Short fiction collected, p.130
Short Fiction Collected, page 130
“Let me make that clear. A few centuries back, we founded a colony on Mars of a hundred ordinary human beings. At the end of a generation, that colony had grown to two hundred, simply by the excess of births over deaths, making no allowance for further immigration. Suppose that the orignal colony had been of our rapid variant. Provided there had been enough food for them, the increase to two hundred would have taken place in about two years, which is one of their generations. Every two years the number would have doubled again, to four hundred, eight hundred, and so on, so that by the end of twenty years the original colony would have grown to a hundred thousand. At the end of forty years, to a hundred million.
“You can see the survival advantage this gives them in comparison with ordinary human beings. We might try to get them to limit their numbers—but on what grounds? Why should they voluntarily agree to limit themselves, when they would seem, in their own eyes, to be so obviously superior? As you have already seen, their speed gives them a tremendous advantage. At any moment, I don’t think that Pappas could exert more muscular force than any of those men who attacked him. But he could move ten or twenty times as fast as they could, which meant that any blow he landed on them would have the effect of an exploding bombshell. And they couldn’t lay a finger on him.”
AT this Correll nodded. “So you think that it won’t be easy to come to an agreement with them?”
“I think it will be difficult, if not impossible. That’s why we have to organize now, with all the speed we can manage, to protect ourselves. We don’t want to start a deadly war any more than they do. But you can see that for either side it’s hard to say where defense ends and attack begins.”
Correll was silent for a moment. Then he said slowly, “Actually, we haven’t tried to come to any agreement.”
“Mostly because we haven’t known what there was to agree about. I suppose we will try in future, though. But mean, while, we’ll have to prepare for the worst.”
“And possibly bring it on by the very preparations themselves.”
“Damn it, man, we have no choice,” said Hjalmar impatiently.
“I wouldn’t know,” admitted Correll. “The situation’s new to me. However, there’s one factor you’ve overlooked. Our fast-moving ‘supermen’ aren’t the only ones. There’s that other group.”
“They’re of lesser importance,” Hialmar asserted flatly. “They’re apparently normal. And normal people we can handle. At this stage there’s no need to complicate the problem by worrying about them.”
“You don’t simplify a problem by making your mind simple,” said Correll. “This other group is no more normal than the first one is. I should say that it’s composed of individuals who are super-slow.”
“Then they’re certainly no problem. However, what gives you the impression that they’re slow?”
“Certain things that happened, and certain things that were said. Medlana referred to her group’s ‘weakness.’ I think this is it. She said that they had been in existence for some time before the other group, and had anticipated the existence of the latter. The reason for that, obviously, is that their attention had already been drawn to the possibility of changes in the metabolism rate by what had happened to themselves. A man who is missing a finger is the first to realize that men can exist with six fingers. Medlana said also that they had taken certain measures of precaution. That indicates that she knows things which we don’t know, and that her group would be a useful ally in the fight.”
Hjalmar shook his massive head. “If they’re slow, they’re at the same disadvantage with regard to us as we are with regard to the others, and we don’t need them. It’s true that the information we have indicates that some individuals developed much more slowly than others. But the slow ones could hardly have gotten together effectively. We’ll do better in this, Correll, to rely upon our own strength and not upon that of such doubtful allies, if they exist.”
Correll said nothing. He disagreed, without being quite sure of how firm his grounds for disagreement were.
“You’ll be leaving for Mars in a few more days,” went on Hjalmar. “As I told you before, you’ll report all this to your superiors. And in case our rapid friends attempt to establish a base on Mars, we’ll be ready for them.”
Correll understood that the interview was at an end. He rose, and Hjalmar, evidently trying to emulate his new rapid opponents, shook hands with him, and ushered him briskly to the door. Outside the building Correll once more experienced the unpleasant sensation of knowing that he had no privacy, that Hialmar’s men were keeping an eye on him.
He laughed at the sight of them, but without real amusement. They were a nuisance. And he had already seen enough of them to be sure that they would be no protection whatever if he were attacked by Pappas or any of his group.
HE WAS beginning now to find some sense in what had happened to him. The loss of time which had so baffled him could only be explained by a drug. The human race had long known of drugs which gave the user a sense of expanded time, so that he seemed to live an entire life in the period of half an hour. Suppose, however, that there were a drug which acted not on the brain alone, but on the entire metabolism, producing neither hallucinations nor nightmares, but fundamental differences in the action of the body, actually slowing it up in every way. And suppose that the drug had been used upon him by Medlana, not merely after her interview with him, but before it.
Then the entire scene would actually have taken place in a sort of slow motion, without his being aware of it. He objected to himself that there had been nothing wrong with his sense of time when he first met her. And, he told himself, she might have compensated for her different metabolism with another drug.
He realized he was only guessing, but the guess seemed plausible. Now, to speculate a bit further, perhaps not all individuals were affected by the drug in the same way. Suppose, for example, that Arwon, in that first interview, had tried to speed up his own processes so as to meet Correll on equal terms, and had fallen victim to some side effect of the drug he had used. That would explain his collapse. And suppose—
He began to feel a sense of excitement as he realized where his speculations were leading him. Suppose that others of Arwon’s group, who had used the drug and then gone out to mingle with ordinary human beings, collapsed likewise, but with none of their own kind near to help them. What would happen to them then? Why, they’d be taken to the nearest hospital in a coma, and be treated for shock or exhaustion, or whatever else the doctors thought was wrong with them.
That was the place to look for them, then—the hospitals. Sooner or later they’d turn up there.
Disregarding the parade of Hjalmar’s men trailing behind him, he flagged a taxi-copter, and asked to be taken to the nearest Health Record Center. He noted that three other copters promptly took their places behind him. Probably Commerce Department property that had been kept in reserve, he thought, taking no chances of his escaping them again.
At the Health Record Center, he found easy access to the lists of hospital admissions. There were relatively few diagnosed cases. These were described in terms of symptoms. Of the thousands of admissions during the past year, there had been no more than a dozen in which the patients had been in a low-temperature coma for no detectable reason. He checked the descriptions of these patients, and noted seven of them were men, all bearded. And beards were distinctly not fashionable.
The clerk said, “Doing research, Mr. Correll?”
“Yes, for the C.D. How up-to-date are your records?”
“Up to the minute. We get the reports by direct wave from the hospitals as soon as the admissions are made and the patients classified. An electronic brain codes and classifies the cases.”
“Ever try classifying the patients by whether or not they wear beards?”
“Why, no.”
“The system might yield some interesting information.”
“But bearded patients are unusual. Strangely enough, now that you mention it, Mr. Correll, I noted that there was one reported early today. But ordinarily we wouldn’t have one in weeks.”
“There was one today?”
“At the Third General Hospital. Here’s the record. Man found in coma.”
“Temperature?”
“Ninety-six degrees.”
“Very interesting,” said Correll. “I think I’ll go over and take a look at him.” In his eagerness, he almost ran out, slowing down outside so that the men following him mightn’t perceive his eagerness. At the hospital, he made at once for the clerk at the entrance desk. “I’m looking for an uncle of mine,” he said. “He wears a beard, and sometimes he has fits.”
“An uncle of yours? That’s strange.”
“That I have an uncle?”
“No, but that you aren’t the first person to come for him. The patient’s brother and niece are already here. If you’ll wait a moment—”
Presently a nurse led him to the room where the patient lay unconscious. At the bedside a girl was sitting with what seemed to be an older man, his face lined with age. She smiled charmingly at Correll, and said, “It’s a pleasant surprise to see you again, Mr. Correll. You can help us take my uncle home.”
As he had expected, it was Medlana. As he had not expected, the older “man’s” hand closed over his arm with a grip of iron. A robot’s grip.
And then his body seemed to freeze, and the room to whirl around him. When they walked him out, he was like a dead man.
VI
IT WAS impossible to collect his thoughts. He was being raced through the corridors of the hospital, around the bend, and up the stairs. He had a moment of terror when he saw the wall rush at him, and only by a miracle, it seemed to him, did the robot holding him avoid a disastrous collision. People and stairs, light and dark, everything flashed past him with kaleidoscopic speed. For one final moment, as they tossed him into the helicopter on the hospital roof, his heart seemed to miss a beat—except that what happened took place in less time than his heart needed for a beat. He had hardly landed in his seat before they were high in the air, the hospital far behind them.
Slowly, how slowly he himself dreaded to realize, he gathered his wits. They hadn’t rushed him through the hospital, and the helicopter itself was moving at only normal speed. It was he himself who had been changed, slowed down. Formerly, when they had done that to him, they had done it gradually, put him in surroundings where he wouldn’t suspect. Now, himself moving and thinking at roughly only a tenth of ordinary human speed, he could appreciate the feelings of Medlana and her people, forced to fight for their right to live in a world that whirred and roared dizzyingly around them.
He had no time to think of it. As if by magic, they were in a space ship, the door seeming instantly to slide shut behind him with a vicious clang, as if in rage at having missed hitting him. He was conscious of Medlana facing him, and then of images racing confusedly and confusingly across his field of vision, of bursts of crackling sound vaguely resembling human speech that hurt his eardrums.
Suddenly the sounds slowed down, became comprehensible. He was alone with Medlana.
“You’d better sit. Here,” she said, in what seemed to him normal tones.
He sat down. But no sooner had he dropped into his seat, with a thud that jarred him to the crown of his head, than he felt a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach, the horrible nausea of rapid acceleration. Darkness flashed in front of his eyes and flooded his brain. A heavy weight pressed his eyelids together. But, to his great relief, only for a second.
He opened his eyes. They were still accelerating, although less rapidly than before. And Medlana was watching him. There was a trace of a wistful smile on her beautiful face as she said, “You’re beginning to realize something of what we go through.”
His own face was still pale. “It’s a horrible experience.”
“Because you don’t yet know how to adjust to it. You dropped into that seat too rapidly. Next time, when we’re on a planet, you’ll remember that for you the apparent acceleration of gravity has increased ten times.”
“Only when I move, of course.”
“You can’t help moving. The mere act of standing up straight is a continual falling backward and forward. You’ll have to be more careful than usual about every step you take. You’ll have to be more careful even about sitting down and getting up.”
DOWN below them, the Earth had already dwindled to a small bright globe, hardly larger in appearance than the moon. Suddenly he realized that he had been kidnapped again. Despite all her present solicitude, Medlana hadn’t had any misgivings about snatching him from Earth. And he didn’t like the way he had been drugged. He snapped at her, “Do you intend to keep me in this condition?”
“For a while. It’s rather convenient for us, and it will make time pass more rapidly for you.”
“You won’t get away with it. You know that, don’t you? Hjalmar had men following me—”
She laughed. “I know all about Hjalmar’s men. They’re still following you.”
“Of course they are. And sooner or later they’ll catch up with us. They must have wasted time getting a ship.”
“They aren’t concerned with ships. They’re following you on Earth. Or at least they’re following a robot made up to look like you.”
“A robot? No robot could imitate me.”
“One had already done so. Even to the fingerprints and retinal patterns. We didn’t, as you may have supposed, substitute other prints and patterns for those on record. We simply impressed on the robot those of your characteristics that were already marked down. Unfortunately, it didn’t occur to us that Martians and native Earthmen might behave in slightly different ways, and we learned later that our robot had shown, by a few subtle traits, an Earth origin. Still, there was little harm done at the time. And we rectified our mistake later.”
Correll shook his head in bewilderment. “Impossible,” he insisted stubbornly. “Those men following me know me too well. A robot couldn’t imitate my walk, my speech.”
“This robot has been set to do just that. You forget that we had an opportunity to study you, on your first visit to us. We made our adjustments then.”
He remained unconvinced. “How could a robot carry through trade negoitations, as you claim he did in my name?”
“I made no such claim, and he didn’t.” She smiled at him as if at a slow-witted child. “He faced Hjalmar across the desk, he listened—and he transmitted everything he heard back to our headquarters by ultrashort wave. He replied to Hjalmar the same way.”
“I should have realized,” Correll admitted. “I suppose, as I told Hjalmar, I’m simply too dull to think of such things.”
“It isn’t a matter of speed. You haven’t lived an outcast life. We have.”
There was bitterness in her manner now, and he said, as much on the defensive as if he had been the kidnapper, and not she, “That’s no one’s fault.”
“Fault or not, it’s a fact. That’s why we were able to take off in this ship so rapidly. We’ve had experience in rapid getaways.”
He stared through a viewplate of transparency metal. Alongside the plate were the words, Rambler Queen. The name of the ship he was on, of course. The ship on which he was a helpless, kidnapped victim.
BEHIND them, Earth was now half the apparent size of the moon, part of the continent of one side—he couldn’t make out whether it was Asia or Africa —on the ether side from the sun, and hence dark making the planet as a whole slightly gibbous. And he noted with excitement that against the dark continent a bright speck flickered. He exclaimed, “There’s another ship on the lane behind us. I can see the exhaust.”
“I know. We’re being followed. We were followed less than five minutes after we took off.”
His voice took on a tone of triumph. “So Hjalmar isn’t asleep after all.”
“He is not very wide awake. But this isn’t Hjalmar. It’s the others, who want our cargo. The rapid ones, the R group.”
“The ones who move a hundred times as fast as you do? What chance do you think you have against them?”
She seemed amused at his question. But instead of answering directly, she asked a question of her own. “You think we have none?”
“What chance can you have?” he demanded. “You were able to make fools of us only so long as we didn’t know of your existence. Because of that you were able to organize, and to catch us by surprise again and again. But now all that has changed. Now we know about you, and we’re setting up an organization of our own. And it won’t be long before we’ve spotted all your agents, whether they’re on Mars or Venus or Earth.
“And what we can do, this R group, as you call it, can do ten times as fast. We’re all of us helpless against them.”
You think we had better surrender?” she asked ironically. “Look again. They haven’t gained on us.”
“They’ve just started to follow.”
She shook her head impatiently. “You don’t understand in the least. If we dared to travel at top speed, we would go faster than they possibly could. The speed of a ship is determined by its power and its design, not by the agility of the people in it. The Rambler Queen is a ship especially built for our purposes. The ship following us is an ordinary passenger vessel, which the R group has managed to steal.”
“They may have a few tricks up their sleeves.”
“They have tricks,” she demurred. “They rely a great deal on tricks. But we have tricks too. And our sleeves are longer.” He noted now that there was nothing serene or placid about her. That had been a momentary effect, created by the difference which had existed between them, and which no longer existed. Now she seemed animated, full of a lively, mocking spirit. Still beautiful, of course. He was more conscious of that than ever, as she stared through the transparency metal at their pursuer, and he caught a glimpse of her profile. She was saying, “Our best friends have a surprise or two in store for them. And so have you.”
