Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
Dedication
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
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First Mariner Books edition 2012
Copyright © 1956 by A. A. Wyn, Inc.
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-0-547-57265-9
Book design by Melissa Lotfy
Printed in the United States of America
DOC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Eph Konigsberg who talked fast and talked very well
1
THE TEMPERATURE OF the Refuge varied from 99 degrees Fahrenheit to 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Steam lay perennially in the air, drifting and billowing sluggishly. Geysers of hot water spurted, and the “ground” was a shifting surface of warm slime, compounded from water, dissolved minerals, and fungoid pulp. The remains of lichens and protozoa colored and thickened the scum of moisture that dripped everywhere, over the wet rocks and sponge-like shrubbery, the various utilitarian installations. A careful backdrop had been painted, a long plateau rising from a heavy ocean.
Beyond doubt, the Refuge was modeled after the womb. The semblance couldn’t be denied—and nobody had denied it.
Bending down, Louis moodily picked up a pale green fungus growing near his feet and broke it apart. Under its moist organic skin was a mesh of man-made plastic; the fungus was artificial.
“We could be worse off,” Frank said, watching him hurl the fungus away. “We might have to pay for all this. It must have cost Fedgov billions of dollars to set up this place.”
“Stage scenery,” Louis said bitterly. “What for? Why were we born this way?”
Grinning, Frank said: “We’re superior mutants, remember? Isn’t that what we decided years ago?” He pointed at the world visible beyond the wall of the Refuge. “We’re too pure for that.”
Outside lay San Francisco, the nocturnal city half-asleep in its blanket of chill fog. Occasional cars crept here and there; pockets of commuters emerged like complicated segmented worms from underground monorail terminals. Infrequent office light glowed sparsely . . . Louis turned his back on the sight. It hurt too much to see it, to know that he was in here, trapped, caught within the closed circle of the group. To realize that nothing existed for them but the sitting and staring, the empty years of the Refuge.
“There must be a purpose,” he said. “A reason for us.”
Frank shrugged fatalistically. “War-time sports, generated by radiation pools. Damage to the genes. An accident . . . like Jones.”
“But they’re keeping us alive,” Irma said, from behind them. “All these years, maintaining us, caring for us. They must get something out of it. They must have something in mind.”
“Destiny?” Frank asked mockingly. “Our cosmic goal?”
The Refuge was a murky, steamy bowl that imprisoned the seven of them. Its atmosphere was a mixture of ammonia, oxygen, freon, and traces of methane, heavily laden with water vapor, lacking carbon dioxide. The Refuge had been constructed twenty-five years ago, in 1977, and the older members of the group had memories of a prior life in separate mechanical incubators. The original workmanship had been superior, and from time to time improvements were made. Normal human workmen, protected by sealed suits, periodically entered the Refuge, dragging their maintenance equipment after them. Usually it was the mobile fauna that went out of order and needed repairs.
“If they had a purpose for us,” Frank said, “they’d tell us.” He, personally, trusted the Fedgov authorities who operated the Refuge. “Doctor Rafferty would tell us; you know that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Irma said.
“My God,” Frank said angrily, “they’re not our enemies. If they wanted to, they could wipe us out in a second—and they haven’t, have they? They could let the Youth League in here at us.”
“They have no right to keep us in here,” Louis protested.
Frank sighed. “If we went out there,” he said carefully, as if he were speaking to children, “we’d die.” At the upper rim of the transparent wall was a pressure vent, a series of safety valves. A dull miasma of acrid gasses trickled in, mixing with the familiar dampness of their own air. “Smell that?” Frank demanded. “That’s what it’s like outside. Harsh and freezing and lethal.”
“Did it ever occur to you,” Louis asked, “that maybe that stuff leaking in is a deliberate fake?”
“It occurs to all of us,” Frank said. “Every couple of years. We get in our paranoia stage and we start planning to break out. Only we don’t have to break out; all we have to do is walk out. Nobody ever stopped us. We’re free to leave this steamed-up bowl, except for one fact: we can’t survive out there. We’re just not strong enough.”
By the transparent wall, a hundred feet away, stood the remaining four members of the group. Frank’s voice carried to them, a hollow and distorted sound. Garry, the youngest of the group, glanced up. He listened for a moment, but no further words were audible.
“Okay,” Vivian said impatiently. “Let’s go.”
Garry nodded. “Goodbye womb,” he muttered. Reaching up, he pressed the red button that would bring Doctor Rafferty.
Doctor Rafferty said: “Our small friends get somewhat excited, once in awhile. They’ve decided they can lick any man in the house.” He led Cussick to the upramp. “This will be interesting . . . your first time. Don’t be surprised; it may be a shock. They’re quite different from us, physiologically speaking.”
At the eleventh floor the first elements of the Refuge were visible, the elaborate pumps that maintained its temperature and atmosphere. Doctors instead of police were visible, white uniforms instead of brown. On the fourteenth floor Rafferty stepped from the rising ramp, and Cussick followed.
“They’re ringing for you,” a doctor said to Rafferty. “They’re highly disturbed, these days.”
“Thanks.” To Cussick, Rafferty said: “You can watch on that screen. I don’t want them to see you. They shouldn’t be aware of the police guard.”
A section of wall retired. Beyond it was the swirling blue-green landscape of the Refuge. Cussick watched as Doctor Rafferty strode through the lock and into the artificial world beyond. Immediately the tall figure was surrounded by seven curious parodies, gnomish miniatures both male and female. The seven of them were agitated, and their frail, bird-cage chests rose and fell with emotion. Crying shrilly, excitedly, they began to explain and gesture.
“What is it?” Rafferty interrupted. In the sweltering steam of the Refuge he was gasping for breath; perspiration dripped from his reddening face.
“We want to leave here,” a female piped.
“And we’re walking,” another announced, a male. “We’ve decided—you can’t keep us shut up in here. We have rights.”
For an interval Rafferty discussed the situation with them; then, abruptly, he turned and made his way back through the lock. “That’s my limit,” he murmured to Cussick, mopping his forehead. “I can tolerate three minutes in there, and then the ammonia goes to work.”
“You’re going to let them try
it?” Cussick asked.
“Activate the Van,” Rafferty said to his technicians. “Have it ready to pick them up as they drop.” To Cussick he explained: “The Van is an iron lung for them. There won’t be too much risk; they’re fragile, but we’ll be ready to gather them up before damage is done.”
Not all the mutants were leaving the Refuge. Four hesitant figures were picking their way along the passage that led to the elevator. Behind them, their three companions remained in the safety of the entrance, huddled together in a group.
“Those three are more realistic,” Doctor Rafferty said. “And older. The slightly heavier one, the dark-haired one who looks the most human, is Frank. It’s the younger ones who give us the trouble. I’ll put them through a gradational series of stages to acclimatize their overly-vulnerable systems—so they won’t suffocate or die of heart stoppage.” Worriedly, he went on: “What I want you to do is clear the streets. I don’t want anybody to see them; it’s late and there won’t be many people out, but just in case . . .”
“I’ll phone Secpol,” Cussick agreed.
“How soon can it be done?”
“A few minutes. The weapons-police are already mobile, because of Jones and the mobs.”
Relieved, Rafferty hurried off, and Cussick began searching for a Security police phone. He found it, got in touch with the San Francisco office, and gave his instructions. While he kept the phone circuit open, the airborne police teams began collecting around the Refuge building. He stayed in direct touch until the street-blocks had been erected, and then he left the phone to look for Rafferty.
By elevator the four mutants had descended to the street level. Staggering, groping numbly, they followed Doctor Rafferty across the lobby, toward the wide doors that led to the street.
No pedestrians or cars were in sight, Cussick observed; the police had successfully cleared everybody away. At the corner one gloomy shape broke the expanse of gray; the Van was parked, its motor running, ready to follow.
“There they go,” a doctor said, standing beside Cussick. “I hope Rafferty knows what he’s doing.” He pointed. “The almost-pretty one is Vivian. She’s the youngest female. The boy is Garry—very bright, very unstable. That is Dieter, and his companion is Louis. There’s an eighth, a baby, still in the incubator. They haven’t as yet been told.”
The four diminutive figures were visibly suffering. Half-conscious, two of them in convulsions, they crept wretchedly down the steps, trying to stay on their feet. They did not get far. Garry was the first to go down; he tottered for a moment on the last step and then pitched face-forward onto the cement. His small body quivering, he tried to crawl forward; sightlessly, the others stumbled along the sidewalk, unaware of the prone shape among them, too far gone themselves even to register its existence.
“Well,” Dieter gasped, “we’re outside.”
“We—made it,” Vivian agreed. Sinking wearily down she rested against the side of the building. A moment later Dieter lay sprawled beside her, eyes shut, mouth slack, struggling weakly to get to his feet. And presently Louis slid down beside them.
Chagrined, dazed by the suddenness of their collapse, the four of them lay huddled feebly against the gray pavement, trying to breathe, trying to stay alive. None of them made any attempt to move; the purpose of their ordeal was forgotten. Panting, struggling to hold onto consciousness, they gazed sightlessly at the upright figure of Doctor Rafferty.
Rafferty had halted, hands in his overcoat pockets. “It’s up to you,” he said stonily. “You want to go on?”
None of them answered; none of them even heard him.
“Your systems won’t take the natural air,” Rafferty continued. “Or the temperature. Or the food. Or anything.” He glanced at Cussick, an expression of pain on his face, an acute reflection of suffering that startled the Security official. “So let’s give up,” he said harshly. “Let’s call the Van and go back.”
Vivian nodded faintly; her lips moved, but there was no sound.
Turning, Rafferty curtly signaled. The Van rolled instantly up; robot equipment dropped to the pavement and scuttled up to the four collapsed figures. In a moment they were being lifted into the Van’s locks. The expedition had failed; it was over. Cussick had had his view of them. He had seen their struggle and their defeat.
For a time he and Doctor Rafferty stood on the cold night sidewalk without speaking, each involved in his own thoughts. Finally Rafferty stirred. “Thanks for clearing the streets,” he murmured.
“I’m glad I had time,” Cussick answered. “It might have been bad . . . some of Jones’ Youth League Patrols are roaming around.”
“The eternal Jones. We really don’t have a chance.”
“Let’s be like these four we just saw; let’s keep trying.”
“But it’s true.”
“It’s true,” Cussick agreed. “Just as it’s true your mutants can’t breathe out here. But we set up roadblocks anyhow; we cleared the streets and hoped to hell we pushed them back this one time.”
“Have you ever seen Jones?”
“Several times,” Cussick said. “I met him face to face, back in the days before he had an organization, before anybody had heard of him.”
“When he was a minister,” Rafferty reflected. “With a church.”
“Before that,” Cussick said, thinking back. It seemed impossible that there had been a time before Jones, a time when there had been no need of clearing the streets. When there had been no gray-uniformed shapes roaming the streets, collecting in mobs. The crash of breaking glass, the furious crackling of fire . . .
“What was he doing then?” Rafferty asked.
“He was in a carnival,” Cussick said.
2
HE WAS TWENTY-SIX years old when he first met Jones. It was April 4, 1995. He always remembered that day; the spring air was cool and full of the smell of new growth. The war had ended the year before.
Ahead of him spread out a long descending slope. Houses were perched here and there, mostly privately-constructed shelters, temporary and flimsy. Crude streets, working-class people wandering . . . a typical rural region that had survived, remote from industrial centers. Normally there would be the hum of activity: plows and forges and crude manufacturing processes. But today a quiet hung over the community. Most able-bodied adults, and all of the children, had trudged off to the carnival.
The ground was soft and moist under his shoes. Cussick strode eagerly along, because he, too, was going to the carnival. He had a job.
Jobs were scarce; he was glad to get it. Like other young men intellectually sympathetic to Hoff’s Relativism, he had applied for the government service. Fedgov’s apparatus offered a chance to become involved in the task of Reconstruction; as he was earning a salary—paid in stable silver—he was helping mankind.
In those days he had been idealistic.
Specifically, he had been assigned to the Interior Department. At the Baltimore Antipol center he had taken political training and then approached Secpol: the Security arm. But the task of suppressing extremist political and religious sentiment had, in 1995, seemed merely bureaucratic. Nobody took it seriously; with worldwide food rationing, the panic was over. Everybody could be sure of basic subsistence. Wartime fanaticism had dwindled out of existence as rational control regained its pre-inflation position.
Before him, spread out like a sheet of tin, the carnival sat assembled. Ten metal buildings, displaying bright neon signs, were the main structures. A central lane led to the hub: a cone within which seats had been erected. There, the basic acts would take place.
Already, he could see the first familiar spectacle. Pushing ahead, Cussick made his way among the densely-packed mass of people. The odor of sweat and tobacco rose around him, an exciting smell. Sliding past a family of grimy field laborers, he reached the railing of the first freak exhibit, and gazed up.
The war, with its hard radiation and elaborate diseases, had produced countless sports, oddities, fr
eaks. Here, in this one minor carnival, a vast variety had been collected.
Directly above him sat a multi-man, a tangled mass of flesh and organs. Heads, arms, legs, wobbled dully; the creature was feeble-minded and helpless. Fortunately, his offspring would be normal; the multi-organisms were not true mutants.
“Golly,” a portly, curly-headed citizen behind him said, horrified. “Isn’t that awful?”
Another man, lean and tall, casually remarked: “Saw a lot of them in the war. We burned a barnful of them, a sort of colony.”
The portly man blinked, bit deep into his candied apple, and moved away from the war veteran. Leading his wife and three children, he meandered up beside Cussick.
“Horrible, isn’t it?” he muttered. “All these monsters.”
“Sort of,” Cussick admitted.
“I don’t know why I come to these things.” The portly man indicated his wife and children, all of them stonily gobbling up their popcorn and spun-sugar candy. “They like to come. Women and kids go in for this stuff.”
Cussick said: “Under Relativism we have to let them live.”
“Sure,” the portly man agreed, emphatically nodding. A bit of candied apple clung to his upper lip; he wiped it away with a freckled paw. “They got their rights, just like everybody else. Like you and me, mister . . . they got their lives, too.”
Standing by the railing of the exhibit, the lean war veteran spoke up. “That don’t apply to freaks. That’s just people.”
The portly man flushed. Waving his candied apple earnestly, he answered: “Mister, maybe they think we’re freaks. Who says who’s a freak?”
Disgusted, the veteran said: “I can tell a freak.” He eyed Cussick and the portly man with distaste. “What are you,” he demanded, “a freak-lover?”
The portly man sputtered and started over; but his wife seized his arm and dragged him away, into the crowd, to the next exhibits. Still protesting, he disappeared from sight. Cussick was left facing the war veteran.
“Damn fool,” the veteran said. “It’s contrary to common sense. You can see they’re freaks. My God, that’s why they’re here!”
The World Jones Made Page 1