The Golden Age Of Science Fiction Vol Ii Part 12

Jaeger looked again at the boy, who was sitting tensely, his hands gripping the arms of his chair, his eyes fastened fearfully on the officer before him. As Jaeger watched, Elwar half rose from his chair, then sank back, his face appearing to mirror Kweiros' efforts.

At last, Kweiros sat up. Shakily, he removed his headband and snapped the playback off.

"Long time since I checked that tape," he said. "Pretty rugged stuff, and highly speculative. Always gives me a headache." He shook his head as he looked at Elwar.

"And this makes it even worse. It was bad enough as pure speculation, but we've got something real here. Something rough. For one thing, we have got a planet where no one but native operatives stand a chance of working. For another we--" He cupped his chin in his hands and examined Elwar closely.

"Do you really want to learn the secrets you looked for in the books, youngster? Do you still want the secrets you first thought you might learn?"

The boy seemed to withdraw a little. "I have a great fear," he admitted tremulously.

"You haven't been injured or mistreated, have you?"

"No, Master, but--" Elwar looked toward the door.

"And you won't be," he was told rea.s.suringly. "Now you just go ahead on back to your quarters."

As the door closed, Kweiros turned to Jaeger.

"Think we'll put you on special a.s.signment. For the next few cycles, you'll act as a private tutor. Then you can go back to Main Base with Elwar while they give him his training."

Jaeger raised his eyebrows. "Yes, sir," he said doubtfully. "You think the boy will develop?"

Kweiros nodded. "I'm quite sure of it," he said. "And he's got a big job ahead of him. He may be instrumental in preventing a major disaster." He waved at the tape reels.

"I got that little tape out just on an off chance," he added. "Didn't really expect to find anything, but--" He flipped his hands out. "Anyway, I pulled it." He leaned forward, looking at Jaeger.

"We may have run into a second, or even third growth culture," he said slowly. "Once, before some ancient war of destruction, the people of this planet might have been normally telepathic." He closed his eyes for an instant. "Possibly they were unable to use their telepathic power. And equally possibly, they could have had a highly developed mechanical civilization. Something went wrong." He waved at the tape reel.

"In this reconstruction, there's an hypothesis on just such a situation. Here, a race reaches high development and wrecks itself--leaving no trace of its accomplishments. Growth starts over from the most meager of beginnings. Survival becomes a matter of the most bitter conflict, with everyone becoming a hunter and being hunted in his turn. In this situation, detection of an enemy becomes vital." He grinned wryly. "Can you imagine what would happen to someone who radiated his thoughts?"

Jaeger ran a finger over his lips. "He'd be easy to locate," he mused. "And he'd have a hard time evading an enemy."

"Precisely." Kweiros nodded. "And he'd never be able to approach his prey. In short, he'd fail to survive. Complete telepathic blankness would have a high survival value. But an ability to detect mental radiation would still be a big help." He waved a hand.

"So, a race like this one could evolve. And the author of this tape extrapolated from there. A normal telepathic reception will be accompanied, by a slight feedback. A completely black body, however, will neither radiate nor feed back. It merely absorbs energy and, unless it's super-imposed on a reflective background, it leaves no trace. Since nothing in nature other than a telepathic mind can reflect telepathy, no background would survive for long." He frowned a little.

"Of course, no mind we are familiar with could act as a telepathically black body, but this author hypothesized a race that could do just that--plus. There's a further hypothesis of an ability to detect and localize radiations as such, without bothering to resolve them."

"Sounds like just what we have here," Jaeger admitted.

"It does, doesn't it?" Kweiros nodded. "And there's a further extrapolation. Some of the members or the elder races have speculated on a sort of second-order telepathy, undetectable to the normal telepath, but capable of noting normal radiation. And some of the speculations seem to make sense--though they're a little confusing. If you don't have a specific sense, it's difficult to visualize it, or even to speculate on its presence." He drew a deep breath.

"That leads us into a real problem. Our people roamed around this planet for several cycles this time. And there may have been others before us, who didn't record their visits, other than in the minds and legends of the natives. And there may be other legends from that other, older culture." He shrugged.

"We picked up what we could on the culture, but we didn't get the full story on them. And we've probably left a thousand legends behind us, including that beautiful mess at your station." He grinned.

"Right now, their folklore is loaded with sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, and what not. After all, whatever their past is, they're primitive now. So those stories are going to grow and continue. Eventually, long before they really develop a stabilized ethic, someone's going to collate that whole mess. And do you know what he'll come up with?"

"Us?"

"Us, yes. Us, in a distorted form." Kweiros nodded emphatically. "They will come to a full realization that there are advanced ent.i.ties running around the cosmos, ent.i.ties that have all kinds of mysterious powers. And they'll invent still more powers and characteristics--mostly bad." He spread his hands, then laid them on the desk in front of him.

"That way, they could develop a hopeless, planet-wide trauma--a sort of super inferiority complex--and they could contract on themselves, devote their time to an intensive study of demonology, and very possibly come apart at the seams.

"Or, they could do something else. I was watching Elwar while I was checking that tape. Did you notice anything peculiar?"

"He seemed disturbed."

"As though he were sensing my thoughts?"

"Something like that. But--"

Kweiros nodded. "But I had a shield up. You could detect no trace of mental action. Right?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's what I thought." Kweiros shook his head and looked closely at Jaeger.

"Can you imagine," he added, "a primitive race with the power to detect a galactic by his thoughts? And can you imagine that power developing until that detection is possible at interstellar ranges, with members of that race being able to pick up faint impressions from received thoughts--distorted impressions? And can you imagine that same race, ignorant of the humanic equations, devoid of a stable ethic, superst.i.tious, distrustful and fearful of advanced ent.i.ties? They would be undetectable by normal telepathic means, you know. And suppose they were disposed to destroy what they could not understand." He frowned.

Jaeger looked back at him, his eyes becoming wide. Suddenly, his gaze defocused and he looked aside, to stare unseeingly at the floor.

"Something's got to be done, sir," he said reluctantly.

Kweiros nodded. "Something's got to be done," he agreed. "Of course, there's another side to the picture. If this race develops and learns, they'll be just as valuable to the galaxy as they would otherwise be dangerous." He looked toward the door.

"And our boy out there is one of the few who can help in this situation. He's going to have to work out counter stories--amusing stories--about all those magical creatures his people tell about. He's going to have to hint at the possibilities of close co-ordination and co-operation between members of his own species. And he's going to have to suggest the possibility of friendly co-operation between his species and others." He drew a deep breath.

"And he's going to have to do all this without taking any risk of exposing the existence of other, more advanced species in the galaxy." He brushed a hand across his head, then pressed the back of his neck, kneading the skin.

"These stories of his, he'll have to publish. He'll have to get them circulated all over his planet, if he can. Possibly we can give him some indirect help, but he's going to have to carry a good share of the load.

"He knows his own people as we could never hope to. And he'll have to be thoroughly educated, so he can say what he wants to. And he'll have to be fully aware of the humanic equations and all their connotations. If he's to have any direct help, he'll have to choose his helpers from among his own people, and he'll have to choose carefully." Kweiros thrust at his temple with the heel of a hand, then shook his head violently.

"Somehow, he's going to have to accentuate any legends he may be able to find which present a favorable light on co-ordination and co-operation, and he'll have to invent more. And all those other legends--the ones which treat of superst.i.tion and destructive force--will have to be reduced to the realm of the storybook, submerged under a layer of amused condemnation, and kept there. All these things, that youngster is going to have to do.

"It's your job to help teach him."

Forell watched his friend closely as the critic laid aside the last page.

Andorra sat for a moment, his head c.o.c.ked in thought. Then, he picked up the last page and looked at it again. Finally, he laid the sheet aside. He looked at his friend with a wry smile, then picked up his winegla.s.s, looking at it quizzically.

"Do you always give your own name to one of your characters?"

Forell's grip tightened on the small object in his hand.

"Oh, sure," he said. "Gives me a better identification. If I can get into the story, it's easier to draw the reader in." He forced a casual smile. "I'll change that name later, of course."

"I see what you mean." Andorra sipped from his gla.s.s.

"You know," he added, "a couple of hours ago, I was almost ready to get excited about the idea of a cosmos full of super beings. And I even might have dreamed up something like this myself--and more than half believed it." He shook his head.

"But when a fantasist like yourself comes up with it, and makes it look so nicely possible, the idea almost looks foolish. After all, Elwar, if you actually were the guy in that little sketch of yours, you'd hardly be asking me to read it, now would you?" He looked down at the papers, then raised his head again, frowning.

"'He'll have to choose his helpers from among his own people,'" he quoted. "'All these things, that youngster is going to have to do.'" He sipped again from his gla.s.s, keeping a searching gaze on his friend.

"And on the other hand, if your story here should be true, you just might be asking me to read it, for one reason or another." He raised his gla.s.s, examining the bright liquid within it.

Elwar tensed, his hand coming part way out of his pocket.

Suddenly, Andorra set the gla.s.s down and leaned forward, hands gripping his knees.

"Tell me, Elwar," he begged, "this isn't a hoax, is it? Surely, no one could be so warped as to present a friend with something like this and then to laugh it off?"

Forell drew a deep breath and examined his companion closely. At last, his left hand relaxed a little.

"It's no hoax," he admitted.

Andorra sighed and leaned back.

"And you can use help? You're asking me?"

He paused, waiting as Forell nodded, then spread his hands.

"You know," he said, "it shouldn't take me too long to fix it so I would not be missed too much for a few years." He looked at the wall.

"It must be quite a training course."

THE END.

Contents

THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON.

By CORDWAINER SMITH

Only partners could fight this deadliest of wars--and the one way to dissolve the partnership was to be personally dissolved!

THE TABLE.

Pinlighting is a h.e.l.l of a way to earn a living. Underhill was furious as he closed the door behind himself. It didn't make much sense to wear a uniform and look like a soldier if people didn't appreciate what you did.

He sat down in his chair, laid his head back in the headrest and pulled the helmet down over his forehead.

As he waited for the pin-set to warm up, he remembered the girl in the outer corridor. She had looked at it, then looked at him scornfully.

"Meow." That was all she had said. Yet it had cut him like a knife.

What did she think he was--a fool, a loafer, a uniformed nonent.i.ty? Didn't she know that for every half hour of pinlighting, he got a minimum of two months' recuperation in the hospital?

By now the set was warm. He felt the squares of s.p.a.ce around him, sensed himself at the middle of an immense grid, a cubic grid, full of nothing. Out in that nothingness, he could sense the hollow aching horror of s.p.a.ce itself and could feel the terrible anxiety which his mind encountered whenever it met the faintest trace of inert dust.

As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the Sun, the clock-work of the familiar planets and the Moon rang in on him. Our own solar system was as charming and as simple as an ancient cuckoo clock filled with familiar ticking and with rea.s.suring noises. The odd little moons of Mars swung around their planet like frantic mice, yet their regularity was itself an a.s.surance that all was well. Far above the plane of the ecliptic, he could feel half a ton of dust more or less drifting outside the lanes of human travel.

Here there was nothing to fight, nothing to challenge the mind, to tear the living soul out of a body with its roots dripping in effluvium as tangible as blood.

Nothing ever moved in on the Solar System. He could wear the pin-set forever and be nothing more than a sort of telepathic astronomer, a man who could feel the hot, warm protection of the Sun throbbing and burning against his living mind.

Woodley came in.

"Same old ticking world," said Underhill. "Nothing to report. No wonder they didn't develop the pin-set until they began to planoform. Down here with the hot Sun around us, it feels so good and so quiet. You can feel everything spinning and turning. It's nice and sharp and compact. It's sort of like sitting around home."

Woodley grunted. He was not much given to flights of fantasy.

Undeterred, Underhill went on, "It must have been pretty good to have been an Ancient Man. I wonder why they burned up their world with war. They didn't have to planoform. They didn't have to go out to earn their livings among the stars. They didn't have to dodge the Rats or play the Game. They couldn't have invented pinlighting because they didn't have any need of it, did they, Woodley?"

Woodley grunted, "Uh-huh." Woodley was twenty-six years old and due to retire in one more year. He already had a farm picked out. He had gotten through ten years of hard work pinlighting with the best of them. He had kept his sanity by not thinking very much about his job, meeting the strains of the task whenever he had to meet them and thinking nothing more about his duties until the next emergency arose.

Woodley never made a point of getting popular among the Partners. None of the Partners liked him very much. Some of them even resented him. He was suspected of thinking ugly thoughts of the Partners on occasion, but since none of the Partners ever thought a complaint in articulate form, the other pinlighters and the Chiefs of the Instrumentality left him alone.

Underhill was still full of the wonder of their job. Happily he babbled on, "What does happen to us when we planoform? Do you think it's sort of like dying? Did you ever see anybody who had his soul pulled out?"

"Pulling souls is just a way of talking about it," said Woodley. "After all these years, n.o.body knows whether we have souls or not."

"But I saw one once. I saw what Dogwood looked like when he came apart. There was something funny. It looked wet and sort of sticky as if it were bleeding and it went out of him--and you know what they did to Dogwood? They took him away, up in that part of the hospital where you and I never go--way up at the top part where the others are, where the others always have to go if they are alive after the Rats of the Up-and-Out have gotten them."

Woodley sat down and lit an ancient pipe. He was burning something called tobacco in it. It was a dirty sort of habit, but it made him look very dashing and adventurous.