam of sunlight. Overhead, the clouds were breaking up as Weather Patrol planes worked their scientific magic, step by step changing the climate to suit civilization’s requirements.
“He’s taking off,” the rookie said disappointedly.
Across the field Mart Havers moved toward a ship. The old hand cocked his head, blinked, then returned Havers’ buoyant wave. It was the old signal of Weather Patrol—“All clear”.
“Sure he’s taking off, kid. He’s got a date in Reno with his wife.”
“Oh, that’s right. He’s married, isn’t he?”
There was a pause.
“Yes. Married to a girl who used to be a Leader in the old days—never mind that . . . There he goes! Quite a man, Mart Havers. I think I knew that twenty years ago, when he walked into my office.”
“Did you know him then?”
“Mart Havers got his field training under me,” Andre Kelvin said. “Probably that’s why I can pull the jobs I want. Colonels aren’t generally assigned to frontier work like this, but I asked for the assignment. Mart and I both like frontiers . . . There’s our call. Let’s go, kid. We’ve got some weather to smash before a city can be built in this neck of the woods.”
The two men in their bright blue uniforms turned toward the ship. The clouds were almost gone now, but toward the west a new bank was forming. Another job for the Storm Smashers, the shock troops of civilization.
The jets flamed, and the plane shot forward, rising from alien soil into the turbulent winds of Venus.
EXIT THE PROFESSOR
The Kentucky Hogbens were hillbillies with a difference, as an investigating scientist certainly comes to know!
WE HOGBENS are right exclusive. That Perfesser feller from the city might have known that, but he come busting in without an invite, and I don’t figger he had call to complain afterward. In Kaintuck the polite thing is to stick to your own bill of beans and not come nosing around where you’re not wanted.
Time we ran off the Haley boys with that shotgun gadget we rigged up—only we never could make out how it worked, somehow—that time, it all started because Rafe Haley come peeking and prying at the shed winder, trying to get a look at Little Sam. Then Rafe went round saying Little Sam had three haids or something.
Can’t believe a word them Haley boys say. Three haids! It ain’t natcheral, is it? Anyhow, Little Sam’s only got two haids, and never had no more since the day he was born.
So Maw and I rigged up that shotgun thing and peppered the Haley boys good. Like I said, we couldn’t figger out afterward how it worked. We’d tacked on some dry cells and a lot of coils and wires and stuff and it punched holes in Rafe as neat as anything.
Coroner’s verdict was that the Haley boys died real sudden, and Sheriff Abernathy come up and had a drink of corn with us and said for two cents he’d whale the tar outa me. I didn’t pay no mind. Only some damyankee reporter musta got wind of it, because a while later a big, fat, serious-looking man come around and begun to ask questions.
Uncle Les was sitting on the porch, with his hat over his face. “You better get the heck back to your circus, mister,” he just said. “We had offers from old Barnum hisself and turned ’em down. Ain’t that right, Saunk?”
“Sure is,” I said. “I never trusted Phineas. Called Little Sam a freak, he did.”
The big solemn-looking man, whose name was Perfesser Thomas Galbraith, looked at me. “How old are you, son?” he said.
“I ain’t your son,” I said. “And I don’t know, nohow.”
“You don’t look over eighteen,” he said, “big as you are. You couldn’t have known Barnum.”
“Sure I did. Don’t go giving me the lie. I’ll wham you.”
“I’m not connected with any circus,” Galbraith said. “I’m a biogeneticist.”
We sure laughed at that. He got kinda mad and wanted to know what the joke was.
“There ain’t no such word,” Maw said. And at that point Little Sam started yelling, and Galbraith turned white as a goose wing and shivered all over. He sort of fell down. When we picked him up, he wanted to know what had happened.
“That was Little Sam,” I said. “Maw’s gone in to comfort him. He’s stopped now.”
“That was a subsonic,” the Perfesser snapped. “What is Little Sam—a short-wave transmitter?”
“Little Sam’s the baby,” I said, short-like. “Don’t go calling him outa his name, either. Now, s’pose you tell us what you want.”
He pulled out a notebook and started looking through it.
“I’m a—a scientist,” he said. “Our foundation is studying eugenics, and we’ve got some reports about you. They sound unbelievable. One of our men has a theory that natural mutations can remain undetected in undeveloped cultural regions, and—” He slowed down and stared at Uncle Les. “Can you really fly?” he asked.
Well, we don’t like to talk about that. The preacher gave us a good dressing-down once. Uncle Les had got likkered up and went sailing over the ridges, scaring a couple of bear hunters outa their senses. And it ain’t in the Good Book that men should fly, neither. Uncle Les generally does it only on the sly, when nobody’s watching.
So anyhow Uncle Les pulled his hat down further on his face and growled.
“That’s plumb silly. Ain’t no way a man can fly. These here modern contraptions I hear tell about—’tween ourselves, they don’t really fly at all. Just a lot of crazy talk, that’s all.”
GALBRAITH blinked and studied his notebook again.
“But I’ve got hearsay evidence of a great many unusual things connected with your family. Flying is only one of them. I know it’s theoretically impossible—and I’m not talking about planes—but—”
“Oh, shet your trap.”
“The medieval witches’ salve used aconite to give an illusion of flight—entirely subjective, of course.”
“Will you stop pestering me?” Uncle Les said, getting mad, on account of he felt embarrassed, I guess. Then he jumped up, threw his hat down on the porch and flew away. After a minute he swooped down for his hat and made a face at the Perfesser. He flew off down the gulch and we didn’t see him fer a while.
I got mad, too.
“You got no call to bother us,” I said. “Next thing Uncle Les will do like Paw, and that’ll be an awful nuisance. We ain’t seen hide nor hair of Paw since that other city feller was around. He was a census taker, I think.”
Galbraith didn’t say anything. He was looking kinda funny. I gave him a drink and he asked about Paw.
“Oh, he’s around,” I said. “Only you don’t see him no more. He likes it better that way, he says.”
“Yes,” Galbraith said, taking another drink. “Oh, God. How old did you say you were?”
“Didn’t say nothing about it.”
“Well, what’s the earliest thing you can remember?”
“Ain’t no use remembering things. Clutters up your haid too much.”
“It’s fantastic,” Gaibraith said. “I hadn’t expected to send a report like that back to the foundation.”
“We don’t want nobody prying around,” I said. “Go way and leave us alone.”
“But, good Lord!” He looked over the porch rail and got interested in the shotgun gadget. “What’s that?”
“A thing,” I said.
“What does it do?”
“Things,” I said.
“Oh. May I look at it?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll give you the dingus if you’ll go away.”
He went over and looked at it. Paw got up from where he’d been sitting beside me, told me to get rid of the damyankee and went into the house. The Perfesser came back. “Extraordinary!” he said. “I’ve had training in electronics, and it seems to me you’ve got something very odd there. What’s the principle?”
“The what?” I said. “It makes holes in things.”
“It can’t fire shells. You’ve got a couple of lenses where the breech should—how did you say it worked?”
“I dunno.”
“Did you make it?”
“Me and Maw.”
He asked a lot more questions.
“I dunno,” I said. “Trouble with a shotgun is you gotta keep loading it. We sorta thought if we hooked on a few things it wouldn’t need loading no more. It don’t, neither.”
“Were you serious about giving it to me?”
“If you stop bothering us.”
“Listen,” he said, “it’s miraculous that you Hogbens have stayed out of sight so long.”
“We got our ways.”
“The mutation theory must be right. You must be studied. This is one of the most important discoveries since—” He kept on talking like that. He didn’t make much sense.
Finally I decided there was only two ways to handle things, and after what Sheriff Abernathy had said, I didn’t feel right about killing nobody till the Sheriff had got over his fit of temper. I don’t want to cause no ruckus.
“S’pose I go to New York with you, like you want,” I said. “Will you leave the family alone?”
He halfway promised, though he didn’t want to. But he knuckled under and crossed his heart, on account of I said I’d wake up Little Sam if he didn’t. He sure wanted to see Little Sam, but I told him that was no good. Little Sam couldn’t go to New York, anyhow. He’s got to stay in his tank or he gets awful sick.
