Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  As the taxi took off Angel didn’t even try to figure out the direction they were taking; he knew that the involved loops and spins would hopelessly confuse him. He faced Gaussman quizzically. “This must be something awfully big,” he said. “I mean using high-grade extra-terrestrial engineers for muscle-men on a simple pick-up job. Unless I guess wrong this is concerned with some pretty high finance.”

  The taller man took out his blaster again. “Don’t try anything this time,” he said thickly. “And don’t get nosey before you’re supposed to. You can get hurt doing that.”

  “Yeah?” asked Angel, mildly eyeing him. “That struck home? Okay, pal.” He turned again to Gaussman. “You must have been in this for several years, whatever it is,” he said.

  “That’s right. My last job in the open was for Pluto Colony Corporation. I handled their mining in full.” He glanced at his watch. “We’re here,” he said. As he spoke the muffled hum of the plane stopped abruptly and Angel felt it being swung about by a ground crew or turntable. He grinned.

  “As I figure it,” he said, “we’ve come about seventy-three miles due east after swinging around four times to throw my sense of direction off the track. I think we’re in the heart of the New York financial district, on about the twentieth floor of a very high building.”

  “I’ll be damned!” exclaimed Gaussman, open-mouthed. “How did you do that?”

  “Long years of training at the hands of my late beloved father, rest his martinet soul,” said Angel. “You behold the only practical, authentic superman. No short cuts, no royal road—just hard work and development of everything I was born with. Let’s go.” He gestured at the door, which had opened to reveal a dim, luxurious corridor.

  “Okay,” said the taller man. “Hand over your gun.” Maclure obeyed, smiling. “When I pass in front of the metal-detector,” he said, “remember the eyelets in my shoes. They’re a beryllium alloy.”

  “That’s all right,” said Gaussman. “We use an X-ray.”

  “Oh,” said Angel shortly. “Then I might as well tell you now that I have a saw in my shoe and a gas-capsule in my zipper.” He produced them and handed them over as he got out of the taxi.

  “Thanks,” said Gaussman. He pointed. “Through that door, Angel. You go in alone.”

  AS the door—heavy as a bank vault’s—closed ponderously behind him, Maclure instinctively recoiled at the terribly moist heat of the room he was in. In the dim red glow that came from the ceiling he could see little curls of steam in the air. His clothes were sopping wet. Absently he wiped his face with a soaked handkerchief.

  A voice rang through the air—a thin, feeble whisper, magnified over a PA system. Normally it would be so faint that one could not even strain to hear it. It was the voice of an old man—a man so terribly old that intelligible speech was almost lost to him. It said: “Sit—there, Angel Maclure.” A boxy chair glowed for a moment, and the young man sat. He was facing a soft sort of wall, which was red beneath the ceiling lights—a dull, bloody dried red. It slid aside slowly and in absolute silence.

  This room was certainly the quietest place in all the world, Maclure thought. He could hear not only his heartbeat but the little swish of air passing through his bronchial tubes and the faint creaking of his joints as he moved his hand. These were sounds which the most elaborate stethoscope could bring out but faintly. Perhaps it was the quiet of the room, he thought, and perhaps it was the faint and mysterious aura which the figure, revealed by the sliding wall, diffused.

  IT was the shape of a man—had been once, that is. For it was so terribly old that the ordinary attributes of humanity were gone from its decrepit frame. It could not move, for it was seated with legs crossed and arms folded over the shriveled breast, these members held in place by padded clamps. The dully-glowing tangle of machinery about it bespoke artificial feeding and digestion; a myriad of tiny silvery pipes entering into its skin must have been man-made perspiration ducts. The eyes were lost behind ponderous lenses and scanning devices, and there was a sort of extended microphone that entered the very mouth of the creature. Sound-grids surrounded it in lieu of ears that had long since shriveled into uselessness.

  The lips unmoving, the creature spoke again: “You know me?” it whispered penetratingly.

  Maclure dredged his memory for a moment, following the clue of the high, crusted brow of the creature. “You must be Mr. Sapphire, it seems,” said Angel slowly.

  “Excellent,” whispered the creature. “I am Mr. Sapphire—of Planets Production Corporation, Extraterrestrial Mines, Amusements Syndicate, Publishers Associated—can you complete the list?”

  “I think so,” said Angel. “In spite of the very clever management it’s almost obvious—after a rather penetrating study—that there is one fountainhead of finance from which springs almost all the industry and commerce and exchange in the system today. I had not suspected that you were at the head and still alive. One hundred and eighty years, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” whispered the creature. “One hundred and eighty years of life—if this is it. Now, Maclure, you do not know why I called you. It is because I am a proud man, and will not be humiliated by death. I shall live, Maclure. I shall live!” The voiceless whisper was still for a moment.

  “And,” suggested Angel, “you want me to help you?”

  “Yes. I followed your childhood in the hands of your father. I saw you at twelve the equal of men four times your age, physically and mentally their actual equal. And I know that after the death of your father you chose to disappear. I knew you would do this, Maclure, for a while. It was your intention to slip into the way of the world and forget that you were the infinite superior of your fellows. Well—you succeeded, in your own mind at least. You are well on the way to forgetting that to those around you you are as a man among apes. That is so of all men except you—and me.”

  Angel grinned bitterly. “You struck it,” he said. “I think you and I stand alone in the world. I was the victim of my father’s ambition. What are you?”

  “Life eternal,” sounded the voiceless whisper. “To watch the world and its aspects—to mold it as I will, and eventually—destroy it! Destroy it and fashion another! Maclure, medicine has done all for me that it can. I am the final example of the surgical art. Once my brain was transplanted into a youthful body, but even I could not stand the shock. I died, and was revived only with the greatest difficulty.

  “Three times since then I have died. The last time it took three hours to revive me. Ten minutes more and I would never have lived again. Under the laws of nature I can last no longer. And so you must come to my rescue.”

  “How am I to do that?” demanded Angel.

  “For me,” breathed Mr. Sapphire, “you will suspend these laws. Do not interrupt. I can give you only a few minutes more before I retire for a treatment.

  “All creation is in motion, we know. So we are taught. Earth moves about the sun, sun about the great hub of the galaxy, the galaxy in a mighty circle about its own directrix—space itself, ‘ether,’ so called, is like a mighty ball rolling and tumbling through unimaginable chaos. To this outside of space we cannot attain, for to go to the end of space is to return to the starting point.

  “But there is another locus in space—wholly unique, wholly at variance with any other time-and-space sector that may be marked off. Can you conceive of it?”

  Angel, his brows closely knit, shot out: “The vortex! The hub around which space revolves—space at rest and absolutely without motion!”

  With the faintest suggestion of mockery in his voice Mr. Sapphire whispered, “The celebrated superman has it. Utterly unique and lawless—or perhaps with laws of its own? At any rate it must be obvious that the limitations which bind matter in space are removed in this vortex of Dead Center.”

  “And I am to find it and release a certain amount of matter, your body, from certain restrictions, that is, human decrepitude?” countered Angel.

  “That is it. You will work f
or me?”

  “Damn right I will,” exploded Angel. “And not for your money or anything you have to offer—but just for the kick of finding your quiet spot and doping it out!”

  “That,” whispered Mr. Sapphire, “is how I had estimated it.” The wall began to slide back into place again, hiding his shriveled body and tangle of machinery, when he spoke again: “Use the metal tab lying on that table.” He was gone.

  Angel looked about, and as a table lit up with a little flash, he picked a tag of some shiny stuff from it and pocketed the thing. He heard the ponderous door grind open behind him.

  CHAPTER II

  ANGEL, his mind buzzing with figures and colossal statistics, had aimlessly wandered into the proving room. Assistants leaped to attention, for he was known as a captain in the Tri-Planet Guard. And the ship and plotting were, of course, official business. That was only one of the many ways in which his work had been made easier. But work it still was—the hardest, most grueling kind of work of which any man could be capable. The first job he had ordered had been the construction of immense calculating machines of a wholly novel type. He could not waste his own time and his own energy on the job of simple mathematics. He just showed up with the equations and theoretical work well mapped out and let the machines or his assistants finish it off.

  “At ease,” he called. “Get back to work, kids.” He ambled over to the main structural forge and confronted the foreman. “Rawson,” he said, “as I planned it this job should be finished by now.”

  Rawson, burly and hard, stared at Angel with something like contempt. “You planned wrong,” he said, and spat.

  Angel caught him flat-footed. After one belt on the chin Rawson was down and out. “How much longer on this job?” he asked a helper.

  “Nearly done now, sir. Who’s stuck with the proving-ground tests?”

  “Nobody’s stuck. I’m taking her out myself.”

  With something like concern the helper eyed Maclure. “I don’t know, sir,” he volunteered. “In my opinion it isn’t safe.”

  “Thanks,” said Angel with a grin. “That’s what we aim to find out.” He climbed into the ship—small and stubby, with unorthodox fins and not a sign of a respectable atmospheric or spatial drive-unit—and nosed around. He grunted with satisfaction. No spit-and-polish about this job—just solid work. To the men who were working a buffer-wheel against the hull he called, “That’s enough. I’m taking her out now.” They touched their caps, and there was much whispering as Maclure closed the bulkhead.

  WITH a light, sure touch he fingered the controls and eased the ship inches off the ground, floating it to the take-off field, deeply furrowed with the scars of thousands of departing rockets. There was no fanfare or hullabaloo as he depressed the engraved silver bar on the extreme right of the dash. But in response to that finger-touch the ship simply vanished from the few observers and a gale whipped their clothes about them.

  Maclure was again in the black of space, the blinking stars lancing through the infinitely tough plastic windows. And he was traveling at a speed which had never before been approached by any man. “Huh!” he grunted. “I always knew I could work it out.” He saw the moon in the distance—about a million miles behind and to starboard.

  Deliberately he cut into the plane of the ecliptic, determined to take on any meteorites that might be coming. He had a deflection device that needed testing.

  Through the clear window before him he saw a jagged chunk of rock far off, glinting in the sun. Deliberately he set out to intersect with its path. As they met there was a tension in the atmosphere of the ship that set his hair on end. But there was no shock as he met the meteorite; he did not meet it at all, for when it was about a yard from the ship it shimmered and seemed to vanish.

  Maclure was satisfied; the distortion unit was in order. And the chances of meeting anything so freakish as a meteorite were so small that he did not need any further protection. He was whistling happily as he headed back to Earth.

  Then, abruptly, there was a peculiar chiming resonance to the idling whisper of the drive-units. And in the back of Angel’s head a little chord seemed to sound. It was like something remembered and forgotten again. Scarcely knowing what he was saying and not caring at all he called softly: “I can hear you!”

  The chiming sound mounted shrilly, seemed to be struggling to form words. Finally, in a silvery tinkle of language he heard: “We’re superhet with your malloidin coils. Can’t keep it up like this. Full stop—all power in malloidin for reception. Okay?”

  That, at least, he could understand. Someone had performed the almost impossible task of superheterodyning some sort of nodular wave of constant phase-velocity into a coil set up as an anchor-band! He groaned at the thought of the power it must have taken and flung the ship to a halt, reversing his power to flow through the anchoring coil that was receiving the message. It sounded again: “That’s better. Can you make it 7:7:3, please?”

  He snapped insulated gloves on his hands and adjusted the armature windings. “God knows where they get their juice from,” he thought. “But I hope they have plenty of it.”

  “We can’t hear you, Angel Maclure,” said the voice from the coils. “This must be going through to you, though, because you’ve followed our requests. I can’t get detailed, because this little message will burn out every power-plant we have. Do not return to Earth. Do not return to Earth. Do you get that? Come instead to coordinates x-3, y-4.5, z-. 1—get that? three, four point five, point one. We’ll be able to contact you further there. But whatever you do, don’t return to Earth. Signing off—”

  The metallic voice clicked into silence. Maclure, mind racing, grabbed for a star-map. The coordinates indicated in the message were those of a fairly distant and thinly-filled sector of space. He hesitated. Why the hell not? No man had ever been beyond Pluto, but was he a man?

  He grinned when he remembered his tight-fisted, close-mouthed father, who had made him what he was with a grueling course of training that began actually before he was born.

  Yes, he decided, he was a man all right, and with all of a man’s insatiable curiosity he set his course for the distant cubic parsec that was indicated by the coordinates he had so strangely heard through a drive-unit receiver. And with all the fantastic speed of which his craft was capable he did not want to drive it beyond its capacity. Having set the controls, he relaxed in a sort of trance in preparation for his week-long trip.

  AFTER locating himself among the unfamiliar stars of his destination, he rearranged his coils. “That wasn’t necessary,” they said almost immediately in the metallic chimes. “We’re coming out for you.” Then they fell silent. But minutes later a craft hove alongside and fastened onto his hull with a sort of sucker arrangement. It was no larger than his own, but somehow sleeker and simpler in its lines.

  They had clamped right over his bulkhead and were hammering on it. He opened up, trusting to luck and logic that their atmosphere was not chlorinous. “Come in,” he called.

  “Thanks,” said the foremost of three ordinary individuals. “My name’s Jackson.”

  “Yeah?” asked Maclure, staring at him hard. He was dressed exactly as Maclure was dressed, and his features were only slightly different.

  Jackson smiled deprecatingly. “You’re right,” he said. “But you can call me Jackson anyway. I’d rather not show you my real shape. Okay?”

  “You should know best,” shrugged Angel. “Now tell me what’s up.”

  “Gladly,” said Jackson, settling himself in a chair with a curiously loose-jointed gesture. “You’re not very much of a superman, you know.”

  “Pardon the contradiction,” said Angel ominously, “but I happen to know for a fact that I’m very far above the normal human being.”

  “Intellectually,” said Jackson. “Not emotionally. And that’s very important. You don’t mind my speaking plainly?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Very well. You’re much like an extremely brillian
t child. You have a downright genius for mechanics and physical sciences, but your understanding of human relationships is very sub-average. That must be why you were so badly taken in by Mr. Sapphire.”

  “Taken in?” reflected Angel. “I don’t think he fooled me. I knew that he’d try to get me out of the way—murder or otherwise—as soon as he got what he wanted from me. I trusted myself to take care of him.”

  “Good, but not reasoned far enough. Did it ever strike you that Mr. Sapphire—as you persist in thinking of him—was not a free agent? That he was—ah—grinding somebody else’s axe.

  “Holy smokes!” yelped Maclure. The strange discrepancies which he had bundled into the back of his mind suddenly resolved themselves into a frightening pattern.

  “Exactly,” smiled Jackson. “You are the key piece in the problem. Both sides must take care of you, for if you are lost the game is at an end. Shall I begin at the beginning?”

  “You’d better,” said Angel weakly.

  “Very well,” began Jackson. “Our opponents are known to us as the Morlens; we are the Amters. For some thousands of your years there has been an intermittent warfare going on between us. You must take my word for it that it is they who are bent on destroying us and that we act only in self-defense. They are situated about nine parsecs away from us, which makes attack a difficult and dangerous undertaking, yet they have not hesitated to risk their entire generations in desperate attempts to wipe us out.

  “Of late there had been little of that; when our spies reported they informed us that an intensive psychological campaign was going on against us. This we could repulse with ease. But we could not very well block their attempts to gain mental domination of Earth and its solar system. They did not, of course, control every individual, but they reached sufficient key-persons like Mr. Sapphire to be nearly masters of your world.”

  “One moment,” interrupted Angel. “I can assure you that Mr. Sapphire knew that they were at work on him. I also believe that he only pretended submission. His ends were his own.”