Iron Head: Science Fiction Mystery Tales

by E. C. Tubb

  It was an impressive scene. Ranked down the vast hall were the representatives of every assimilated world and allied race. They differed from each other in minor physical detail but not so much that they did not betray their common heritage. One day, thought Jake watching them, he would have to investigate the origins of the human race. It could be no accident that peoples on diverse planets had so much in common. They must all have had, at one time, a common ancestry.

  He concentrated on the advancing figure of the President. Ayha touched his hand.

  “Poor man,” she whispered. “He is terrified.”

  He had good reason to be, thought Jake grimly. Only the threat of total destruction had brought Earth to the realisation that it was literally yield or die. And it was this man, this lone, stooped figure, who was the direct cause. Harvey had much to answer for.

  Jake let him sweat for a while. He leaned forward from the high throne.

  “You admit that you are totally defeated?”

  “Yes, your Serenity.”

  “And you are here to offer your unconditional surrender?”

  “Yes, your Serenity.”

  “I see.” Jake relaxed. He wasn’t cruel and the old man had suffered enough. “I shall, of course, absorb you into my empire. I cannot permit the threat of another, unwarranted attack to disturb the peace of my empire and my dynasty. You agree?”

  “Naturally, your Serenity.” The President had expected no less. In his more despondent moments he had imagined all Earthmen being sold into slavery. He braced himself for what was to come.

  “There will also be reparations. Your remaining vessels will be confiscated.

  “The prisoners of war, your Serenity?”

  “Will be offered employment. They may, if they wish, join my forces. I shall employ them to keep the peace and protect my domains.”

  “Your Serenity!” It was more than the President had hoped for; more than he deserved. “I—” He broke off as Jake lifted his hand. “Your Serenity?”

  “I shall demand implicit loyalty towards myself and my descendants.”

  “That is understood.” The President was sweating, he was waiting for the catch. Jake waved a hand.

  “That is all.”

  The President gaped.

  “Earth will be received into my empire on an equal status and certain benefits will accrue. For example, it is not my wish to ruin your economy; ships and men to crew them will always be in demand.”

  Jake relaxed on his throne feeling a glow of satisfaction that he had done the right thing. Himself a son of Earth he had a soft spot for the home world. Also, his personal troops, the ex-mercenaries he had engaged to keep order in his far-flung empire were all Terrans. It would have been bad policy to have been too harsh on their mother-planet.

  *

  Later, when they were alone, Jake poured Harvey a glass of wine.

  “The war is over,” he said. “Let us drink to peace.”

  “To peace!” Harvey drained his glass. It was good wine, the best he had ever tasted, the goblet cut from a single crystal. He set it down and examined the sumptuous private apart-ments, the costly hangings, the incredibly expensive furniture. He looked at Jake, elegantly dressed in fabrics which the President had only heard about but could never have afforded. He shook his head.

  “Something on your mind?” Jake refilled the empty glass. “Only a minor matter’ your Serenity.” Harvey’s initial fear had gone. Jake was no ravening monster, no beast bent on revenge. He was just a quiet, ordinary-seeming man married to one of the most beautiful women Harvey had ever seen, and the old man was curious.

  “You know,” he said, “I can’t figure out how you did it. Advance so quickly, I mean.” He coughed. “I must confess that I took the liberty of looking up your record before the recent—unpleasantness between us.”

  “Indeed?”

  “Yes.” Harvey sipped at his wine and gave a deep sigh. “With all due respect, your Serenity, it’s incredible. From a common Guardsman to the virtual ruler of the galaxy. It’s almost unbelievable.”

  Jake shrugged.

  “Merton, Master of Space!” The President mouthed the title with awe. “With all due respect, your Serenity, it makes a man wonder. If you, crippled as you are—I am sure that you will forgive my referring to your handicap—have accomplished so much in so short a time; what would you have done had you been normal? A telepath like the rest of us.”

  “That’s easy,” said Jake. He helped himself to wine. “I’d still be herding cows for the Apex Delicacy Co.”

  MEMORIES ARE IMPORTANT

  Holding it as he did, scant inches from his eyes, the hypodermic held a new and significant importance. Only the instrument was clear, the rest of the room was out of focus, a formless blur against which the machined perfection of glass and chromed steel shone with startling clarity.

  Symbolism, thought Carter absently. The tangible evidence of the advance of science against the unknown, and wondered a little why he, who had long since grown familiar with all the tools of modern medicine, should have entertained such a thought. A little impatient with himself he gently pressed the plunger, watched as a globule of colourless fluid oozed from the slanted tip of the needle, and lowered the instrument. Arden’s face replaced the image of the hypodermic.

  He was a small man, not young, not old, the only saving feature being his eyes. They glowed in the mediocrity of his face, alive with intelligence, the desperate, unceasing urge to know, the eyes of a fanatic. He sat in a chair, loosely dressed in a hospital robe, one sleeve of which was drawn back to reveal his thin, hairless, unmuscular arm.

  Carter stepped forward, pinched up a fold of skin and deftly thrust home the needle. Steadily he pressed the plunger until the barrel was empty, wiping the puncture with alcohol-soaked pad as he withdrew the needle. Arden held the pad in place without being asked, he too was no stranger to the procedure of medicine.

  “How long?” The third man in the room leaned forward in his chair. Like the others he was a doctor, like them he was a little more than that. The realm of the mind held, for Hendrickson, a special fascination.

  “Several minutes.” Carter gently placed the hypodermic on a surgical table. “We know how the preliminary injection operates, the second stage is the unknown factor.”

  “Perhaps—” Hendrickson paused. Arden spoke before he could continue.

  “Let’s not go over all this again,” he said. His voice w deep and melodious, the trained tones of a practiced hypnotist. “We have made all the tests we can on animals, now it is time to make the final test. There is only one way.”

  Hendrickson swallowed, knowing that Arden was right, knowing that what he did had been done before by other men with other drugs but all having a common factor. Caution could only go so far—then had to come the calculated taking of risks. And who better than a skilled observer to take them?

  “Odd.” Carter had sat down, his thick, short legs stretched before him, his hands, so big and clumsy looking, and yet so gentle and deft, resting on his thighs. “Have you realised that, if what we hope materialises, all we at present stand for will be obsolete?” He looked from one to the other. “Not surgery, of course, not much of medicine as we know it, but psychiatry will never be the same again.”

  “So speaks the witch doctor confronted with truth instead of surmise.” Arden rubbed his arm, the injection, despite Carter’s care, had bruised the flesh. “Don’t over-estimate what we are trying to do. We are proving a tool, nothing more. The drug, if it works as we hope, will simply add the resources of the psychiatrist. It can never replace skill.”

  Hendrickson nodded, feeling a glow of comfort, recognising why he felt it and then recognised the guilt behind his satisfaction. It isn’t easy for anyone to admit that he has served his purpose. For thirty years he had studied to understand some of the workings of the mind, trying to bring help and comfort to the mentally afflicted. The drug, if it worked, would not replace him. His skill would
still be necessary and he was glad of it. Then he felt guilty because that meant he, subconsciously, hoped there would still be those needing his assistance. And that, for any psychiatrist, was to suffer guilt. Could he only be happy while others suffered?

  *

  The room was very quiet. Here, high in one wing of the hospital, away from the wards, the theatre, the now-empty waiting rooms and the out-patients department, the casualty wards and the never-sleeping emergency service, pain and suffering seemed very far away. From the single window the night-scene beneath showed itself as strings of flaring sodium lights, the garish glow of window-signs; the traceries of lighted cars. Even the traffic sounds, muted as they were in the small hours seemed muffled and distant. Arden’s sigh echoed with exaggerated clarity.

  At once Carter was on his feet, his fingers on the other’s pulse, his eyes squinting at the dilation of the irises. Arden shook his head.

  “Not yet.” He restrained his impatience with the older man. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”

  “We’ll tell you when you’re ready.” Hendrickson made the statement as if it were a joke but he wasn’t joking. “You’re just a guinea-pig, Arden.” He extended the joke.

  “What does it feel like to be a laboratory specimen, waiting for the injection that will do—what?”

  “We know what it will do!” Arden was sharp. Carter corrected him.

  “We think we know. Later we may be sure, but at the moment all we can do is to hope that we’ve guessed right.”

  “Do you guess when you hunt down a trauma and resolve it?” Arden was still sharp. He recognised it and deliberately controlled himself. The drug in his veins made that a simple task—it had been designed to achieve maximum relaxation without any loss of sensual or mental perception. “We know,” he continued quietly “that psychosomatic disorders are directly due to mental causes. We know that most mental disorders are due to psychic traumas experienced in childhood. We are certain that, if we can erase these traumas then we can restore mental health and so eliminate psychosomatic disturbances. Agreed?”

  There was no disagreement.

  “The normal method of psycho-analysis is a long and tedious procedure and, though we may not like to admit it, one with a high percentage of failure. Operative failure, I mean, we know what is wrong but, for one reason or another, be powerless to do anything about it. After all, telling a man that he is ill because of something done to him, before him or with him in his childhood doesn’t eliminate it. It doesn’t erase it. The memory is still there. Sometimes we can rationalise the memory, give it a new frame of reference, so to speak, but not always. But, if we could remove the memory? Erase it? Then it would, to the individual, never have existed.”

  It was an old dream. Logically it would provide the cure to the major portion of the world’s ills for men unplagued by disturbing memories would not be driven by the unsuspected devils dictating their actions. Individuals make a state, individuals form a government. Cure the individual and the rest would follow. Eliminate the mischief making memories and happiness would no longer be an unachievable state of existence.

  Arden sighed again and now his words came faster as if he were racing time.

  “You know what the drug will do. It will cause a complete cessation of memory, temporarily, of course, but effectively. During that period you must confine the activities of the drug to a certain, selected incident…”

  His voice droned on but the others were paying more attention to the speaker than to his words. They knew what they had to do. First, when the preliminary injection had taken full effect, to hypnotise Arden so as to bring into the present the selected memory to be erased. Then, with the memory predominant, to administer the drug and so eliminate it. There would be a mental gap which would soon be overlaid with surrounding memories so as to eliminate a vacuum. That wasn’t important, it didn’t even matter, who can remember, consciously, every incident of an entire lifetime?

  They had tried it before, of course, with hypnotism, with electrical shock, with pre-frontal lobotomy, but none had proved satisfactory. Hypnotism blanked out by suggestion but did not erase the memory—it merely raised a barrier artificial and attendant with its own ills. Shock treatment like lobotomy destroyed without selection doing more damage than good. This new drug, if it worked, would replace with a surgeon’s scalpel the shotgun effect of present techniques.

  “You have my file,” said Arden. “A test case but not without personal importance. There was a girl, you know about her. A love affair, over now but not forgotten, how could it ever be forgotten? Years ago and it should be dead but it still lives, still disturbs me, still affects my life.” His words came slower, his eyes grew a little vacant, the irises no longer responding quickly to light. He was not asleep, not numbly drugged but he was divorced from immediacy, lost in introspection. “Erase her,” he whispered. “Erase her from my mind, from my life. Then, to me, she will never have existed.” He sighed, a long deep sigh, and his eyes sharpened a little. “Ready now,” he murmured. “Ready...”

  Carter looked at Hendrickson, nodded, rose to his feet and stepped forward towards the surgical table on which lay a second hypodermic and a phial of the new drug. It was tran-sient in effect, there was no need for antidotes, but he wished that he knew more about it. Tests on animals had proved it physically harmless but animals couldn’t speak and assessing their intelligence was not an easy task. He remembered several disturbing facts, a guinea-pig who had hunched itself in a corner of its hutch, a rabbit which had consistently beaten its head against a wall, a dog—he preferred not to think about the dog.

  But, he reminded himself, Arden was not a dog. He was a reasoning, intelligent man who knew perfectly well what he was doing and who had insisted on doing it. Carter wondered just how deeply the test-case love affair had affected Arden. Could it, perhaps, have given the impetus to this line of research? Love, even thwarted love, had an unsuspected power.

  Carefully he loaded the hypodermic, hardly conscious of Hendrickson’s voice as he went through the ritual of expelling all air from the barrel of the instrument. Henrickson’s deep, trained, soothing voice loaded with suggestive power, taking Arden back through mental time, winnowing his memories until the desired incident of his first meeting with the girl stood out dominant, skipping forward to find the key note which would ease the hurt most, selecting with the fine Judgment of skill and his thirty years of practice.

  Carter stepped forward, his feet silent on the carpet, the hypodermic ready in his hand, waiting for the moment when Hendrickson, finally satisfied, would give him the signal. It came. Deftly he thrust home the needle, pressed the plunger, withdrew the shining steel.

  And, at that moment, a multi-engined jet plane, finding itself in trouble, fought for altitude by a desperate dive towards the sleeping city and a tormented flight upwards away from the serried houses below.

  The noise was deafening. The screaming roar of engines and the shattering bang of the sonic wave hit with an almost physical impact. Carter jumped. Hendrickson obeying instinc-tive reflex action, turned and sprang to his feet. For a moment neither man was capable of constructive thought.

  A moment was enough.

  “Arden!”

  They thought of him at the same time. They turned from the window which they had instinctively faced and looked towards the chair. Nothing seemed to have altered. Arden still sat as they had last seen him. He hadn’t slumped or fallen or died. His eyes were open and he seemed normal.

  But he didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He didn’t smile. He hadn’t answered to his name. He sat immobile, like an image carved from wax, only the slight lifting of his chest revealing the fact that he was alive, that and the movement of his eyelids as they dropped at regular intervals over his blank, staring empty eyes.

  The room hadn’t changed. It was still a quiet, warm, somnolent haven in the bustle of the city, a sanctuary which offered privacy and the extended comfort of the womb and that, Hendrickson fe
lt, was all wrong. There should have been damage and disaster, wreckage and shattered glass, ruined plaster and torn brick, devastation to match devastation.

  Devastation from which to run, screaming for help, shouting for comfort, the warm understanding of others, the sheer physical need of group effort. He felt panic rise within him and controlled it. He felt sweat beading his face and wiped it with a handkerchief. This devastation, none the less terrible because it was mental, had to be fought alone.

  Carter rose to his feet from where he had squatted before Arden. He looked down at the other man for a moment then sighed. When he spoke it was in almost a whisper, a doctor conferring with a colleague within earshot of his patient.

  “No response,” he said. “None.”

  “Catatonia?”

  Carter lifted Ardens arm, placed it above his head, watched as it remained there. Gently he replaced it to its former position.

  “Schizophrenia?”

  “Obviously. The dissociation must be complete as is the catatonia, you noticed how the voluntary muscular system retained the position in which I placed it.” Carter frowned, deep in thought. “But these are symptoms,” he said. “I doubt if Arden is either in true schizophrenia or true catatonia at all. Certainly he hasn’t tried to escape from mental stress by reverting back to childhood and there finding more stress and so going back even earlier.”

  “No foetal position,” agreed Hendrickson. “But that isn’t conclusive.”

  “True, but there is another reason. No memories.”

  And then they had to face it, the thing which, subconsciously, they had both tended to avoid.

  *