Collected short fiction, p.604
Collected Short Fiction, page 604
Ryeland staggered. He was half floating as the hurtling sphere reached maximum velocity, hundreds of miles under the open air; but it was not that which made him dizzy, nor even the fact that he had not eaten for nearly a full day; it was this man on the other side of the desk. He said incredulously: “Sir, my parents never said anything about knowing the Planner. Surely they would have been proud . . .”
The Planner laughed, a glorious huge laugh. “My boy,” he cried, “it’s a wise child, eh? And you are not that wise. You don’t know much about your parents. They were not proud of knowing me at all; they were ashamed because, you see, your father hated me very much.” He nodded, the smile drying on his face. His voice became like the rasp of a file. “Your father was an enemy of the Plan!” he barked.
“Sir,” Ryeland protested, “I don’t know anything about my father. He disappeared when I was young. And my mother never told me that.”
“She wouldn’t,” the Planner said savagely. “She was a dangerous woman, but not a stupid one. Neither of your parents were stupid, Ryeland; so how is it that you are?” Ryeland said baffled: “Sir?”
“You’re a Risk!” rasped the Planner. “You should not have dared defy the Plan. That was an act of stupidity!”
Ryeland took a deep breath. Perhaps this was his chance to get his case on the record. He began: “Sir, let me explain. I had no intention of defying the Plan. There was a girl who reported me, and the Machine reclassified me as a Risk. I think this was an error, but—”
“You question the Machine?”
“No, sir. Not the Machine, but the information that—”
“Never mind!” snapped the Planner. “I don’t want you to incriminate yourself further. You are your father’s son, and you, must remember that everything you do is suspect for that reason.
It took Ryeland’s breath away. For a moment he couldn’t speak. He stood there, weaving slightly in the unsteady footing as the sphere rolled restlessly about in the beginning of its up-drive back to the surface.
Then he burst out: “Sir, do I understand you? You’re saying that the Machine considers me a Risk because of what my father may have done before I was born! That’s not fair. That’s—”
“Fair!” bellowed the Planner, while the raven opened its tiny eyes and whirred restlessly over his head. “What sort of word is that, Ryeland? ‘Fairness.’ ‘Freedom.’ ‘Democracy.’ All those words your father used to use, they run in the blood. And they mean nothing. What does ‘fairness’ have to do with seventeen hundred and fifty calories a day?
“Fairness,” he sneered, “is used up, gone, spent! Do you know what your blessed ancestors did, boy? They mined ‘fairness’ and ‘democracy’ from the untapped resources of the world. They didn’t invent them, they mined them—just as the old farmers mined minerals from their cornfields, twenty crops of corn and a foot of soil! Well, the topsoil’s gone now. And so is fairness and freedom. The world is a closed system now boy, and there isn’t enough to go around!”
The ferocity of the outburst left Ryeland stunned. “But—but sir,” he said, “surely the far planets offer new frontiers, new resources—”
“Be still!” barked the Planner, the square silver head thrust forward like a hammer. Above him the steel-gray falcon whirred threateningly.
The Planner glowered up at Ryeland, shifting his position in the compensating chair as the subtrain began its up-grav thrust. Weight came back to normal, then more than normal. Planner Creery said: “Ryeland, you’re like your father. He never learned that the frontier was gone, but you must. The Plan of Man is based upon a systematic reduction of the pernicious personal liberties that almost destroyed our world. War! Dust bowls! Floods! Forest fires!” Each word was a foul epithet; he spat them at Ryeland. “We have to pay the bill for the waste that has gone before—waste that your father, and those like him, would have spread. Never forget it, boy!”
Ryeland stood silent. There was no reasoning with this man; there was a power and assurance that a gun might shatter, but no human power ever could. After a moment Ryeland said: “I haven’t forgotten.” Nor ever would, he thought. Not while the collar weighed around his neck.
“The collar bothers you,” said the Planner surprisingly, and grinned. It was as though he had read Ryeland’s thoughts—easy enough, Ryeland realized. “But we all wear them, boy. Each one of us, from the Planner down to the castoffs waiting for salvage in the Body Bank, must account to the Machine for every hour of every day; and each of us wears the Machine’s shackle. On some of us they’re intangible,” he explained gravely, “and I admit that that does make a difference.”
Unwillingly Ryeland smiled. Not only power, he realized; the man had personality, charm—even to use on a Risk.
“But if you like,” the Planner added, off-handedly, “you can get that particular collar off your own particular neck.”
For a moment Ryeland couldn’t believe what he had heard. “Get the collar off, sir?”
The Planner nodded majestically. He shifted his position again, touching a button. The massive, cushioned chair inclined slightly backward. The raven flapped with a tinkling metallic sound into the air, hovering, as a neck-rest rose out of the chair’s back and enveloped the Planner’s silver head. The subtrain sphere was well into its upward thrust now. A faint squeal filtered through the soundproofing of the room—testimony of the pressure that forced the car against the invisible, unfeelable wall of electrostatic force. It wasn’t friction that made the squeal, but a heterodyne of vibrations from the generators that drove the car. Ryeland staggered as his weight grew.
The Planner said suddenly: “We are all bound to the Plan in one way or another. I must try to find unbreakable links that can replace your iron collar—or you must find them yourself; then the collar can come off.”
Ryeland said desperately: “Surely my work proves that I am loyal.”
“Surely it does not!” the Planner mocked. He shook his head like a great father bear with a naughty cub. “It is not what you have done already,” he reproved, “but what you can do now that will matter. You have worked freely, Ryeland; perhaps brilliantly, but you must work within the Plan. Always. Every moment. The Planning Machine will assign you a task. If you complete it—”
He shrugged, with an effort. Ryeland was gasping now, the sag of his flesh a trap as the subtrain sphere forced its way up from Earth’s molten center. He wanted to talk—question the Planner—perhaps leave the secret of those missing days. But his body refused. All around them was white-hot rock under pressure; only the electrostatic hoops kept it out; they were down many miles, but now rising. It was like an elevator again, but going up. The vertical component of the sphere’s speed was rapidly reaching a hundred and fifty miles an hour; and even the Planner’s voice, cushioned and protected as he was, began to grow hoarse and slow.
“You’d better go now, Ryeland,” he grumbled. “But would you like to know what your task will be?” Ryeland didn’t answer—he couldn’t; but his eyes answered for him. The Planner chuckled slowly. “Yes, of course. The Machine thinks you can handle it. It sounds—Well,” said the Planner thoughtfully, “we each have our part to play, and mine is not necessarily to understand everything the Machine requires. Your task is to develop a jetless drive.”
Ryeland rocked, and clutched frantically at the edge of the Planner’s huge desk. “A—a jetless drive?”
The Planner looked somberly amused. “I see,” he said. “Perhaps your task does not include understanding it either? But that is what the Machine asks of you.”
“You mean—” Ryeland tried to recover his breath. “You mean, a reactionless propulsion system?”
“Precisely.”
“Do you know that your torture experts—you reconstruction therapists—have been trying for three years to make me tell them how to build a jetless drive? They seem to think I know how.”
“I know.” The big man shrugged. “I know their efforts failed. The Machine had received information that you had designed such a mechanism. Apparently that information was mistaken. But the past three years have made such a device more than ever essential to the security of the Plan—more than ever dangerous to the Plan, if it should fall into unfriendly hands.
“The Machine requires a jetless drive. Its records of your abilities and achievements indicate that you are qualified to develop such a device. I have decided to disregard the evidence of your unplanned behavior, the problem of whether your amnesia is real or assumed, voluntary or not. If you want to come out of your collar in one piece, you will design a working method of reactionless propulsion. Now,” he said in an exhausted voice, “you must go.”
Through a haze Ryeland saw him make a faint motion with the huge gnarled hand that lay on the arm of his chair. The raven shifted position ever so little and beat the air frantically with its steel wings. Across the room a door opened.
One of the Planner’s guard officers came in. He was a giant of a man, but he stepped very carefully under the thrust of the sphere’s climb.
“Ryeland,” whispered the great old man behind the desk.
Ryeland turned, half leaning on the officer in guard blue.
“About my daughter,” said the Planner softly. The squeal had become a roar, almost drowning him out. “Donna has a soft heart, which she inherited from her mother; but her brain she inherited from me. Do not attach importance to the fact that she allowed you to talk with her in her bath.” And the old man’s eyes closed, as the Planner allowed his head to slump back at last.
III
Machine Major Chatterji said comfortingly: “You’ll like us here, Ryeland. We’re a brisk outfit, brisk.”
“Yes, sir.” Ryeland looked around him. He was in a steel-walled cubicle with a Security designation. He had no idea where on, or under, Earth he might be.
“You don’t have to worry about nonsense,” the major chattered. “Get the work done, that’s all we care about.”
Ryeland nodded. The little major moved with the youthful grace of a kitten. He wore the radar-horned helmet of a risk-pusher debonairly, as though it were part of a fancy-dress costume. He caught Ryeland’s glance.
“Oh, that,” he said, embarrassed. “Confounded nuisance, of course. But you are a Risk and the Machine’s orders—”
“I’m used to it.”
“Not that you’re the only Risk here,” Major Chatterji added quickly. “Heavens, no! Some of our best men, and all that.”
Ryeland interrupted, “Excuse me, Major.” He bent to the teletype and rapidly typed out his identification number and the fact that he had arrived. Without delay the teletype rapped out:
R. Information. Machine Major Chatterji is authorized to reconsider your status. Action. Requisition necessary equipment for expansion of equations re unified force field and steady-state hypothesis.
Ryeland frowned. Major Chatterji, peeking over his shoulder at the gray teletype, cried: “At once, Steve! Oh, we move fast here. I’ll have a six-deck calculator and a room to put it in before you can change your clothes, I’ll bet you a lakh of dollars!”
Ryeland said: “I don’t understand. ‘Unified force field and steady-state hypothesis’—what’s that about?” But the major was cheerfully ignorant. Administration was his job; Ryeland would find out everything else in due course, wouldn’t he? Ryeland shrugged. “All right. But I won’t need the calculator—not if Oporto is still around.”
“The other Risk?” Machine Major Chatterji winked. “Always stick together,” he nodded. “I’ll have him detailed to you.”
Ryeland looked again at the teletype. The truly important part of the message also needed some thought. Machine Major Chatterji is authorized to reconsider your status. Then this man here, with the liquid black eyes and the lean, hooked nose, this was the man who could turn the key that would unlock the iron collar?
Or was that the wrong assumption to make? The Machine was always exact. But sometimes the mere human who read its message failed to understand the meaning. For instance, did that message mean that Machine Major Chatterji could clear Ryeland—or did it mean that he could downgrade him . . . say from Risk to raw material for the Body Bank?
It was a sobering thought.
The faded unreality of everything in his past except his knowledge of science left Ryeland with a nagging sense of bewilderment and loss.
“Why does the Machine need a jetless drive?” Uneasily, he put the question to Major Chatterji. “The ion jet ships are good enough to reach the planets—and anyhow the Plan of Man seems to be retreating from space and burrowing into the Earth.”
“Stop it!” Chatterji warned him sharply. “Such speculation is no part of our function.”
Ryeland insisted, “The Machine seems to be afraid that a jetless drive in the wrong hands would be dangerous to the Plan. Whose hands could that be? The Plan has conquered all the planets, taken in the whole human race. Except for a few fugitives like Ron Donderevo—”
“Don’t talk about him!” Chatterji looked shocked. “Our own function here is enough to keep us busy without any such unplanned talk.”
Ryeland shrugged and gave it up, and Chatterji at once reverted to his cheerful bustle.
“We’ve got to get you settled,” he beamed, his gold-rimmed glasses flashing. “Faith! Come in here, girl.”
The door opened. A tall blonde strutted in. She wore tight scarlet pants and a brief scarlet jacket. Two centuries before she would have been a drum majorette; under the Plan she had a more important role to play. “This is Faith, Steve. She’s one of our Togetherness girls. She’ll help you get adjusted here, I promise!”
The Togetherness girl smiled a lacquered smile. She piped: “ ‘Perform your own function perfectly—and your own function only.’ That’s our motto here, Mr. Ryeland.” It was like a doll talking.
“And a splendid motto it is!” Major Chatterji endorsed, beaming. “Get him started, Faith. And don’t forget the Togetherness meeting at nineteen hundred hours.”
Ryeland’s mind was teeming with jetless drives and the steady-state hypothesis and three missing days and Major Chatterji is authorized to reconsider and the fact that the Planner had known about his interview with Donna in her bath. But this was important too; he swept the other things out of his mind and tried to pay attention to what the Togetherness girl was saying.
“You’ll like it here, Steve,” she whispered, solemnly squeezing his arm. She smiled up at him, and steered him down a gray-walled concrete tunnel. There were no windows. “This is Point Circle Black. Sounds confusing, doesn’t it? But you’ll learn. I’ll teach you!” Point Circle Black was the headquarters office, where Major Chatterji, the administrative officer, fussed endlessly over his problems of supply and personnel. “Point Triangle Gray.” Faith sang, waving at an intersection ahead. “That’s the medical section. Tests and diseases, injuries and—” she giggled naughtily—“supply depot for the Body Bank.” Ryeland grunted.
“Oh, that’s nothing for you to worry about, Steve,” she said reassuringly. “Trust Major Chatterji. You do your part and he’ll do his; that’s Teamwork.”
Ryeland mumbled, “I understand. It’s just that—well, I’ve had to face the chance of the Body Bank for three years now. I admit I don’t like the idea of being butchered.” She stopped, scandalized, her perfect eyebrows arched, her clear eyes wide. “Butchered? Steve, what an unplanned word!”
“I only meant—”
“The Planned term,” she said firmly, “is ‘salvaged’. And you can’t deny the logic of the Machine, can you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. She was well into her set speech. “The Body Bank,” she parroted, “provides the attack team with the necessary stimulus to insure maximum effort. If the effort is successful, the team has nothing to fear. If the effort fails—”
She shrugged winsomely. “The welfare of the Plan of lyian,” she said, “requires that they must make their contribution in another way. That is, their physical organs must contribute to the repair of more useful citizens. That’s Teamwork!”
“Thanks,” said Ryeland grumpily. The isolation camp on the rim of the Arctic Circle, he thought wistfully—it had been hard and dull and uncomfortable; but at least he hadn’t been exposed to lectures from teen-aged girls!
Point Triangle Gray was a Security designation; all the names were. The whole area was called Team Center. It might have been under Lake Erie or the Indian Ocean; Ryeland never learned.
At Point Triangle Gray he was given his tests. He caught a glimpse of Oporto, looking healthy enough but somehow crestfallen; they waved, but there was no chance to speak as Oporto came out of one laboratory room while Ryeland was going into another. At least, Ryeland thought, the little man hadn’t been salvaged.
Then he forgot about Oporto for five rigorous hours. Point Triangle Gray measured his functional indices and his loyalty quotients with every test that he had ever undergone before and one or two that were brand new to him. The lab men stripped him and clamped him in their metering devices, while the interrogators demanded every detail of his life, back to the toys his mother had given him for his third birthday.
In these tests he tasted the afterbitterness of those sessions in the therapy room at the “recreation center”—those long, endless ages when he was punished and punished again because he could not make sense of the crazy questions the therapists flung at him. He dreaded, each moment now, that in the next moment it would start again. Someone would fling him a question about pyropods or Ron Donderevo. Someone would ask him about the missing three days in his life, or demand that he draw them the plans for a device he’d never heard of.
But it didn’t happen; the questions were all routine.
In fact, every one of the questions had been asked him before—some of them a hundred times. Every answer had long since been recorded for the memory drums of the Planning Machine. But the interrogation went on. His reactions were studied in blinding actinic light, and photographed by infra-red in what to him was utter dark. His body fluids were sampled again and again. Whole salvos of injections stimulated and calmed him, and for a short time put him to sleep—while heaven knew what pokings by scalpel and probe investigated the muscle tensions of his innermost system.
