Collected fiction, p.55
Collected Fiction, page 55
Baker turned, threw a vicious punch at Argyle’s chin. The old-timer wasn’t expecting that, and went down with a thud. Meanwhile the Tank was swinging into action; hormones flooded into its blood stream.
Kathleen shrank back against a tree, watching with wide eyes as Argyle got up, a grim smile on his scared face, and gripped Baker’s collar as the star tried to crawl into the hollow tree. Baker, writhed, twisted free; sent another blow at his opponent’s face. But Argyle’s head jerked aside, and the punch slid past harmlessly.
The two men grappled. The Tank’s snaky head flashed down, dug up a fountain of dirt where the fighters had been a moment before. The monster remained unmoving for a space, though its eyes rolled sideward to examine its prey.
The knapsack on Argyle’s back handicapped him, and he was no longer a young man. But experience had toughened him, so the struggle was fairly even. Kathleen had no weapon. She hovered above the two men, waiting for an opportunity to snatch a gun from its holster:
The Tank turned; once more its gaping jaws moved down toward Argyle and Baker. Kathleen screamed warning just in time. They rolled aside, still fighting; the huge jaws ripped cloth from Argyle’s back. The monster froze, glaring. Its lolling tongue writhed grotesquely.
Just then Tony Quade came running along the road and saw what was happening. With an angry curse he tore the two men apart, snatched a gun from Baker’s belt. The familiar touch of the cold metal was heartening.
With two well-placed bullets he blew off the Tank’s head.
The monster did not seem discommoded. It stood quietly for a time, the bleeding, raw stump erect, and then turned to wander blindly off, knocking down trees as it proceeded. Luckily it headed in the opposite direction from the camp.
LOUD, hungry noises spoke of the approach of other creatures. Quade gripped Kathleen’s arm, snapped a curt command at the two men. Quickly they raced along the road. Not until they were safely within the electrified barrier did Quade speak again. Then it was only to swear at Kathleen.
“What the devil are you doing here? You ought to have more sense! These creatures—”
Ignoring his anger, Kathleen swiftly explained what had happened. Quade whistled.
“That’s nice! You say Kenilworth’s trying to fix the generator? Let’s—see!”
He hurried to the televisor, spun the dials experimentally. For a moment there was no sound. Then a low humming came, and a face, blurred and wavering, swam into view. They saw Kenilworth’s face, strained and smeared with dirt.
“Quade!” the biologist yelped. “For God’s sake! I’ve been trying to reach you for ten minutes! Are you okay?” Kathleen broke in. “We just got here—Blaze and Neal and I. I told Tony what’s happened. Is the power on?”
“Yes. Try a keyboard. The power’s on full.”
Quade found a control board, pressed several keys. He said into the televisor, “It’d better work. Something’s coming this way—in a hurry!”
In fact, several things were coming. To be exact, there were two Plutonian devils, about a dozen of the vicious, tentacled flying lashes, and a number of the deadly snakes. They advanced to the electrified fence, hesitated, apparently sensing its menace—perhaps through some obscure vibration—and waited. Argyle got out his guns. Neal Baker rushed into the hut and remained there.
“What’s wrong?” On the televisor screen Kenilworth’s thin lips were white.
“As near as I can figure out,” Quade said slowly, “you’ve made the monsters too damn real. Their brains are in complete control. The receiving apparatus in the brains isn’t strong enough to overcome the creatures’ natural neural impluses. All it does is irritate them—and they’ve located the source of that irritation. They’re heading this way—lots of them.”
Loud bellows and crashings in the shining forest spoke of the advance of a horde.” Several more monsters came toward the barrier and halted—waiting. They scattered, and from the trees marched a gigantic, headless thing that rolled forward brainlessly, insensitive alike to the electric shock of the fence and the bullets that Argyle sent at it. It was the Tank, full of hormones and rushing forward with insane purposelessness.
It smashed down the fence, crushed a lash under one stumpy foreleg, and hurried on, demolishing the hut as it passed. Almost torn to bits by Argyle’s bullets, it went through the other side of the fence and disappeared into the forest. Through the gap in the barrier surged a horde of monsters.
The snakes were deadliest. Argyle blasted them out of existence, but they poured from the forest in a never-ending stream. The lashes leaped and sprang to meet destruction. The huger monsters came forward to death, heedless of all but the irritation within their brains that drew them toward its source.
QUADE was frantically working on an instrument board.
“Kenilworth,” he said breathlessly, “haven’t you any more power? I can t—”
“Wish I had a ray-gun,” Argyle flung over his shoulder. “I’d bum ’em to—”
Quade’s eyes widened. He sent a swift glance at the monsters, pouring through the gap in the fence to be blasted to nothingness by Argyle’s bullets. One of the guns clicked on an empty magazine, was flung aside.
“Kenilworth!” Quade cried. “What’s the range of your waves? You told me—”
“Forty meters to seventy millionths of a centimeter. I’m using ten meters—
“Get it down!” Quade’s fingers were playing over the keyboard. “Down! Below three-hundredths of a centimeter. Heat waves, Kenilworth—heat waves!”
The televisor screen went blank. Nothing happened for a second A lash got past Argyle, bounded toward Kathleen. Quade blew it to bits.
Then, quite suddenly, the monsters died. It was unspectacular. All of them hesitated, made a few brief, tentative motions of retreat—and died. The lashes collapsed in a wormy huddle of tentacles. The monstrous Plutonian devils simply lay down and stayed there. The serpents coiled and twisted and stopped moving.
All over the Plutonian forest set the bellow and roar of life died. Two minutes after the first lash had collapsed a great hush brooded over the cavern. The robots were dead.
“Whew!” Argyle exclaimed. “Are they—finished?” He was gasping for breath, blood-smeared.
“Yeah,” Quade said. “Heat did it. Kenilworth broadcast heat waves, the receivers simply got red-hot—and fried their brains to a crisp. Lucky the receivers were adjusted to a wide range!”
A muffled groan came from the wreckage of the hut. Neal Baker crawled out, unhurt but vociferous.
After a frantic glance around he suddenly realized that the monsters were no longer a menace. He listened while Quade spoke briefly on the televisor to Kenilworth.
“Send but a car right away,” Quade finished. “We’ll—”
Baker peered over his shoulder. “Send a photographer, too,” he suggested.
Then he found. Argyle’s discarded gun and practiced various, poses with the dead monsters until the car arrived. The others left him there, arguing with a cameraman who wanted a few pictures of the robots without Baker brandishing his pistol in the foreground.
CHAPTER VI
INTERIOR: Fronton’s Mercurian Theatre. Night.
THE System’s greatest theatre was a blaze of van-colored brilliance. Doom World was having its premiere, after several sneak previews from which the cast had been rigorously excluded. Neal Baker was there, resplendent and aloof in a box. Von Zorn was there, his toothbrush mustache carefully waxed.
Blaze Argyle and Kathleen and Quade were there, and on Kathleen’s lap was Caruso, bright-eyed and interested. Apparently the singing frog had not been a robot; he had been a genuine mutation born to one of the monsters. So he had escaped the general holocaust in the Plutonian set, and Kathleen had discovered him the next day wandering forlornly about the cavern.
Somebody made a speech. Somebody else sang, and Caruso vigorously joined in the chorus with such gusto that an usher hastily removed him.
Blaze Argyle was rather happy. Since his decline in films he had never expected to see his own face on the screen again, and now a little thrill of expectation went through him. Of course he wouldn’t get screen credit. Neal Baker had promised to see to that, for Argyle had made a lifelong enemy of the crooner.
It didn’t matter. Naturally Baker was co-star, and his word was law, even though he ordered the cutting crew to slice out all Argyle’s good scenes. That was the way it had been done in the old days. When Kathleen had learned what Baker intended, she had gone off to quarrel with Von Zorn, but she hadn’t told Argyle the result of that interview. Well, he could guess.
Kathleen moved closer to Quade and squeezed his arm, and he returned the pressure.
“Hi, Fathead,” he said.
She made a horrible face at him.
“Hi,” she returned.
Quade quirked up one eyebrow.
“So you turned down an invitation from the great Neal Baker and came to the premiere with me instead, eh? Afraid you’d get your block knocked off if you hadn’t?”
“Go chase a meteor,” Kathleen said, and feeling somehow that the words were inadequate, she pinched her companion heartily. Quade merely chuckled. Kathleen was herself again.
VON ZORN twisted in his seat to stare at Argyle. Then he glanced up at Baker’s box, and a malicious little smile dwelt on the film magnate’s simian face. Baker saw the look and, misunderstanding, bowed and grinned genially.
With a fanfare of trumpets the curtains parted. The screen lit up with the credit title:
NINE PLANETS FILMS, INC.,
Presents
BLAZE ARGYLE
and
KATHLEEN GREGG
in
DOOM WORLD
with Neal Baker
THE DISINHERITED
A short story about one who watches over development.
THE man worked swiftly and mechanically, a grotesque figure in his protective armor and transparent helmet. He was alone in the bare lead-sheathed room, seated before a conveyer belt, his gloved fingers making delicate adjustments in the enigmatic mechanisms that moved into place under the microscope before him. There was a stinging smart in his eyes, a dull pain he would not be able to relieve until his work was done.
Fifteen years ago a soldier had taken him to this grim chamber far underground and instructed him in his duties. Ever since then he had known the dull monotony of a machine’s existence, not even comprehending the nature of his work. In 2530 A. D. the Helots—the worker class—had lost all knowledge of science, and so the man could not understand that the subtly powerful bombardment of radium was destroying his sight and his life. But the horror of darkness that lay before him he realized, for his father, too, had worked in a room similar to this.
Presently a bell sounded through the audiophone within his helmet, and the man arose as the conveyer belt slowed and stopped. Sighing, he removed the armor. Under the cool radiance of carbon-dioxide lamps he stood revealed as a thick-bodied youth whose seamed, harsh face seemed far older than his twenty-eight years. A loose, sleeveless tunic, shorts, and sandals, were all the clothing necessary in the warm atmosphere within the City of the Lords. He stepped out into a low-ceilinged corridor and trudged toward an elevator.
Five minutes later he thrust open the door of his apartment, a cheerless room in the Helots’ dormitory section. With no trace of expression on his stolid face he crossed to a low couch and dropped upon it in the utter relaxation of weariness. But he sat up quickly as a girl entered.
She, too, wore the sexless Helot uniform. Her face and close-clipped dark hair seemed drab and uninteresting, but the mask of impassivity dropped from it as she came toward the man, and made it alive and attractive.
“You’re tired, Ron,” she said. “A hard day?”
Ron Carver shrugged. “I’m strong enough for it, I guess. But my eyes ache——”
The girl went to a compartment in the wall and brought out a vial. She pressed Carver back on the couch and brushed his eyes with the soothing liquid as she talked.
“Must it go on forever?” Her voice was very bitter. “Won’t they transfer you?”
“Why should they, Morna? It’s easy to get new Helots to replace the others.” He sat up again, gripping her wrists. “Morna, I had another warning today.
About——”
“A—a child?”
“Yes. We’ve been mated for a year now, and—well, you know their laws. So many Helots annually—no more, no less. They want——”
Morna dropped the vial unnoticed on the floor and stared dully at nothing. “No. I won’t bear a child. Not even your child, Ron—to this. Slavery. No!”
WITHOUT expression Carver said, “The alternative is a re-mating. Some other Helot will have you.”
“No,” the girl said again. “We can die if necessary.”
“You know I can’t. There’s Ardno out there——”
Morna held up a warning hand, her face frightened. The girl’s lips formed unspoken words. “Not here. They may be listening.”
She picked up the vial and resumed her task of bathing Carver’s eyes. “They’ve been talking in the Factory, Ron. Excitement—all through the City. About the Ship.”
“Eh? I heard something, not much though. Has it reached Mars?”
Morna shook her head. “I don’t think so. A few rumors floating about, that’s all. Nothing’s certain. They wouldn’t tell us, you know. But I believe something’s gone wrong. One of the guards told a girl that the Ship stopped halfway to Mars and is coming back. It’s strange.”
“Why strange? They might have run out of fuel. Or——”
“It’s more than that,” Morna whispered, her mouth close to Carver’s ear. “I hear the Lords are—afraid!”
“What?”
“Something happened out there in space. I don’t know. It’s the first interplanetary flight beyond the Moon, and——Don’t keep moving, Ron! I can t——But Carver pushed her away and got up. He went to a closet and from behind a meagre stack of garments withdrew a small parcel, which he hid in a mesh-steel knapsack. He donned heavier clothing.
“Be back soon, Morna,” he told the girl, and went out.
Morna stared after his bulky figure. Her hands were clenched in her lap, still gripping the little vial. Presently she dropped it to the floor and crushed it underfoot, grinding the glass to splinters. She was thinking of the warning Carver had received. Another mate. No! She would bear a child for only one man, and not even for Carver would she bear—a Helot. Another slave for the machines of the Lords!
CARVER made his way to one of the City’s gates. His pass was in order, and the soldier nodded and waved him on. A long, broad road stretched into the blue distance through wooded hills, but Carver turned aside into the scanty forest. Occasionally he cast a furtive glance behind him, but, though autocars flashed along the road and one or two aircraft droned overhead toward the landing-fields on the City’s roof, no one paid heed to the Helot. It was good psychology to let the workers do as they wished during their free hours. Always provided that they did not interfere with the pleasure of the Lords.
Outside the City the wind was cold and chilling, yet Carver drank it in hungrily, his face bare to the refreshing blasts. Out here a man could feel some illusion of a freedom which had not really existed in America, or in all the world, for hundreds of years. To be free one must have in his veins the untainted blood of the Lords, the racial purity that gave them license to rule Earth. Other races were inferior by law of conquest and by decree of the Lords, who held their power over the mixed stocks of America, as ages ago Americans had enslaved the Negroes. The guards were recruited from the ranks of the Lords, each youth serving a brief military apprenticeship. And under the oligarchy sweated and labored the Helots, their birth-rate limited, hopeless and impotent, their criminals doomed to being hunted down by wolfhounds for the sport of the despots.
Carver could not understand the social forces that had inevitably led to such an end; he simply toiled and hated, one of a million robots working amid the slim, graceful forms of the overbred Lords. Now he trudged through the forest, the ground strange to his sandaled feet which were more used to the rubbery pavements of the City corridors. Once he glanced up at an unfamiliar shrilling in the air, and saw a gigantic silvery torpedolike craft drift down till it was hidden by a wooded bridge. The Ship, returning from its voyage toward Mars. Briefly he wondered what had gone wrong in space.
BUT THE SHIP was forgotten as he came to a little cave beside a brook, and saw an old man, gnarled and shrunken, sitting in the sunlight. Carver came forward hastily.
“Ardno,” he said. “Father. You should not—what if they saw you?”
The oldster turned a sightless face, pale and wrinkled, toward Carver. His voice was thin and high.
“I’d die, of course. They’d kill me. And you’d not have to risk your life smuggling food out of the City to me.”
Carver’s quick glance examined the sky. He helped his father into the cave. For almost a year Ardno Carver had dwelt here, since his failing sight had brought down on him the official decree of euthanasia. There was no room in the City for outworn Helots. Death was painless and merciful. But to young Carver it had seemed very horrible that his father should die, and so he had managed to do the impossible—guide Ardno to this lonely place where the blind man could still live, after a fashion, feeding on the scraps Carver stole.
“Well?” The oldster’s voice was querulous. “What did you bring, eh?”
He was not satisfied till he had fingered each morsel and lifted it in misshapen fingers to his nostrils. “It’ll do,” he said grudgingly. “It’ll have to.” And he fell silent, cramming the food into his mouth.
Carver sat in silence on a boulder, eying his father in the gloom. He remembered when Ardno had been a strong, well-shaped man who had more than once felt the lash because of his moments of insane defiance. A bitter, dry sob shook Carver’s thick body. The father looked up quickly, a crumb of bread on his lip.
