Possible Tomorrows

by Groff Conklin (Ed. )

  He shifted position, became aware of the revolver in his pocket and brought it out A wave of dull anger surged slowly through him again. What they did with trees and animals was their own business. But what they had done to a human being. . .

  He scrambled suddenly to his feet, drew his arm back, and sent the gun flying far out over the lake. It spun through the moonlight, dipped, struck the surface with less of a splash than the fish had made, and was gone.

  Now why, Barney asked himself in amazement, did I do that? He considered it a moment, and then, for the first time in over a year, felt a brief touch of something not far from elation.

  He wasn’t going to die here. No matter how politely the various invitations to do himself in had been extended by McAllen or the association, he was going to embarrass them by being alive and healthy when they came back to the valley four years from now. They wouldn’t kill him then; they’d already shown they didn’t have the guts to commit murder directly. They would have to take him back to Earth.

  And once he was there, it was going to be too bad for them. It didn’t matter how closely they watched him; in the end he would find or make the opportunity to expose them, pull down the whole lousy, conceited crew, see them buried under the shambles an outraged world would make of the secret association. . .

  THE END OF YEAR TWO

  The end of Year Two on the Ecological Base in the Eighteenth System arrived and went by without Barney’s being immediately aware of the fact. Some two hours later, he glanced at his wrist watch, pushed back the chair, got up from the desk and went over to the big grandfather clock to confirm his surmise.

  “Well, well, Brother Chard,” he said aloud. “Another anniversary . . . and three of them to go. We’re almost at the halfway mark—”

  He snapped the cover plate back over the multiple dock faces, and turned away. Three more years on the Ecological Base was a gruesome stretch of time when you thought of it as a whole . . .

  Which was precisely why he rarely let himself think of it as a whole nowadays.

  This last year, at any rate, Barney conceded to himself, had to be regarded as an improvement on the first. Well, he added irritably, and what wouldn’t be? It hadn’t been delightful; he’d frequently felt almost stupefied with boredom. But physically, at least, he was fit—considerably fitter, as a matter of fact, than he’d ever been in his life.

  Not very surprising. When he got too restless to be able to settle down to anything else, he was walking , about the valley, moving along at his best clip regardless of obstacles until he was ready to drop to the ground wherever he was. Exertion ate up restlessness eventually—for a while. Selecting another tree to chop into firewood took the edge off the spasms of rage that tended to come up if he started thinking too long about that association of jerks somewhere beyond the sun. Brother Chard was putting on muscle all over. And after convincing himself at last—after all, the animals weren’t getting hurt—that the glaring diamond of fire in the daytime sky couldn’t really be harmful, he had also rapidly put on a Palm Beach tan. When his carefully rationed sleep periods eventually came around, he was more than ready for them, and slept like a log.

  Otherwise: projects. Projects to beat boredom, and never mind how much sense they made in themselves. None of them did. But after the first month or two he had so much going that there was no question any more of not having something to do. Two hours allotted to work out on the typewriter a critical evaluation of a chapter from one of McAllen’s abstruse technical texts. If Barney’s mood was sufficiently sour, the evaluation would be unprintable; but it wasn’t being printed, and two hours had been disposed of. A day and a half—Earth Standard Time—to construct an operating dam across the stream. He was turning into an experienced landscape architect; the swimming pool in the floor of the valley beneath the cabin might not have been approved by Carstairs of California, but it was the one project out of which he had even drawn some realistic benefit.

  Then:

  Half an hour to improve his knife-throwing technique.

  Fifteen minutes to get the blade of the kitchen knife straightened out afterwards.

  Two hours to design a box trap for the capture of one of the fat gray squirrels that always hung about the cabin.

  Fifty minutes on a new chess problem. Chess, Barney had discovered, wasn’t as hairy as it looked.

  Five hours to devise one more completely foolproof method of bringing about the eventual ruin of the association. That made no more practical sense than anything else be was doing—and couldn’t, until he knew a great deal more about McAllen’s friends than he did now.

  But it was considerably more absorbing, say, than even chess.

  Brother Chard could beat boredom. He could probably beat another three years of boredom.

  He hadn’t forgiven anyone for making him do it.

  THE END OF YEAR FIVE

  For some hours, the association’s Altiplano station had been dark and almost deserted. Only the IMT transit lock beneath one of the sprawling ranch houses showed in the vague light spreading out of the big scanning plate in an upper wall section. The plate framed an unimpressive section of the galaxy, a blurred scattering of stars condensing toward the right, and somewhat left of center, a large misty red globe.

  John Emanuel Fredericks, seated by himself in one of the two Tube operator chairs, ignored the plate. He was stooped slightly forwards, peering absorbedly through the eyepieces of the operator scanner before him.

  Melvin Simms, Psychologist, strolled in presently through the transit lock’s door, stopped behind Fredericks, remarked mildly, “Good evening, doctor.”

  Fredericks started and looked around. “Never heard you arrive, Mel. Where’s Ollie?”

  “He and Spalding dropped in at Spalding’s place in Vermont They should be along in a few minutes.”

  “Spalding?”. Fredericks repeated inquiringly. “Our revered president intends to observe the results of Oilie’s experiment in person?”

  “He’ll represent the board here,” Simms said. “Whereas L, as you may have guessed, represent the outraged psychology department.” He nodded at the plate. “That the place?”

  “That’s it ET Base Eighteen.”

  “Not very sharp in the Tube, is it?”

  “No. Still plenty of interfering radiation. But it’s thinned out enough for contact Reading 0.19, as of thirty minutes ago.” Fredericks indicated the chair beside him. “Sit down if you want a better look.”

  “Thanks.” The psychologist settled himself in the chair, leaned forward and peered into the scanner; After a few seconds he remarked, “Not the most hospitable-looking place—”

  Fredericks grunted. “Any of the ecologists will tell you Eighteen’s an unspoiled beauty. No problems there—except the ones we bring along ourselves.”

  Simms grinned faintly. “Well, we’re good at doing that, aren’t we? Have you looked around for uh . . . for McAllen’s subject yet?”

  “No. Felt Ollie should be present when we find out what’s happened. Incidentally, how did the meeting go?”

  “You weren’t tuned in?” Simms asked, surprised.

  “No. Too busy setting things up for contact.”

  “Well”—Simms sat back in his chair—“I may say it was a regular bear garden for a while, doctor. Psychology expressed itself as being astounded, indignant, offended. In a word, they were hopping mad. I kept out of it, though I admit I was startled when McAllen informed me privately this morning of the five-year project he’s been conducting on the quiet. He was accused of crimes ranging . . . oh, from the clandestine to the inhumane. And, of course, Ollie was giving it back as good as he got.”

  “Of course.”

  “His arguments,” Simms went on, pursing his lips reflectively, “were not without merit. That was recognized. Nobody enjoys the idea of euthanasia as a security device. Many of us feel—I do—that it’s still preferable to the degree of brainwashing required to produce significant alterations in a perso
nality type of Chard’s class.”

  “Ollie feels that, too,” Fredericks said. “The upshot of the original situation, as he saw it, was that Barney Chard had been a dead man from the moment he got on the association’s trail. Or a permanently deformed personality.”

  Simms shook his head. “Not the last. We wouldn’t have considered attempting personality alteration in his case.”

  “Euthanasia then,” Fredericks said. “Chard was too intelligent to be thrown off the track, much too unscrupulous to be trusted under any circumstances. So Ollie reported him dead.”

  The psychologist was silent for some seconds. “The point might be this,” he said suddenly. “After my talk with McAllen this morning, I ran an extrapolation on the personality pattern defined for Chard five years ago on the basis of his background. Results indicate he went insane and suicided within a year.”

  “How reliable are those results?” Fredericks inquired absently.

  “No more so than any other indication in individual psychology. But they present a reasonable probability . . . and not a very pleasant one.”

  Fredericks said, “Oliver wasn’t unaware of that as a possible outcome. One reason he selected Base Eighteen for the experiment was to make sure he couldn’t interfere with the process, once it had begun.

  “His feeling, after talking with Chard for some hours, was that Chard was an overcondensed man. That is Oliver’s own term, you understand. Chard obviously was intelligent, had a very strong survival drive. He had selected a good personal survival line to follow—good but very narrow. Actually, of course, he was a frightened man. He had been running scared all his life. He couldn’t stop.”

  Simms nodded.

  “Base Eighteen stopped him. The things he’d been running from simply no longer existed. Ollie believed Chard would go into a panic when he realized it. The question was what he’d do then. Survival now had a very different aspect The only dangers threatening him were the ones inherent in the rigid personality structure he had maintained throughout his adult existence. Would he be intelligent enough to understand that? And would his survival urge—with every alternative absolutely barred to him for five years—be strong enough to overcome those dangers?”

  “And there,” Simms said dryly, “we have two rather large questions.” He cleared his throat “The fact remains, however, that Oliver B. McAllen is a good practical psychologist—as he demonstrated at the meeting.”

  “I expected Ollie would score on the motions,” Fredericks said. “How did that part of it come off?”

  “Not too badly. The first motion was passed unanimously. A vote of censure against Dr. McAllen.”

  Fredericks looked thoughtful. “His seventeenth—I believe?”

  “Yes. The fact was mentioned. McAllen admitted he could do no less than vote for this one himself. However, the next motion to receive a majority was, in effect a generalized agreement that men with such . . . ah . . . highly specialized skills as Barney Chard’s and with comparable intelligence actually would be of great value as members of the association, if it turned out that they could be sufficiently relieved of their more flagrant antisocial tendencies. Considering the qualification, the psychology department could hardly avoid backing that motion. The same with the third one—in effect again that Psychology is to make an unprejudiced study of the results of Dr. McAllen’s experiment on Base Eighteen, and report on the desirability of similar experiments when the personality of future subjects appears to warrant them.”

  “Well,” Fredericks said, after a pause, “as far as the association goes, Ollie got what he wanted. As usual.” He hesitated. “The other matter—”

  “We’ll know that shortly.” Simms turned his head to listen, added in a lowered voice, “They’re coming now.”

  Dr. Stephen Spalding said to Simms and Fredericks: “Dr. McAllen agrees with me that the man we shall be looking for on Base Eighteen may be dead. If this is indicated, we’ll attempt to find some evidence of his death before normal ecological operations on Eighteen are resumed.

  “Next, we may find him alive but no longer sane. Dr. Simms and I are both equipped with drug-guns which will then be used to render him insensible. The charge is sufficient to. insure he will not wake up again. In this circumstance, caution will be required since he was left on the Base with a loaded gun.

  “Third, he may be alive and technically sane, but openly or covertly hostile to us.” Spaulding glanced briefly at each of the others, then went on, “It is because of this particular possibility that our contact group here has been very carefully selected. If such has been the result of Dr. McAllen’s experiment, it will be our disagreeable duty to act as Chard’s executioners. To add lifelong confinement or further psychological manipulation to the five solitary years Chard already has spent would be inexcusable.

  “Dr. McAllen has told us he did not inform Chard of the actual reason he was being marooned—”

  “On the very good grounds,” McAllen interrupted, “that if Chard had been told at the outset what the purpose was, he would have preferred killing himself to allowing the purpose to be achieved. Any other human being was Chard’s antagonist. It would have been impossible for him to comply with another man’s announced intentions.”

  Simms nodded. “I’ll go along on that point, doctor.” Spalding resumed, “It might be a rather immaterial point by now. In any event, Chard’s information was that an important ‘five-year-plan’ of the association made it necessary to restrict him for that length of time. We shall observe him closely. If the indications are that he would act against the association whenever he is given the opportunity, our line will be that the five-year-plan has been concluded, and that he is, therefore, now to be released and will receive adequate compensation for his enforced seclusion. As soon as he is asleep, he will, of course, receive euthanasia. But up to that time, everything must be done to reassure him.”

  He paused again, concluded, “There is the final possibility that Dr. McAllen’s action has had the results he was attempting to bring about.. Ollie, you might speak on that yourself.”

  McAllen shrugged. “I’ve already presented my views. Essentially, it’s a question of whether Barney Chard was capable of learning that he could live without competing destructively with other human beings. If he has grasped that he should also be aware by now that Base Eighteen is presently one of the most interesting spots in the known universe.”

  Simms asked: “Do you expect he’ll be grateful for what has occurred?”

  “We-e-ll,” McAllen said judiciously, turning a little pale, “that of course, depends on whether he isstill alive and sane. But if he has survived the five years, I do believe that he will not be dissatisfied with what has happened to him. However”—he shrugged again—“let’s get ahead with it Five years has been a long time to find out whether or not I’ve murdered a man.”

  In the momentary silence that followed, he settled himself in the chair Fredericks had vacated, and glanced over at Simms. “You stay seated, Mel,” he said. “You represent Psychology here. Use your chair scanner. The plate’s still showing no indications of clearing, John?”

  “No,” said Fredericks. “In another two hours we might have a good picture there. Hardly before.”

  McAllen said, “We won’t wait for it Simms and I can determine through the scanners approximately what has been going on.” He was silent a few seconds; then the blurred red globe in the plate expanded swiftly, filled two thirds of the view space, checked for a moment, then grew once more; finally stopped.

  McAllen said irritably, “John, I’m afraid you’ll have to take over. My hands don’t seem steady enough to handle this properly.”

  A minute or two passed. The big plate grew increasingly indistinct, all details lost In a muddy wash of orange-brown shades. Green intruded suddenly; then McAllen muttered, “Picking up the cabin now.”

  There was a moment of silence, then Fredericks cleared his throat. “So far so good, Oliver. We’re looking
into the cabin. Can’t see your man yet—but someone’s living here. Eh, Simms?”

  “Obviously,” the psychologist acknowledged. He hesitated. “And at a guess it’s no maniac. The place is in reasonably good order.”

  “You say Chard isn’t in the cabin?” Spalding demanded. Fredericks said, “Not unless he’s deliberately concealing himself. The exit door is open. Hm-m-m. Well, the place isn’t entirely deserted, after all.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Spalding.

  “Couple of squirrels sitting in the window,” Simms explained.

  “In the window? Inside the cabin?”

  “Yes,” said Fredericks. “Either they strayed in while he was gone, or he’s keeping them as pets. Now, should we start looking around outside for Chard?”

  “No,” Spalding decided. “The Base is too big to attempt to cover at pin-point focus. If he’s living in the cabin and has simply gone out, he’ll return within a few hours at the most. We’ll wait and see what we can deduce from the way he behaves when he shows up.” He turned to McAllen. “Ollie,” he said, “I think you might allow yourself to relax just a little. This doesn’t seem at all bad!”

  McAllen grunted. “I don’t know,” he said. “You’re overlooking one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  I told Chard when to expect us. Unless he’s smashed the clock, he knows we’re due today. If nothing’s wrong—wouldn’t he be waiting in the cabin for us?”

  Spalding hesitated. “That Is a point He seems to be hiding out. May have prepared an ambush, for that matter. John—”

  “Yes?” Fredericks said.

  “Step the tubescope down as fine as it will go, and scan (hat cabin as if you were vacuuming it There may be some indication—”