Collected Short Fiction

by C. M. Kornbluth

  The All Earth Executive Committee was imprisoned pending trial; trial for what was never made clear. Communications sending sets were declared provisionally illegal; anyone caught with one in working commission would suffer death. The only etheric voice that could be legally heard was the light, mocking one of Voss, personal secretary to Admiral Fitzjames, and that only from the powerful sender aboard the Admiral’s ship Stupendous, floating grimly above the Bronx.

  The receiving code set in the communications room of the little suite of offices once occupied by the Intelligence Wing was clicking like a mad thing, and never an answer came, for the Wing had moved out lock, stock and barrel. The message that kept repeating (Admiral Fitzjames had said “Keep trying” two days ago) was: “Why don’t you answer, Intelligence Wing? Bartok, report immediately aboard Stupendous to show cause why you should not be removed from office and the Wing disbanded. Why don’t you answer, Intelligence Wing? Bartok, report—” et cetera.

  A squad of marines would shortly break into the office and find nothing of interest to anybody.

  But there were two people who seemed to be partly Rigelian from the greenish patches on their faces and their peculiar scalp-lines, shaped like tipsy S’s. They were cowering in a cellar as many other Rigelians were doing during those lunatic days when the Navy had first taken over, but there was something purposeful and grim about their behavior that didn’t fit the disguises.

  Babe MacNeice was tinkering despondently with the central control panel of the conference-type communications system exclusive to the Intelligence Wing. The panel was a little thing, like a book in size and shape, but its insides were so fearfully complicated that nothing short of an installations engineer could make anything of them. And the panel was definitely shot to hell.

  She said as much, and burst into a flood of tears. Bartok, the other Rigelian, snarled softly and handed over a mussy handkerchief. “Take it easy,” he snapped, his own nerves raw and quick with strain. “We’re sitting pretty compared with the rest of the office staff.”

  The brave smile that always ended the weeping spells flashed out as she returned the handkerchief. “What now?” she demanded tremulously. “Now that we can’t keep in touch with the rest of the men?”

  “Now,” he said slowly, “I don’t know. But—” He snatched at her wrist and dragged her behind a pillar as the door of their cellar swung open and a streak of light shot through the gloom. The profile of a marine’s cap showed against the light. Bartok raised his handgun, resting the long barrel across his left forearm, pioneer-sharpshooter style.

  The door opened fully. The marine called: “Come on out or I’ll shoot!” That was on general principles. It was surprising how many fell for the centuries-old dodge. Then when the hider came out the marines would have a little innocent fun with their handguns and depart for other cellars.

  Babe sneezed. The marine started and Bartok shot him through the head. “Come on,” he snapped in an undertone as he tore off the Rigelian wig. “Through the window, Babe, and try to forget you’re a lady!”

  THE HUE and cry has been called the most shameful tradition of genus homo; for generations it had been abandoned in favor of more civilized and efficient methods, such as teletype alarms and radio squad cars. Now, in the taking-over by the Navy, the dishonorable tradition was revived as a further testimony that this taking-over was nothing short of barbarism once you sheared it of the nickelplate of the lineships and the gold braid dripping from officers’ shoulders.

  Behind the two fleeing people poured a ragged mob of marines and sailors, roaring inarticulate things about what they would do to the sneaking murderers when they caught them.

  Luckily—in a way—an officer of the Navy popped from a doorway armed to the teeth and charging them to surrender. This they gladly did as he stood off the mob with his weapons.

  They found themselves at last in a lighter, one of the small boats connected to the Stupendous. In an off-hand way, as the boat left the ground, the officer said: “I recognized you, you know.”

  “Really?” asked Babe, frozen-faced.

  “Not you,” he hastily explained. “But Commander Bartok—I’ve seen his picture. Did you know you were proscribed, Commander?”

  “I assumed so,” answered the commander dryly. The officer—an ensign—was very young and callow. The hard lines were growing about his mouth, though. When he could call this “pacification” without laughing out loud, thought Bartok, he’d be a real Navy man.

  “How’s everything going?” asked the commander. “Would you know how the campaign’s progressing in other parts?”

  The ensign, seemingly delighted to converse on equal terms with a Wing Commander, even though a proscribed one, drew nearer—or as much nearer as he could, in the windowless, tiny, completely enclosed compartment that was the load-space of the lighter, and grinned: “Some dashed mysterious things have been happening, and I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if you johnnies in Intelligence were behind them.”

  He shifted uneasily beneath Bartok’s steady, piercing stare. “You needn’t look at me like that,” he complained. “Even if it isn’t true, it’s the official non-official news—if you understand me.” He chuckled.

  Bartok moved swiftly then, clutching the ensign by the throat and bringing an elbow into his midriff. The ensign, not wholly taken by surprise, apparently, drew his gun and fired.

  THEY DRAGGED his bloody body—he had been shot in the face, and it had run all over the enclosed space—from the lighter a few minutes later. Babe was having a hysterical attack and the ensign frantically signaled to the sailors who took in the boat to relieve him of her. The engineer of the little craft came from his cubbyhole in the bow and took her by the arm, led her away from the mess on the floor.

  “Poor girl,” said the ensign. “She must have loved him terribly.”

  To follow Babe MacNeice, after the first torrential outburst she was dry-eyed, but there was a catch in her voice when she spoke: “Where are you taking me?”

  “To the O.D., lady. He’ll route you.”

  The Officer of the Day decided that she was important enough to go directly to the Admiral.

  In the super-sumptuous office of Fitzjames she thought at first that she was alone, but a snaky individual who had a knack of blending in with the furniture, as if he didn’t want to be seen, coughed tentatively.

  She eyed him up and down. “You,” she said, “must be the Satanic Mr. Voss.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Indeed? How so?”

  “It’s no secret that you’re the one who started the—the taking-over.”

  “I defy you to prove it,” he snickered.

  “You’re a civilian. That’s final and conclusive. There isn’t one of these certifiable fatheads in uniform that’d have the guts to do what they’ve all been talking about for fifty years. You touched it off, and you see victory in your hands right this moment. Bartok is dead.”

  “No!” he spat. “Where?”

  “Coming up here on a lighter. He rashly jumped the ensign who’d arrested us. He got his face blown off.”

  “So,” grunted Voss. “The end of organized resistance to our program. How did he manage, by the way, to blow up our ships with their own ammunition, or whatever really happened?”

  “I don’t know the details,” she replied wearily. “We used glorified lantern-slides to project the simulacrum of a lineship; we could do that with about fifty one-man craft. It’s a kind of formation flying. We turned back your shells by magnetic fields. Normally you could dodge them, because you keep ready to move whenever you fire the big guns. But we dubbed in a dummy shell—like the lantern-slide lineship—and you’d see that shell and there wouldn’t be a thought in your heads until you were blown up. But you’re onto that trick now. It only worked four times, I think. I was a lunatic to think that you could fight guns with brainwork and hope to win.”

  She collapsed limply into a chair and stared dully at the floor. “Bartok’s de
ad. The communication system’s wrecked. You can have your taking-over, Mr. Voss; we’re licked.”

  CHAPTER V

  “HELL!” said the Admiral. “Why can’t I go out into the street if I want to?”

  “Because,” said Voss patiently, “you’d be shot down like a dog. You’re going to speak from behind cover, and I’ll post the best shots in the Navy all over just in case.”

  “Right,” said the Admiral. “Then it’s decided. I guess the old brain’s clicking right along, eh?” He forced a laugh, and Voss responded with a meager smile.

  Tapping on the door, Voss opened it on the young ensign who’d been boasting all over the ship of shooting down the insidious Bartok. He was being avoided by his friends now; he wouldn’t let them get a word in about their own feats of clubbing and mayhem.

  “What do you want?” thundered the Admiral. “I’m preparing my address to All Earth and Colonies!”

  “Beg pardon, sir,” said the ensign. “But I was wondering if I could be assigned to your guard of honor for the address. After all, sir, I did outwit Bartok.”

  “Since when,” asked Voss coldly, “does outwitting consist of getting in a lucky shot?”

  “Tut,” grumbled the Admiral. “Let him have his way. Why not, Voss?”

  “I was going to,” said the secretary. “Report this evening.”

  “Thank you, sir. And—and—”

  “Spit it out, kid. What do you want?” demanded Voss.

  “About Miss MacNeice, sir. She seemed awfully broken up about what I did. How is she now?”

  “Resting easy in Cell Eleven,” said the Admiral. “Now go away.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said the ensign, saluting as he closed the door.

  “Good boy, that,” said Voss. “It pays to have semi-fanatics like him in your train. They’ll do the dirty work when nobody else will. Remember that, Fitzjames.”

  “I will, Voss,” said the Admiral. “Now about this speech—”

  The ensign was walking down one of the very long corridors of the ship, whistling cheerfully, oblivious to the superstition to the effect that it’s the worst kind of luck to a ship; even worse than changing her name.

  And in Cell Eleven—neat and comfortable, but a cell—Babe MacNeice was fiddling desperately with the communications control. Trust those bloody incompetents, she dryly thought, to leave a woman unsearched because a matron wasn’t handy . . .

  Then, by the most convenient of miracles, there was a little tone signal from the switchboard. “It works,” she said in a hushed whisper. “It was bound to happen—nobody could try as hard as I’ve been trying and not get some kind of results.”

  She hissed into the tiny grid mouthpiece: “Hello—who’s in?”

  A male voice grumbled: “My God, woman, you’ve been long enough about it! I’m Casey, heading towards Spica because I can’t think of anything else to do. My fuel’s low, too.”

  “Keep going,” she said. “When you get there, be prepared for anything at all. I’m not making promises, but there’s a chance. And my God! What a chance! You get out now. I have some heavy coverage to do.”

  “Good luck, lady, whoever you are.”

  She smiled briefly and fiddled with the elaborate, but almost microscopically tiny, controls that directed the courses of the Intelligence Wing.

  “Come in, anybody, in the Twenty-Third Cosmic Sector. Anybody at all. This is MacNeice—urgent!”

  “Not the famous Babe herself?” came a woman’s voice dryly. “I’m listening, dearie.”

  “You locate on Aldebaran III, sister, in no more than ten hours. Keep under cover. Now get out. Aldebaran III has to be covered.”

  With an anxious note the voice asked: “Just a minute—how’s Barty? I heard a rumor—”

  “Forget it, sister,” snapped Babe. “You have a job to do.” She cut the woman out and called in rapid succession as many of the thirty Cosmic Sectors as she could get. One set had fallen into the hands of the Navy, and that was bad, but she cut out before they could have traced it or even guessed what it was. There had been a confused murmur and a single distinct voice saying: “The damned thing’s a radio, sir!” before she cut out.

  What she had been doing was to locate operatives on the principal planets and stations of the Cosmos; operatives prepared for anything. It had been a job of routing; they bunched together when they weren’t under orders. She had to break them up—and she did.

  After locating one stubborn female, she heard a man’s tread in the corridor outside and as quickly as she could hid the little panel-like affair, which, considering where she was forced to hide it, was not a very speedy job of concealment.

  THE ENTIRE CITY of New Metropole was jammed into the vast Square of the Living Statues that evening for the ultimate proclamation from Admiral of the Fleet Fitzjames concerning the taking-over and the new order to be established. Though, of course, some historians would say that there was nothing new about it, but that it was a very old order indeed.

  There had been erected against the superb backdrop of the living statues a great booth-like affair from which the Admiral would make his speech, a speech to be heard simultaneously by every living human and colonial extraterrestrial alive. There was even declared a temporary amnesty on extraterrestrials; for this evening they might walk the streets—but only to and from the Square.

  The booth was, of course, weapon-proof. Voss had been most particular about that.

  Crowds had begun to assemble early in the afternoon; if there was to be a new order, they would make sure that they would be its earliest and heartiest boosters. By dusk the press of people had grown so great that there was no room to turn around, let alone draw a weapon, so Fitzjames could have no fear on that score. The only free place was the platform of the booth, flush with the great transparent base on which the living statues moved on in their endless perfection.

  When night had fallen they turned on the floodlights normally used to illuminate the statues, removing the color-wheels. The crowd was picked out in glaring detail by the pitiless glow. As far as the eye could see there was a meadow of faces upturned, each sharp and distinct by itself. The statues were in the dark, their sole remaining lights being turned on the booth. The very music had been subdued so that the amplifiers would lose no word of what the Admiral would say. It was a memorable occasion in many unsuspected ways.

  Ten o’clock sharp, enter the Admiral, dropping from the heavens in an ornate lighter which was then immediately dispatched. Fitzjames was afraid that his hour of triumph might end tragically should a spanner fall from the craft and crack his skull.

  With him, of course, were Voss and the guard of honor.

  Five past ten Voss stepped to the mike. “Friends,” he said, “it is my proud duty to present to you the man who has liberated us from the yoke of the All Earth Exec—Fitzjames The First!”

  There was an astounded hush from the audience, and then a protesting murmur. The wildest fancy they had indulged in hadn’t included anything like a monarchy!

  Fitzjames The First stepped to the mike as Voss bowed low. He said: “My loyal subjects, I greet you.”

  The guard of honor fidgeted. It had been a well-kept secret. The young ensign strolled over to Voss, who was surprised to feel a handgun’s muzzle pressed into his ribs.

  “Excuse me?” he said strainedly. “Are you sure you’re quite sane, young man? Take that thing away.”

  “I’m not only sane,” said the Ensign, “I’m Bartok. When that silly ass fired at me in the lighter he missed, of course. So I switched clothes in three minutes flat, Babe made up my face with the kit that every Intelligence Wing man carries, then we blew the face off the ensign of yours. He was unconscious. A pity.”

  “—magnificent demonstration of the reversion to childlike faith in the will of Providence and the divine right of kings—” the Admiral was droning.

  Voss, a slender, slimy, active man, dived into the shadows as Bartok’s attention wavered from him to t
he speaker.

  The Wing Commander dived right after him. “Where are you?” he called into the darkness. “Don’t be a damned fool!”

  The only answer was a slug zipping past his ear.

  “Bartok,” hissed Voss from the blackness, “this is your last adventure. I can see you and you can’t see .me. Good-bye, Bartok.”

  THERE WAS a sickening crunch from the blackness and a gasp that sounded like a tin can in labor.

  “The poor, damned fool,” said Bartok. One of the living statues had stepped on the man’s head in the course of some intricate pas seul. Bartok had known it would happen, for the periodicity of the statues was limited to this: in the course of two minutes and forty seconds every square foot of the dancing platform was trodden on at least once by at least one of the two-ton feet of the statues.

  Meanwhile the remainder of the guard of honor was vainly trying to fire unloaded handguns—except one slender young man who simply grinned like a cat.

  “Okay, Babe,” said Bartok to the slender young man. “You do it.”

  “With pleasure!”

  As the Admiral had just got around to the choosing of his palace-planet—nothing less than an entire planet would do for his regal estates—he too felt a gun in his ribs. He stopped short.

  “Read this,” said the slender young man, who was trying to keep from giggling.

  Without ado of any sort the Admiral placed the paper on the lectern before him and read in flat, colorless tones:

  “I hereby declare that I personally had no such nonsense in mind. It was the work of my secretary. I hereby state that I assume no powers beyond my naval duties.

  “General Order to All Officers: any seditious talk of taking over will be severely dealt with by the Intelligence Wing which is—u/p.f—hereby constituted as supreme police authority over the Navy.