Assignment in Tomorrow Read online

  “I don’t use the thousand-credit note unless the natives need new loincloths,” Munger explained over his shoulder. “These fifties are a lot easier to dispose of.”

  “The hell they are,” I said. “How’d I find you?”

  “That was a mistake,” he answered testily. “The minute I’ve got enough of these made, I sell them to certain—ah—contacts of mine for fifty per cent of face value. What you caught was a sample batch one of my former contacts spent through misguided avarice.”

  “Less talk and more action,” I said. I didn’t even have to guess what had happened to his “contact” and I was impatient to see how he was going to get a tree to duplicate his money for him.

  “All right,” he said, pulling my gun out of his belt. “I used to have the natives make a loud noise, but this will be infinitely more efficient.”

  He’d folded the fifty-credit bill into a paper airplane while we’d been talking. Now he held it in his right hand, ready to launch at the tree, while he raised my gun in his left. Behind us, the murmurs among the natives cut down into silence. The tree’s big leaves rustled loudly in the silence.

  Bam! The gun went off and the folded bill flew at the tree. It sailed into the foliage.

  There was a popping noise. Followed by another. And another. More. More, infinitely more, and still more, until all I could hear was pop! pop! pop!

  The bill came sailing back out of the foliage. Right behind it came another one, and behind these came flight groups, squadrons, wings, armadas of paper airplanes that were fifty-credit notes! They scattered out in all directions from the strangely moving foliage, and sailed around over the native village.

  “Well, what do you know?” I said blankly, my mouth open. An airplane flew into it. I pulled the plane out and carefully unfolded it, staring at it with bulging eyes. It was as genuine as the day is long. All around me the natives were going crazy, running and jumping around, picking airplanes out of the air and off the ground, stuffing them into little bags they had ready.

  Munger turned around and looked at me. “Startling, isn’t it?” he asked politely.

  “Protective mimicry!” I yelled, suddenly realizing.

  He nodded. “Precisely. I discovered this tree six years ago. I was lost while attempting to evade the clutches of the law on a confidence rap. I swung an ax at the damn thing to blaze a trail, and I almost got scalped. Fifty axes came bouncing back at me.”

  “But how did anything ever develop mimicry to this extent? I’ve heard of animals and insects assuming the forms of dangerous life-forms as camouflage, but never to this degree.”

  “Search me,” Munger said. “The Eglins contacted this world centuries ago, before the Terrestrials took this federation away from them. They were great little experimenters, the Eglins.”

  “Hmm. It does look funny, just this one tree like this. Maybe it was some kind of experimental plant. It is just one tree, isn’t it?” I asked hastily.

  “Definitely. After I became buddies with the natives and set up this village here, I had them scour the jungle for another like it, but no go.”

  “Hell, one’s good enough. What a setup! You scare the tree with a loud noise, and it obliges by duplicating what it thinks is the menace. Brother!”

  “That’s what I said when those axes came at me,” Munger said. He was facing me, with fifty-credit bills settling down all around him, and now he raised my gun. “Well, Baumholtzer, it looks as though your pal didn’t bring help, after all. I’ll miss your company.”

  He began tightening on the trigger, and I started to sweat.

  Suddenly there was an outbreak of yelling on the other side of the village. A gun went off and several spears slashed through the air.

  “The cops!” Munger stood staring at the inspector and his men as they broke into the open from the edge of the jungle. “They must have sneaked up after surprising my lookouts!”

  Munger raised my gun again. “I’ll still get you, though!”

  I charged at him, hoping he’d miss the first shot.

  He didn’t fire it before I plowed into him. We rolled onto the ground and I grabbed for him, but he scrambled away. I stumbled back against the tree just as he fired and missed me.

  Well, that’s about it.

  Here we sit in the spaceport on Deneb XI, waiting for the government to get around to sending out a ship to pick us all up.

  Once Munger missed his shot, the fight was over, for obvious reasons. He didn’t stand a chance against us.

  Yeah, us. Munger and all one hundred and sixty-eight of me.

  The Frightened, Tree by Algis Budrys. Copyright, 1953, by Galaxy Publishing Corp. (under the title Protective Mimicry); reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Scott Meredith.

  H.L. GOLD

  As an editor, H.L. Gold knows few equals; witness the fact that, of the sixteen stories in this volume, seven, or all but half, appeared in his magazine, Galaxy Science Fiction—in spite of the fact that Galaxy is far the newest of the major science-fiction magazines. But Gold glitters also as a writer; after a long lay-off, his new output of fiction is beginning to emerge to delight the hearts of the fans who remember None But Lucifer, The Trouble with Water, and the brilliantly plausible short novel entitled——

  A Matter of Form

  Gilroy’s telephone bell jangled into his slumber. With his eyes grimly shut, the reporter flopped over on his side, ground his ear into the pillow and pulled the cover over his head. But the bell jarred on.

  When he blinked his eyes open and saw rain streaking the windows, he gritted his teeth against the insistent clangor and yanked off the receiver. He swore into the transmitter—not a trite blasphemy, but a poetic opinion of the sort of man who woke tired reporters at four in the morning.

  “Don’t blame me,” his editor replied after a bitter silence. “It was your idea. You wanted the case. They found another whatsit.”

  Gilroy instantly snapped awake. “They found another catatonic!”

  “Over on York Avenue near Ninety-first Street, about an hour ago. He’s down in the observation ward at Memorial.” The voice suddenly became low and confiding. “Want to know what I think, Gilroy?”

  “What?” Gilroy asked in an expectant whisper.

  “I think you’re nuts. These catatonics are nothing but tramps. They probably drank themselves into catatonia, whatever that is. After all, be reasonable, Gilroy, they’re only worth a four-line clip.”

  Gilroy was out of bed and getting dressed with one hand. “Not this time, chief,” he said confidently. “Sure, they’re only tramps, but that’s part of the story. Look . . . hey! You should have been off a couple of hours ago. What’s holding you up?”

  The editor sounded disgruntled. “Old Man Talbot. He’s seventy-six tomorrow. Had to pad out a blurb on his life.”

  “What! Wasting time whitewashing that murderer, racketeer——”

  “Take it easy, Gilroy,” the editor cautioned. “He’s got a half interest in the paper. He doesn’t bother us often.”

  “O.K. But he’s still the city’s one-man crime wave. Well, he’ll kick off soon. Can you meet me at Memorial when you quit work?”

  “In this weather?” The editor considered. “I don’t know. Your news instinct is tops, and if you think this is big—Oh, hell . . . yes!”

  Gilroy’s triumphant grin soured when he ripped his foot through a sock. He hung up and explored empty drawers for another pair.

  The street was cold and miserably deserted. The black snow was melting to grimy slush. Gilroy hunched into his coat and sloshed in the dirty sludge toward Greenwich Avenue. He was very tall and incredibly thin. With his head down into the driving swirl of rain, his coat flapping around his skinny shanks, his hands deep in his pockets, and his sharp elbows sticking away from his rangy body, he resembled an unhappy stork peering around for a fish.

  But he was far from being unhappy. He was happy, in fact, as only a man with a pet theory can be when facts begin t
o fight on his side.

  Splashing through the slush, he shivered when he thought of the catatonic who must have been lying in it for hours, unable to rise, until he was found and carried to the hospital. Poor devil! The first had been mistaken for a drunk, until the cop saw the bandage on his neck.

  “Escaped post-brain-operatives,” the hospital had reported. It sounded reasonable, except for one thing—catatonics don’t walk, crawl, feed themselves or perform any voluntary muscular action. Thus Gilroy had not been particularly surprised when no hospital or private surgeon claimed the escaped post-operatives.

  A taxi driver hopefully sighted his agitated figure through the rain. Gilroy restrained an urge to hug the hackie for rescuing him from the bitter wind. He clambered in hastily.

  “Nice night for a murder,” the driver observed conversationally.

  “Are you hinting that business is bad?”

  “I mean the weather’s lousy.”

  “Well, damned if it isn’t!” Gilroy exclaimed sarcastically. “Don’t let it slow you down, though. I’m in a hurry. Memorial Hospital, quick!”

  The driver looked concerned. He whipped the car out into the middle of the street, scooted through a light that was just an instant too slow.

  Three catatonics in a month! Gilroy shook his head. It was a real puzzler. They couldn’t have escaped. In the first place, if they had, they would have been claimed; and in the second place, it was physically impossible. And how did they acquire those neat surgical wounds on the backs of their necks, closed with two professional stitches and covered with a professional bandage? New wounds, too!

  Gilroy attached special significance to the fact that they were very poorly dressed and suffered from slight malnutrition. But what was the significance? He shrugged. It was an instinctive hunch.

  The taxi suddenly swerved to the curb and screeched to a stop. He thrust a bill through the window and got out. The night burst abruptly. Rain smashed against him in a roaring tide. He battered upwind to the hospital entrance.

  He was soaked, breathless, half-repentant for his whim in attaching importance to three impoverished catatonics. He gingerly put his hand in his clammy coat and brought out a sodden identification card.

  The girl at the reception desk glanced at it. “Oh, a newspaperman! Did a big story come in tonight?”

  “Nothing much,” he said casually. “Some poor tramp found on York and Ninety-first. Is he up in the screwball ward?”

  She scanned the register and nodded. “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “My grandson.” As he moved off, both flinched at the sound of water squishing in his shoes at each step. “I must have stepped in a puddle.”

  When he turned around in the elevator, she was shaking her head and pursing her lips maternally. Then the ground floor dropped away.

  He went through the white corridor unhesitantly. Low, horrible moans came from the main ward. He heard them with academic detachment. Near the examination room, the sound of the rising elevator stopped him. He paused, turning to see who it was.

  The editor stepped out, chilled, wet and disgusted. Gilroy reached down and caught the smaller man’s arm, guiding him silently through the door and into the examination room. The editor sighed resignedly.

  The resident physician glanced up briefly when they unobtrusively took places in the ring of internes about the bed. Without effort, Gilroy peered over the heads before him, inspecting the catatonic with clinical absorption.

  The catatonic had been stripped of his wet clothing, toweled, and rubbed with alcohol. Passive, every muscle absolutely relaxed, his eyes were loosely closed, and his mouth hung open in idiotic slackness. The dark line of removed surgical plaster showed on Ills neck. Gilroy strained to one side. The hair had been clipped. He saw part of a stitch.

  “Catatonia, doc?” he asked quietly.

  “Who are you?” the physician snapped.

  “Gilroy . . . Morning Post.”

  The doctor gazed back at the man on the bed. “It’s catatonia, all right. No trace of alcohol or inhibiting drugs. Slight malnutrition.”

  Gilroy elbowed politely through the ring of internes. “Insulin shock doesn’t work, eh? No reason why it should.”

  “Why shouldn’t it?” the doctor demanded, startled. “It always works in catatonia . . . at least, temporarily.”

  “But it didn’t in this case, did it?” Gilroy insisted brusquely.

  The doctor lowered his voice defeatedly. “No.”

  “What’s this all about?” the editor asked in irritation. “What’s catatonia, anyhow? Paralysis, or what?”

  “Its the last stage of schizophrenia, or what used to be called dementia praecox,” the physician said. “The mind revolts against responsibility and searches for a period in its existence when it was not troubled. It goes back to childhood and finds that there are childish cares; goes further and comes up against infantile worries; and finally ends up in a prenatal mental state.”

  “But it’s a gradual degeneration,” Gilroy stated. “Long before the complete mental decay, the victim is detected and put in an asylum. He goes through imbecility, idiocy, and after years of slow degeneration, winds up refusing to use his muscles or brain.”

  The editor looked baffled. “Why should insulin shock pull him out?”

  “It shouldn’t!” Gilroy rapped out.

  “It should!” the physician replied angrily. “Catatonia is negative revolt. Insulin drops the sugar content of the blood to the point of shock. The sudden hunger jolts the catatonic out of his passivity.”

  “That’s right.” Gilroy said incisively. “But this isn’t catatonia! It’s mighty close to it, but you never heard of a catatonic who didn’t refuse to carry on voluntary muscular action. There’s no salivary retention! My guess is that it’s paralysis.”

  “Caused by what?” the doctor asked bitingly.

  “That’s for you to say. I’m not a physician. How about the wound at the base of the skull?”

  “Nonsense! It doesn’t come within a quarter inch of the motor nerve. It’s ceria flexibilitas . . . waxy flexibility.” He raised the victim’s arm and let go. It sagged slowly. “If it were general paralysis, it would have affected the brain. He’d have been dead.”

  Gilroy lifted his bony shoulders and lowered them. “You’re on the wrong track, doc,” he said quietly. “The wound has a lot to do with his condition, and catatonia can’t be duplicated by surgery. Lesions can cause it, but the degeneration would still be gradual. And catatonics can’t walk or crawl away. He was deliberately abandoned, same as the others.”

  “Looks like you’re right, Gilroy,” the editor conceded. “There’s something fishy here. All three of them had the same wounds?”

  “In exactly the same place, at the base of the skull and to the left of the spinal column. Did you ever see anything so helpless? Imagine him escaping from a hospital, or even a private surgeon!”

  The physician dismissed the internes and gathered up his instruments preparatory to harried flight. “I don’t see the motive. All three of them were undernourished, poorly clad; they must have been living in sub-standard conditions. Who would want to harm them?”

  Gilroy bounded in front of the doctor, barring his way. “But it doesn’t have to be revenge! It could be experimentation!”

  “To prove what?”

  Gilroy looked at him quizzically. “You don’t know?”

  “How should I?”

  The reporter clapped his drenched hat on backward and darted to the door. “Come on, chief. We’ll ask Moss for a theory.”

  “You won’t find Dr. Moss here,” the physician said. “He’s off at night, and tomorrow, I think, he’s leaving the hospital.”

  Gilroy stopped abruptly. “Moss . . . leaving the hospital!” he repeated in astonishment. “Did you hear that, chief? He’s a dictator, a slave driver and a louse. But he’s probably the greatest surgeon in America. Look at that. Stories breaking all around you, and you’re whitewashing Old
Man Talbot’s murderous life!” His coat bellied out in the wash of his swift, gaunt stride. “Three catatonics found lying on the street in a month. That never happened before. They can’t walk or crawl, and they have mysterious wounds at the base of their skulls. Now the greatest surgeon in the country gets kicked out of the hospital he built up to first place. And what do you do? You sit in the office and write stories about what a swell guy Talbot is underneath his slimy exterior!”

  The resident physician was relieved to hear the last of that relentlessly incisive, logical voice trail down the corridor. But he gazed down at the catatonic before leaving the room.

  He felt less certain that it was catatonia. He found himself quoting the editor’s remark—there definitely was something fishy there!

  But what was the motive in operating on three obviously destitute men and abandoning them; and how had the operation caused a state resembling catatonia?

  In a sense, he felt sorry that Dr. Moss was going to be discharged. The cold, slave-driving dictator might have given a good theory. That was the physician’s scientific conscience speaking. Inside, he really felt that anything was worth getting away from that silkily mocking voice and the delicately sneering mouth.

  At Fifty-fifth Street, Wood came to the last Sixth Avenue employment office. With very little hope, he read the crudely chalked signs. It was an industrial employment agency. Wood had never been inside a factory. The only job he could fill was that of apprentice upholsterer, ten dollars a week; but he was thirty-two years old and the agency would require five dollars’ immediate payment.

  He turned away dejectedly, fingering the three dimes in his pocket. Three dimes—the smallest, thinnest American coins——

  “Anything up there, Mac?”

  “Not for me,” Wood replied wearily. He scarcely glanced at the man.

  He took a last glance at his newspaper before dropping it to the sidewalk. That was the last paper he’d buy, he resolved; with his miserable appearance he couldn’t answer advertisements. But his mind clung obstinately to Gilroy’s article. Gilroy had described the horror of catatonia. A notion born of defeat made it strangely attractive to Wood. At least, the catatonics were fed and housed. He wondered if catatonia could be simulated——