Assignment in Tomorrow Page 7

  He was decorated again and given the battlewagon of an ailing four-striper.

  Without orders he touched down on the Soviet side of Io, led out a landing party of marines and bluejackets, cut through two regiments of Soviet infantry, and returned to his battle-wagon with prisoners: the top civil and military administrators of Soviet Io.

  They discussed him nervously aboard the flagship.

  “He has a mystical quality, Admiral. His men would follow him into an atomic furnace. And—and I almost believe he could bring them through safely if he wanted to.” The laugh was nervous.

  “He doesn’t look like much. But when he turns on the charm—watch out!”

  “He’s—he’s a winner. Now I wonder what I mean by that?”

  “I know what you mean. They turn up every so often. People who can’t be stopped. People who have everything. Napoleons. Alexanders. Stalins. Up from nowhere.”

  “Suleiman. Hitler. Folsom I. Genghis Khan.”

  “Well, let’s get it over with.”

  They tugged at their gold-braided jackets and signalled the honor guard.

  Grayson was piped aboard, received another decoration and another speech. This time he made a speech in return.

  President Folsom XXV, not knowing what else to do, had summoned his cabinet. “Well?” he rasped at the Secretary of Defense.

  Steiner said with a faint shrug: “Mr. President, there is nothing to be done. He has the fleet, he has the broadcasting facilities, he has the people.”

  “People!” snarled the President. His finger stabbed at a button and the wall panels snapped down to show the Secret Servicemen standing in their niches. The finger shot tremulously out at Steiner. “Kill that traitor!” he raved.

  The chief of the detail said uneasily: “Mr. President, we were listening to Grayson before we came on duty. He says he’s de facto President now——”

  “Kill him! Kill him!”

  The chief went doggedly on: “—and we liked what he had to say about the Republic and he said citizens of the Republic shouldn’t take orders from you and he’d relieve you——”

  The President fell back.

  Grayson walked in, wearing his plain ensign’s uniform and smiling faintly. Admirals and four-stripers flanked him.

  The chief of the detail said: “Mr. Grayson! Are you taking over?”

  The man in the ensign’s uniform said gravely: “Yes. And just call me ‘Grayson,’ please. The titles come later. You can go now.”

  The chief gave a pleased grin and collected his detail. The rather slight, youngish man who had something wrong with one arm was in charge—complete charge.

  Grayson said: “Mr. Folsom, you are relieved of the presidency. Captain, take him out and—” He finished with a whimsical shrug. A portly four-striper took Folsom by one arm. Like a drugged man the deposed president let himself be led out.

  Grayson looked around the table. “Who are you gentlemen?”

  They felt his magnetism, like the hum when you pass a power station.

  Steiner was the spokesman. “Grayson,” he said soberly, “we were Folsom’s Cabinet. However, there is more that we have to tell you. Alone, if you will allow it.”

  “Very well, gentlemen.” Admirals and captains backed out, looking concerned.

  Steiner said: “Grayson, the story goes back many years. My predecessor, William Malvern, determined to overthrow the regime, holding that it was an affront to the human spirit. There have been many such attempts. All have broken up on the rocks of espionage, terrorism and opinion-control—the three weapons which the regime holds firmly in its hands.

  “Malvern tried another approach than espionage versus espionage, terrorism versus terrorism and opinion-control versus opinion-control. He determined to use the basic fact that certain men make history: that there are men born to be mould-breakers. They are the Phillips of Macedon, the Napoleons, Stalins and Hitlers, the Suleimans—the adventurers. Again and again they flash across history, bringing down an ancient empire, turning ordinary soldiers of the line into unkillable demons of battle, uprooting cultures, breathing new life into moribund peoples.

  “There are common denominators among all the adventurers. Intelligence, of course. Other things are more mysterious but are always present. They are foreigners. Napoleon the Corsican. Hitler the Austrian. Stalin the Georgian. Phillip the Macedonian. Always there is an Oedipus complex. Always there is physical deficiency. Napoleon’s stature. Stalin’s withered arm—and yours. Always there is a minority disability, real or fancied.

  “This is a shock to you, Grayson, but you must face it. You were manufactured.

  “Malvern packed the cabinet with the slyest double-dealers he could find and they went to work. Eighty-six infants were planted on the outposts of the Republic in simulated family environments. Your mother was not your mother but one of the most brilliant actresses ever to drop out of sight on Earth.

  Your intelligence-heredity was so good that we couldn’t turn you down for lack of a physical deficiency. We withered your arm with gamma radiation. I hope you will forgive us. There was no other way.

  “Of the eighty-six you are the one that worked. Somehow the combination for you was minutely different from all the other combinations, genetically or environmentally, and it worked. That is all we were after. The mould has been broken, you know now what you are. Let come whatever chaos is to come; the dead hand of the past no longer lies on——”

  Grayson went to the door and beckoned; two captains came in. Steiner broke off his speech as Gravson said to them:

  “These men deny my godhood. Take them out and——” He finished with a whimsical shrug.

  “Yes, your divinity,” said the captains, without a trace of humor in their voices.

  The Adventurer by C. M. Kornbluth. Copyright, 1953, by Space Publications, Inc.; reprinted by permission of the author.

  RAY BRADBURY

  There was a time when the by-line of Ray Bradbury was in almost every issue of almost every science-fiction magazine; but a new era is upon us, and now Bradbury fans, in their countless thousands, must turn to such periodicals as Esquire and Collier’s, or to the bookstores where The Martian Chronicles, The Golden Apples of the Sun or Fahrenheit 451 are displayed. Fortunately for anthologists, however, there’s still Bradbury in those old magazines; and hard work with pick and shovel can still turn up nuggets like——

  Subterfuge

  It was Tuesday morning, June 11th, in the year 2087.

  Down the empty streets of Phoenix a breeze stirred softly. Nothing else in sight moved except a small Scottie dog that came to an alert while padding across the avenue.

  The dog heard footsteps coming. It scampered in the direction of the sound, yelping eagerly.

  From far away and far above a faint echo sounded, rising and fading. Hanging poised in the sky like silver needles were I a dozen alien projectiles. They hovered in a warm, humming motion over the quiet town.

  The deep fabric of silence was slashed down the middle. Fat legs pounded the open avenue. An alien jolted heavily through the warm hush, a swarm of military men in his wake.

  Aram of Venus stalked to the City Hall, strode long-leggedly up a silent rampway. There he paused and cursed the deathlike tranquillity that had clasped the city.

  “Is this the fruit of invasion?” bellowed Armu. “Is there no city left alive? Are they all like New York, Chicago and Phoenix?”

  Echo voices answered back in mockery from the stone faces of tall buildings. All like New York, New York, New York. All like New York!

  And then, a more subtle mockery, a voiceless teasing, You thought to conquer, Armu. But Earth saw you coming and escaped. How did Earth escape, Armu? How did Earth escape?

  The Venusian glowered at his generals, as if to make them responsible.

  “We’ll tell you, Armu—we, the voices of two billion. Earth committed suicide!”

  The bitter sound of those words, the keen knife of reality, impaled Armu. His
carefully integrated plan of invasion, to capture the women of Earth as breeders of the new Venusian culture, crumbled into dry rot and pestilence.

  Three thousand star-ships idled above Earth, awaiting orders from Armu.

  The orders he would be forced to give had a poisonous flavor.

  Where were the fighting Earthlings—the men of battles and bullets and soft white flesh? Why had they given up so easily, preferring death shrouds to lightninglike war to the end?

  Armu had so very much expected a nice, bloody Armageddon.

  Armu’s second-in-command gagged on the thin air. “Earth is no good to us this way,” he choked out. “We don’t want its cold climate, its naked atmosphere, its bad soil. We wanted productive protoplasm—and that is self-annihilated!”

  The Venusians stood there, looking at the mute city. Dead; complete suicide. But Earthmen don’t commit suicide. They aren’t made that way. Not one man, woman or child alive—an impossible task.

  Could there have been all that horror and agony just to escape Armu?

  Looking around, one believed it. Here and there a shadow (fluttered, a cat arched its back and prowled a fence; the little Scottie dog that had scampered eagerly to investigate, thinking its master had returned, now turned tail and scuttled away .quickly at the sight of the invaders.

  Armu grumbled, “I did not think it of the Earthlings. I did not think they could do it.” He strode back down the avenue to the immense ship that was grounded in a plaza.

  “Search and keep on searching!” ordered Armu. “There must be someone alive!”

  The battle fleet of Armu jetted across the sky. It roared over a dead Earth, over dead cities, dead oceans.

  This was an entirely different globe.

  It was another world that had existed four years previously, on June nth, 2083.

  “That is, without doubt, the most trivial statement ever made before us,” said Manhardt.

  “Not only is it not trivial, it is crucial!” Harler retorted. He pressed forward against the desk, his clean, bright eyes wandering from face to face of the assembled men. “We’ve got one chance. Only one. Now-do we take it, or do we let the world die?”

  “It’s childish,” said Manhardt.

  Harler bristled, “So is the idea of an invasion, of being made slaves, of Venusians attacking to ruin the world. Good God, Manhardt, I know such things belong in books. I know. But you can’t sing away facts. You can’t whistle away weapons! My solution to the problem may sound ridiculous, but it’s the only way——”

  The conference had dragged on for weeks. Someone stood up in the back of the hall.

  “A question, please.”

  Harler nodded.

  “You have definite proof,” the man asked, “that there really will be an invasion?”

  “Yes. I tuned in on secret meetings when I was presenting myself diplomatically at the Venusian capitol. They didn’t know I heard. They didn’t know I saw certain weapons.”

  “You mentioned one weapon particularly——”

  “Yes. A weapon that can paralyze or annihilate, according to the way it is focused. It’s made from Venusian metal, which makes it impossible for us to duplicate it. They can sweep Earth with it. We’d be helpless. We have only one weapon to fight them with and that is—readjustment to a new environment. We can’t hide; we can’t run away. But we can do the unexpected. We can survive right under the nose of the invader.”

  “That sounds paradoxical. And anyway, how are you going to get the public to swallow your plan?”

  “They’ll have to. It’s nothing but adaptation, a subterfuge.”

  “You speak of mass suicide glibly, Harler.”

  “And mass suicide it will be. But planned and orderly, with reincarnation for some, the Great Sleep for others.”

  “You can’t do it!”

  “If I can’t do it—the Venusians will do worse!”

  Harler was done. “It’s up to you, gentlemen. It’ll be the biggest change ever come to Earth. It means the end of luxuries and even some necessities. It means simplification of our overcomplicated lives. What will it be, gentlemen? A little—or none?”

  He sat down. Grimly he fumbled with the reports he had handed to the council of two hundred scientists and politicians from all nations.

  He remembered the day a year ago when the first Venusian ship had arrived with only six aliens on it—a diplomatic envoy. How he had gone back to Venus with them to study spaceflight problems. How he had accidentally stumbled across Venusian plans——

  But there was one point in their favor—on this day, June nth, 2083, there were no Venusian spies on Earth. Earth was working against time. She had, at the most, four years to prepare for invasion of superior forces. And Earth had the advantage of working in secrecy——

  A murmur touched the air. The president arose. “I’m calling for a vote. Either we try to fight a futile war with airplanes against spaceships, or we take the path suggested by Dr. Harler. Everyone favoring combat say Aye.”

  “Aye—aye.” A mutter went around the table—sparse, intermittent. Harler stiffened, eyes widening, as the president noted the vote.

  Then: “All in favor of Harler’s plan?”

  One man rose. “Aye.”

  A second, and a third and a fourth. Then, like grim, decided machines, all down the line, nearly every man, the council voted, “Aye—aye!”

  Fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty—and a majority!

  “The vote is carried,” said the president. He turned solemnly to Dr. Harler.

  Something gleamed on Harler’s cheek. He brushed it off as he left his chair, as he faced his fellowmen.

  He said, “You will not be sorry, gentlemen. Believe me, you will not be sorry.”

  “And so, as you hear your numbers drawn and your names called, you’ll know your places in the world of next year and the world of ten years from now——”

  The television reporter droned on. “In the capital today, Dr. William Harler declared that no more than five hundred million people will remain ‘aware and alive.’ As many more must sleep to be awakened sometime in the future, perhaps never. The others—well, the others must be sacrificed. That means that one half of the world must die to insure the existence of the remaining half.

  “A certain percentage of the population will be chosen by lottery, giving an element of fair play to the plan. But the rest, to insure intellectual and psychological stamina, will be selected scientifically for the survival of the fit.

  “This is a time of unlimited emergency. Cooperate by listening each night, and by restraining hysterical outbursts. This much is certain: the Venusians are attacking. God grant we may be ready when they arrive. Signing off!”

  It was on every lip—like honey and poison, like good and bad. There was argument, killing, acceptance, denial and ruthless insubordination. There was cooperation and sabotage. And the days rotted on the vine, dripping away into nothingness.

  What a day for Earth. The dismal hours and months that followed extended inevitably into four years. The mobilization of doctors and machines, of men and beasts, of acceptance and patience. There was a tremendous rebuilding afoot. Secret caches were made of certain new foods. Caches that would never be discovered because they were too obvious. The finest minds slaved day after day, operated surgically and manipulated mighty machines that did things to mankind never done before.

  On the television: Why We Are Fighting This Silent War.

  “Because Venusians wish to interbreed with the women of Earth, the fertility of Venus having fallen away to zero; because the combined races would produce children of horror; because all of those found sterile would be slain. Only our women would survive to live a life of terrified shame. This we cannot allow. Therefore we work—and work again.”

  The final days drew near. The battle fleets of Venus were even now gathering in the misty vapor of Venus’ atmosphere. One Venusian ship flew over Earth in reconnaissance but noticed nothing out of place—n
othing except the furious activity that had always been a part of Earth.

  Harler spoke again.

  “Tomorrow we shall know whether we succeed or fail in our mass-production subterfuge. Tomorrow will be the first change of one million experiments. And every day thereafter, in increasing numbers, up to five or ten million a day.

  “We have thought of everything. Man will reproduce himself intelligently. The question is largely one of psychological adaptation to new surroundings, arts, tastes and hungers, to new homes and new viewpoints.

  “Some have said this generation will not be able to reproduce, that intellect will not be passed on. They lie! Intellect will live. The mentality of man will live. The race of men and women will perish, but the precious ego, the power of life, will be retained in the seed we have perfected by experiment.”

  And then the furious final days when egos, brains were dissected, boxed, stored. They were the Sleepers—the slumbering brains who were no more than brains, lying inert and helpless, waiting for the day when the living ones would awaken them.

  “Five hundred million will take the brain sleep. We promise you that we shall awaken you—if we survive.”

  There was a great deal of singing and quavering laughter and tears. And then compact, hidden slumber.

  It is sad that nowhere was any of this transcribed. Not a word of print was ever laid to ink about the Change. Not a word as to the euthanasia, sleeping brains, the mysterious living ones.

  The Venusians must never know about the living ones, or Earth would be completely doomed. The living ones remained alive to keep the world ticking until the Venusians had come, seen, and gone away for good and all.

  Harler was interviewed on the television.

  Harler: “The Venusian culture, without new blood and new bodies, will die within forty years. Then we of Earth may come out of hiding!”

  Question: “Will we actually ever return?”

  Harler: “No—not for a long time, if ever. The cities must fall as they are. We can rebuild them to our needs later, after Venus and its madmen are gone.”