Collected Short Fiction, page 71
“I’m going to put a stop to your time-travelling, anyway,” Quellen finally said.
Lanoy chuckled. “I wouldn’t advise it, Quellen.”
“CrimeSec to you, Lanoy.”
“I wouldn’t advise it, Quellen,” Lanoy repeated. “If you cut off the hoppers now, you’ll turn the past topsy-turvy. Those people went back. It’s recorded in history. Some of them married and had children, and the descendants of those children are alive today. For all you know, Quellen, you may be the descendant of a hopper I’m going to send back next week—and if that hopper never gets back, Quellen, you’ll pop out of existence like a snuffed candle. Sound like a pleasant way to die, Crime-Sec?”
Quellen stared glumly. Brogg stood silently behind Lanoy, and it became apparent to the Crime-Sec now that the burly UnderSec had been gunning for Quellen’s job all along, and that Lanoy was doing an effective job of eliminating the last stumbling-block in his way. Marok, Koll, Spanner, Brogg, and now Lanoy—they were all determined to see Quellen enmeshed. It was an unvoiced conspiracy. Silently he cursed the two hundred million jostling inhabitants of Appalachia, and wondered if he’d ever know a moment’s solitude again.
“The past won’t be changed, Lanoy,” he said. “We’ll lock you up, all right, and take away your machine, but we’ll see to it ourselves that the hoppers go back. We’re no fools, Lanoy. We’ll see to it that everything stays as it is.”
Lanoy watched him almost with pity for a moment, as one might observe a particularly rare butterfly impaled on a mounting-board.
“Is that your game, CrimeSec? Why didn’t you tell me that before? In that case I’ll have to take steps to protect myself.”
Quellen felt like hiding. “What are you going to do?”
“Suppose we talk it over privately, Quellen,” the slyster said. “I might say some things you wouldn’t want your subordinates to hear.”
Quellen glanced at Brogg. “Have you searched him?”
“He’s clean,” Brogg said. “Nothing to fear. We’ll wait in the anteroom. Come on, Mikken.”
Ponderously, Brogg stalked out of the room, followed by the silent Mikken.
WITH the occupants of the room numbering just two, Quellen moved to cut down the oxy vent.
“Leave it up, Quellen,” Lanoy said. “I like to breathe well at government expense.”
“What’s your game?” Quellen asked. He was angry; Lanoy was a completely vicious creature who Offended Quellen’s pride and dignity.
“I’ll be blunt with you, CrimeSec,” the slyster said. “I want my freedom, and I want to continue in business. I like it that way. That’s what I want. You want to arrest me and take over my business. That’s what you want. Right?”
“Yes.”
“Now in a situation like that we have an interplay of mutually exclusive desires. So the stronger of the two forces wins—all the time. I’m stronger, and so you’ll have to let me go and forget all about the investigation.”
“Who says you’re stronger, Lanoy?”
“I’m strong because you’re weak. I know a lot of things about you, Quellen. I know how you hate crowds and like fresh air and open spaces. These are pretty awkward idiosyncrasies to live with in a world like ours, aren’t they?”
“Go on,” said Quellen. He cursed Brogg silently—no one else could have revealed his secret to Lanoy.
“So you’re going to let me walk out of here, or else you’ll find yourself back in a Class Twelve or Ten unit. You won’t like it much there, CrimeSec. You’ll have to share a room, and you may not like your roommate, but there’ll be nothing you can do. And when you have a room-mate, you won’t be free to run away. He’ll report you.”
“What do you mean, run away?” Quellen’s voice was little more than a husky whisper.
“I mean run away to Africa, Quellen.”
That was it, Quellen thought. Now it’s over; Brogg’s sold me down the river. With Lanoy in possession of Quellen’s secret, Quellen was completely in the little slyster’s power.
“I hate to do this to you, Quellen. You’re a pretty good sort, caught in a world you didn’t make and don’t especially like. But it’s either you or me, and you know who always wins in deals like that.”
Check and mate.
“Go ahead,” Quellen whispered. “Get moving.”
“I knew you’d see it my way,” Lanoy said. “I’ll leave now. You don’t interfere with me, and Koll won’t ever know about your little shack.”
“Get out,” Quellen said.
Lanoy got up, saluted Quellen, and slipped out through the door.
CHAPTER IV
AS LANOY left, Koll entered. Quellen, his face in his hands, saw Koll out of the corner of one eye and thought for a moment that it was Lanoy returning. Then he looked up.
“I thought I’d have a look at your slyster,” Koll said. “But I see he’s not around.”
“I sent him inside,” Quellen said weakly.
“I’ll check,” said Koll. “I’m quite curious about him.” He left, and Brogg entered.
“Have a nice chat, CrimeSec?” Brogg asked, smiling. As always, the fat man’s forehead was strung with a row of perspiration-beads.
“Very nice, thank you.” Quellen looked imploringly at his assistant. If only he could be left alone for a few moments!
“He doesn’t seem to be here any more, CrimeSec. I had a few questions for your friend Lanoy, but I can’t find him.”
“I don’t know where he went to, Brogg.”
“Are you sure, now, CrimeSec? Where is he, Quellen?” he said maliciously.
“I don’t know.” It was the first time Brogg had dropped the honorific in addressing Quellen. “Go away.”
Brogg smiled slyly and left, closing the door with care. Quellen sat in his pneumochair, shaking his head from side to side. He was in for it now. If he failed to produce Lanoy, they’d have his neck. If he recaptured the little slyster, Lanoy would give the show away. Either way they had him.
He tiptoed through the front office, where Brogg glared at him with evident interest, stepped out into the crowded street, and caught the first quickboat back to his apartment. It was good to be alone again. He wandered around aimlessly for a moment, and then walked over to face the stat.
All he had to do was step through it and he’d be back in Africa, by the side of the twisting stream and the crocodiles. No more job, but they’d never find him, and he could spend the rest of his days peacefully.
No good, he thought dismally. It wasn’t safe, with Brogg and Lanoy knowing. Between the two of them, they’d ferret him out quickly enough. Africa held no security.
Besides, he felt a strange new feeling growing in him—a feeling that he was put upon, that he was a sort of martyr to overcrowding. He thrust his hands in his pocket and stood before the stat, revolving in his mind the implications of this new concept. A world he never made, Lanoy had said.
All guilt dissolved. Let Koll unravel the mess to suit himself, Quellen thought.
IT WAS done.
There was a swirling and a twisting, and Quellen felt as if he had been turned inside-out and disembowelled. He was floating on a purple cloud high above some indistinct terrain, and he was falling.
He dropped, heels over head, and landed in a scrambled heap on a long green carpet. He lay there for a moment or two, just holding on to the ground.
A handful of the carpet tore off in his fist. He looked at it with a puzzled expression on his face.
Grass.
The dean smell of the air hit him next, almost as a physical shock. It smelled like a room with full oxy, but this was outdoors.
Quellen gathered himself together and stood up. The grassy carpet extended in all directions, and in front of him there was a great thicket of trees.
He had seen trees in Africa. There were none in Appalachia. He looked. A small gray bird came out on the overhanging branch of the nearest tree and began to chirp, unafraid, at Quellen. He smiled.
He wondered how long Koll and Brogg would search for him, and whether Brogg would cope with Lanoy. He hoped not; Brogg was a scoundrel, and Lanoy, despite his slyster habits, was a gentleman.
Quellen began to move toward the forest. He would have to locate a stream and build a house next to it, he decided. He could make the house as big as he wanted.
He felt no guilt. He had been a misfit, thrown into a world he could only hate and which could only ensnarl him. Now he had his chance; it was all up to him.
Two deer came bounding out of the forest. Quellen stood aghast. He had never seen animals that size. Happily, they skipped off into the distance.
Quellen’s heart began to sing as he filled his lungs with the sweet air. Marok, Koll, Spanner, Brogg. They began to fade and blur. Good old Lanoy, he thought. He’d kept his word after all.
The world is mine, Quellen thought. So now I’m a hopper, too—taking the longest hop of all.
A tall, red-skinned man emerged from the forest and stood near a tree, regarding Quellen gravely. He was dressed in a leather belt, a pair of sandals, and nothing else, and in his hair was a decorative feather. The red-skinned man studied Quellen for a moment and then raised his arm in a gesture Quellen could not fail to interpret. A warm feeling of comradeship glowed in Quellen.
Smiling at last, Quellen went forward to meet him, palm upraised.
Sound Decision
Usually, Man acts on the basis of “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” But when crossing it means deliberately ordering the annihilation of 180 human beings, and no policy has been established . . . who has the courage to cross the bridge first?
There are millions of laws
legislators have spoken;
A handful the Creator sent.
The former are being continually
broken;
The latter can’t even be bent.”
—David Gordon
The Ballad of Ways and Means
What happened to the space liner Martian Queen was, on the surface of it, highly improbable. For a velocity vector to exactly cancel out an acceleration is something that no one in his right mind would imagine happening accidentally, and certainly no sane gambler would bet on its probability, no matter what the odds.
But yet, if you inspect the picture a bit more closely, it becomes readily apparent that any given incident is highly improbable. The unfertilized egg, after all, has a few hundred million spermatozoa to choose from; what are the odds that you will be you?
It’s futile, however, to compute the probability of an event after the event has already taken place. You might come up with figures that proved it didn’t happen, and in the realm of cause and effect expost facto legislation is worthless.
The statistics were against it—but it happened.
The Martian Queen was a luxury liner of some five hundred metric tons, belonging to Barr Spaceways. She was, at the time, making a “short-run” orbit from Mars to Earth, carrying a hundred and fifty passengers and a crew of thirty, including stewards.
Just exactly what went wrong with the drivers isn’t known or knowable; the four men who might have known were dead within seconds after it happened. There are several things that could have caused the disaster—an accident which, except for the level-thinking of one man, might have caused the deaths of many more than the mere handful who died in a sudden blaze of light.
I
“How much longer?” snapped Mrs. Natalie Ledbetter. She looked round-headed and wattled like a turtle; her words snapped out and were snapped off at the end, as though she begrudged the question mark at the end of an inquiring sentence.
“A few hours yet, Mrs. Ledbetter,” said Parksel with the infinite patience of a man who has borne more than his share and is willing to bear more indefinitely—as long as it pays.
Mrs. Ledbetter pulled a cigarette out of a gleaming platinum case, struck it, and drew in a lungful of pungent smoke. “I hate spaceships,” she said. “It’s not the crowded little cabins; it’s not that there’s nothing to do; it’s not those—”
She scowled at the gently sighing air intake which seemed to scoop the tobacco smoke out of the room and carry it out of sight. “No. I have plenty to do; I can keep in touch with my directors on Earth and Mars. No. The thing that bothers me is the feeling that I’m on a rollercoaster. I rode on one of those things once—just once. It’s a penned-in feeling, a knowledge that you can’t get off. That’s what I’d like to do! Get off this thing! Get a breath of fresh air. But there isn’t even any stale air out there!” She waved a hand straight down, toward the outer hull of the ship.
Parksel was a big, heavy man with a look on his face that was neither boredom nor idiocy, but an expression of blank acquiescence, revealing nothing whatever of the workings of the mind behind the face. As a combination bodyguard, and private secretary, he left little to be desired, insofar as Mrs. Ledbetter was concerned. He was well-paid and had been told that he was mentioned in her will—provided she did not die by violence. He wasn’t particularly concerned over that. Even Mrs. Ledbetter’s tough old frame didn’t have much longer to go; she was a hundred and nine, and beginning to show it The gerontologists had her held together like a carefully-articulated and highly valuable fossil.
“Get out the chessmen, Parksel,” she said. “And mind you don’t walk into that queen-knight trap like you did last time.”
“Yes, Mrs. Ledbetter.” He walked across the small cabin and got out the set. After arranging the ivory pieces on the table, he looked up at her. “It’s your move first, I think.”
“Yours,” she said testily. “I took you with white last time.”
He reached out a hand just as the speaker blared:
Your attention please! In three minutes, the gyros will begin to cut down the spin on the ship. We have to stop the spin around the longitudinal axis in order to apply thrust along it for deceleration. Please get into your bunks and fasten your safety belts. You will be warned again in tivo minutes.
“Damn!” said Natalie Ledbetter.
Without a word, Parksel leaned forward and began scooping up the precious carven antiques and restoring them to their plush-lined niches, inwardly happy. The musty, oppressive smell of the old woman was starting to bother him, and he was glad to get away from the table.
Still, he thought, it’s a living.
George MacBride stood listening to the announcement, then grinned down at his wife. “You heard what the man said, honey—back to bed.”
Marian MacBride’s pleasant face assumed an impish look of pseudoshock. “George!”
MacBride looked innocent. “That’s what the man up there said. It wasn’t my idea. I’m not captain of this tub.” The grin did nothing to soften the angles in his face; his head and features looked as though they had been carved in mahogany by an expert sculptor who, unfortunately, had had to use a lumberman’s axe for the job. He was of average height and built like a wrestler with a slight paunch. At forty-five, he considered the paunch more or less excusable.
Marian MacBride was ten years younger, and could pass for thirty easily, or even twenty-eight. Her face was round, soft, and glowing with vitality where it lacked mere prettiness. “It’s too bad it had to end so soon,” she said gently. “It was such a wonderful trip.”
MacBride walked over and patted her on the shoulder. “Well go again. Maybe Venus next time. After all, Breckmann’s Incorporated sends only its best men out. Meaning me, naturally.”
Marian smiled. “Sure. But are they going to let you take me? This is your fifth trip. It’s my first. And probably my last.”
“But, honey—”
She shook her head. “You don’t kid me, Georgie-Porgie. You had to pull every wire you could get your hands on to get the company to pay for my passage to space. They’d never do it twice.”
MacBride looked thoughtful. “Well . . . we could save the money—”
Marian walked over to the bunk and lay down. “Don’t be silly, George. If you think I’m going to save money for a second trip, you’re crazy. For a first one . . . well, I might. But I’ve had my fling now, and I’m not going to toss away your salary for fun. If I never go again, I’ll still remember this one.”
MacBride’s face suddenly beamed with pleasure and pride. “Honey, you’re wonderful. And just for that, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. You remember that get-together at Old Man Feld’s place? Yeah? Well, the Old Man said that he thought it was fine that I’d brought you along. Said he thought it was good politics for a sales engineer to bring his wife. He’s going to make a recommendation to Breckmann in Austria.”
Marian sat bolt upright. “George!” She blinked, as if there were a possibility of tears. “That’s what you’ve been working on! Those group-psychology courses! That—”
“That’s right.” He nodded happily. “I—”
Your attention please! In one minute, the gyros will begin to cut down the rotation of the ship. The gravity will drop to zero in twenty-one minutes. Please strap yourselves in your bunks. A steward will check you shortly.
“Comfortable, darling baby?” asked Fred Armbruster, as he looked solicitously at his pretty wife.
Ruby smiled across the space that separated the two bunks. “Uh-huh. I’ll be all right, sweetheart.”
“Sure you will, baby duck. You didn’t feel too bad during the takeoff, did you?”
“No,” she lied. “I’ll be all right.”
Fred Armbruster was lean and tall and rich and in love. Ruby had been deathly sick every time the gravity switched, even though she thought the rest of the trip was simply wonderful. Maybe, Fred thought, I could get her mind on that—
“It’s been a wonderful trip, hasn’t it?” he asked.
“Best honeymoon a girl could ask for,” she said sincerely. “I’d never thought Mars could have been beautiful. I’d always pictured it as a dried-up, nearly airless ball of clay. But the purple sky and the red-and-yellow desert—” Her voice trailed off.
