Death Quotient and Other Stories

by John D. MacDonald

  A few remaining rocks crashed directly down among the timbers and the dust of the crushed stone lingered in the air. All was stillness.

  * * * *

  HE carbine clattered at his feet and he sank down, his head cradled in his arms, the sobs shaking him.

  Just as the sun touched the bitter edge of the next mountain, he stood up, picked up the carbine and walked down toward the dark forest of pine.

  As he walked, he carried his head high.

  Once a man has met, and conquered, the final, unbelievable obscenity, the last lurking god of horror, throwback to ancient days when the world was young, there can be no more fear—ever again.

  The darkness of the forest was a friendly Great.

  MINION OF CHAOS

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Global Rat Trap

  It was, he thought, very much like being a rat in a maze, with a very aseptic death around the next corner. The rat, being a rat, suspects the imminence of death, but can make no counter-offensive

  It had been building for a long time. He felt it in the studied casualness of his fellow-workers, and in the new alertness of the hated monitor, Miss Ellen Morrit.

  A nice clean life, they had said, You’ll be well-protected. The police won’t let the nasty people tear you to death. We hope.

  He sighed, turned on the stool and looked back over his shoulder, seeing his name printed in reverse, showing through the translucent glass of the laboratory door. Peter Lucas.

  He wondered where he had slipped. And he wondered whether the danger of slipping, the fatal effects of a slip, were coloring his judgment. Maybe Ellen Morrit wasn’t being quite so beady-eyed after all.

  No, they were onto him the same way they would be onto any other defective bit of material.

  Ellen Morrit sat on a high stool beside the laboratory table. She said dryly, “Through working for the day, Mr. Lucas?”

  He looked at her, wondering for the thousandth time why they didn’t dress female employees of the Bureau of Improvement in a more becoming uniform. She was a white starched tube with a severe face at one end and slim ankles at the other. Nice hair, though, under a little gold cap.

  “Why are you staring at me, Mr. Lucas ?”

  “For a reason that would horrify your factual little mind, sugar bun. How many years have we been sharing this cubicle?”

  “Three years, four months and—and nine days,” she said firmly.

  “Too long. What do you say we get married?”

  She lifted her chin. She quoted from the manual, “ ‘All technical employees of the Bureau of Improvement are forbidden to marry because of the possibility of their aptitudes being to some degree hereditary characteristics.’ “

  “But they’ll let a colorless reactionary like you marry?”

  She gave him one of her rare smiles; but her gray eyes didn’t smile at all. “As soon as my five years are up, Mr. Lucas.”

  “May you be blessed with numerous ice-cream cones.”

  He stood up, filled with the familiar dull anger, and walked over to the wide window. His lab was on the tenth floor of the Bureau of Improvement Building. He looked out across the expanse of grass, to the distant flight towers, the wide pastel expanse of the New City. It had a fairy-land look; the architects had been infatuated with tower and minaret.

  Yet Peter felt himself drawn to some of the less decayed buildings in the dead city off to the left. A mound of rubble separated the two. In the New City there were cars, pedestrians, glittering shops, gay clothes and the best of music.

  In the dead city were the hiding places of the unfit.

  He felt her beside him and he defiantly pointed to the mouldering lines of a gray building in the old city, the dead city.

  “They had the right idea, Morrit. Look at that. Functional and sweet and clean. They were headed in the right direction.”

  She said thoughtfully, “That’s a curious statement, Mr. Lucas. You used the phrase ‘headed in the right direction.’ That is indicative of the basic flaw in your thinking. We do not ‘head’ in any direction. We’ve achieved a static, unified community, and we are satisfied.”

  He laughed. “You mean you’re dead, Morrit. We’re on a big highway leading toward extinction. A nice flat, broad, smooth highway. We’ve forgotten an old rule—progress or perish.”

  “That has been proven false, Mr. Lucas. You must know that. You must know that it is only through the very extreme liberalism of Chairman Ladu, that you are … “

  “Permitted to exist at all? How nice of Emery!”

  “Thirty years ago, Mr. Lucas, as soon as your aptitudes had been discovered through the use of the integrated tests you would have been painlessly … removed, probably at the age of twelve.”

  “And you’re sorry we aren’t still on that basis.”

  Her gray eyes widened in anger and she turned away. “I see no necessity for improvements,” she said. “Repair and control is all that is necessary.”

  “If they’d turn me loose, baby, you’d really see some improvements.” Lucas gestured toward the tiny motor strewn on his bench. Assembled, it was no larger than a peach pit. “That turns out a quarter horse. But it’ll never be much better because the Code restricts us to minor variation within the approved method. On my own I’d try new methods, new procedures. I might get five horse out of it—or five hundred and then … “

  “Be quiet!” she said, her lips thin and tight.

  He smiled lazily as he went back to his chair. “I forgot, Morrit. Science is a nasty word. There is an approved list of beneficial devices. Radio, television, the internal combustion engine, electricity, subsonic aircraft, telephone, structural plastics, hydroponics. None of those things give you a fear reaction. But we leave the knowledge barrier of electronics right where it is. And we never, never, never mess with atomics any more. Or planetology, or rockets, or weather control. Never, never.”

  * * * *

  He saw that she was composing herself with an effort. She climbed back on her stool with a lithe motion. “I am not here to discuss this matter with you, Mr. Lucas. I was given a technical background only so that I can determine when you try to step outside the approved limitations. You and men like you are as dangerous to this civilization as uncontrolled fire. That is why you are watched so carefully. If you persist in continuing this discussion, I will report you to the Chief of the Bureau of Improvement.”

  Lucas sighed. “Okay, lady. Okay.” He picked up a pair of tweezers, used them to pick up the tiny brushes. He held them up. “Just so you can follow me. This little pin here which supports the brushes is okay. The self-lubricating bearings are okay. But the airseal is bad and dust has leaked in and turned the lubricating agent to an abrasive, thus wearing down the pin until the brushes get an eccentric wobble. My next step will be to look up the table of rubber substitutes and find something we can use for the airseal, something that will have a longer life. Okay with you?”

  Once again she quoted from the manual. “ ‘It is the responsibility of the monitor to determine that all research is along approved lines and to report any suspected variance to the Floor Monitor for investigation. In no case will the monitor express an opinion about research which falls within the approved fields.’ “

  Once again her face was calm and composed. Lucas snorted, crossed over to the book shelf, brought back the rubber substitutes manual, looked up the proper table and made notations on a pad.

  He took the bill of materials for the tiny motor, drew a neat line through the specification for the airseal, lettered in the symbol for the new material, put the bill of materials and the faulty seal in a manila envelope, shoved the rest of the motor parts into the scrap bin. One tiny screw somehow became caught in the fold of flesh at the base of his thumb. He turned back toward the window and idly picked at his tooth with his thumbnail. As he did so he rolled the lit
tle screw up until he could grasp it with his thumb and finger. He inserted it into the painful cavity in a back molar from which he had extracted the filling the night before.

  In search, the little screw would give the same metallic index as the filling.

  The nerve was raw and pain screamed at him. But he smiled, yawned and said, “Morrit, we’d better call it a day.”

  She glanced at the clock. “Ten more minutes.”

  “Too late to start a new one.” Once again he looked toward the dead city, toward that decaying functional building. “Morrit, did you ever think about the dead city? About the reason for it?”

  This time her quote was taken from the Approved World History. “ ‘With the continual shrinkage of population, many cities were completely abandoned because of unsatisfactory climate or other factors, while, in the more desirable cities, the oldest parts were abandoned, the remaining inhabitants taking over the most desirable portions.’ “

  “Quoting and thinking are two different things, sugar bun. Once there were five million people in this city. Now what are there? Eight hundred thousand? Maybe we’re just genetically weary, Morrit. Dame Nature is dwindling us down to fit in the barren world we’ve made for ourselves.”

  Morrit did not quote. Her eyes narrowed. “And who was to blame, Mr. Lucas? The black-hearted men of progress. They blasted the earth and killed so much of the soil that millions starved. That’s why they’ll be forever hated by the race. And they called themselves ‘creators’ and ‘scientists.’ You should feel shame when you think those thoughts, Mr. Lucas. Because you are one of them. Oh, we have you under rigid control now. You can’t do us any harm. You are the servant of the race, like fire. We direct your efforts.”

  Lucas ran his hand through his cropped dark hair, his strong lean face oddly twisted. “Morrit, why is it that we can’t think the same way at all? Why is this wall between us all the time?”

  She quoted from the manual. “ ‘Scientific aptitude is a dangerous mutational characteristic which blinds the individual to anything except his creative desires, making it impossible for him to understand the strict channeling of his efforts into those fields which will benefit mankind without opening the doorways to unknown terrors.’ “

  Lucas controlled his anger by biting down on the tiny screw, forcing it into the naked nerve, letting pain drain the fury from him.

  Suddenly very tired, he said, “The ten minutes are up, my love.”

  * * * *

  The high fence bordered a narrow area half a mile long, leading to the small white houses provided for the workers at the Bureau of Improvement.

  Peter Lucas, dressed in his street clothes, waited until several others had gone through search. When there were ten, a Bureau guard walked with them over to the housing area.

  The precaution dated from the time when a mob had broken through the fence and torn three workers apart. Sometimes, even now, the heritage of sullen hate exploded into mob fury.

  Lucas noticed that the other nine greeted him with less than their usual friendliness. Word must be getting around that he was marked as uncontrollable.

  In the old days that would have meant a quick, painless death. But they had devised a new sort of death: a death of the mind. The electric knife would make a neat incision, cutting away memory and ability. Then the walking and talking school for the period of incontinence; and a nice manual labor assignment.

  They arrived at the small white house. There were sixty of them. It was a pitifully small number of workers, sixty men to carry on every bit of scientific effort in the world. And even that was a joke. They were not research workers; they were mechanics.

  From the doorway of his quarters he could see, ten miles from the city, the myriad shining towers of World Administration. When all governments had disintegrated, after the brutal impact of the Three Wars, the men who had seized power had a knowledge of propaganda. Emery Ladu was called the Chairman, not the Dictator or King.

  Ladu’s palace was the World Administration Building. There he met with his five Princes, one from each world mass. Only they were called Unit Advisors. Lin of Eurasia Unit. Morol of Africa Unit. Frisee of Australia Unit. Ryan of North America Unit. Perez of South America.

  The World Administration Building was the symbol of their reign. In some secret place a young man was being trained for each of them; a man to take each position. It was defense in depth. Nothing was left to chance.

  There was no population pressure any more. And with the passing of this pressure, the prime motivating force for war vanished. The standard of living was built on an economy of abundance. And the abundance was a legacy from the billions who had inhabited the earth. In all the vacant houses of the dead cities of the world there were the pots and pans and chairs and tables free for the taking.

  With design made static, except for minor and unimportant improvements, there was no obsolescence of mechanical things. With adequate care, a car of popular make would last several generations.

  This was the only world Peter Lucas knew. It had been, at one time, a good world. There had been a home and comforting warmth and the old books which told of cowboys and soldiers. He had taken the examinations when he was twelve.

  And then there had been tears in that home, tears and strangeness: a restraint that showed his parents’ grief … as though they had discovered he was something monstrous and obscene, and their love for him fought against this new knowledge.

  That year there had been three hundred thousand children. Each year there were less. Before Ladu’s edict, in the old days, there would have been an efficient use of anaesthesia. The race had been cutting out the cancerous growth that insisted on returning with each generation.

  Later, there would have been the electric knife and three hundred thousand mindless children to be sent to the protected schools, not sent back to their homes because, with the hate and fear in the hearts of men, there was no guarantee that these mindless ones would be permitted to live, once having evidenced the forbidden abilities —mathematical and mechanical ability, a creative turn of mind, an overweening curiosity.

  They would form the labor pool after training.

  But in the year that Peter Lucas had been one of the three hundred children, they had been gathered in the pens in the salt flats and there had been more examinations, more intricate tests.

  Peter Lucas and four others had been selected and sent to a special school which used the forbidden books and taught forbidden knowledge. At twenty he had been assigned to the Bureau of Improvement. Ladu had set it up with a fixed quota of sixty. Each year five children would be withdrawn from those who were to be made nearly mindless. Each year five young men were graduated from the special school. And each year the five most unstable of the workers at the Bureau of Improvement were subjected to the electric knife.

  In two more weeks the new ones would arrive. And Peter Lucas knew that he had won himself extinction through his attitude.

  He went into his two-room house. It had the barren simplicity of a cell. Directly above the television screen was the microphone which recorded every sound from the house, every fragment of conversation.

  The house was clean and shining. His evening meal was under the glass dome on the tiny steam table. The food would keep warm. During the next hour he was permitted to exercise in the small area allotted to him. From then on he would be restricted to his house. Any request to visit another worker had to be submitted in writing and approved two weeks in advance of the date. Such visits were limited to one hour and a guard was detailed to escort the visitor to the door of the worker he wished to visit, and wait there to escort him back.

  It had been a long time since Peter Lucas had had a visitor, or had visited anyone.

  He took a long shower, turned on the television screen and watched the insipid entertainment while he ate. It was a melodrama. The villain was a man who had someh
ow escaped the screening tests and was working on a secret weapon to destroy the world. The hero killed the villain just as he was about to loose his weapon. It ended with a little sermon.

  He felt the tension mounting in him as he ate, and he forced himself to smoke a leisurely cigarette. He knew that while he was at work the house had been carefully inspected for any evidence of forbidden experimentation.

  He went to his bed, stretched out and let his left hand fall, almost as though by accident, against the cool, smooth plastic of the wall. The wax was still firm in the grooves he had cut with the tiny saw. He slowly exhaled, the tension going out of him.

  With a thumbnail he pared the wax away, slid the tiny panel down, removed therefrom the device which had occupied his mind for six years, which had kept him from going quietly mad under the restraint, as had so many others.

  Each bit of it had been smuggled past the search.

  The lead for the little half-pound cup had been brought out, a gram at a time. He had melted it and moulded it with the heat obtained by making a minor adjustment in the heat coils on the steam table.

  The infinitesimal tube, socketed in the lead cup, had been the most difficult. He had waited for fourteen months to smuggle that out. First it had been necessary to mold soft rubber around the tube, make a crude slingshot, wait until Morrit left the room for a few minutes, stretch the spring wire across the window and project the little ball of sticky rubber out so that it fell in the fenced passage.

  Heartbreakingly, he had missed the passage with the first two tries. The third tube had landed properly. On his way back to his house that night he had located it, and, not daring to bend over, had stopped, pressed his heels together so that the rubber clung to the inside of one shoe.

  Four lengths of silver wire, forced into the edge of the lead cup, focused the energy of the tube. Each silver wire was forty millimeters long. Halfway along their length, suspended by spiderweb strands of copper wire, was a crude open-ended tube of lead, the opening pointing toward the tiny, powerful tube socketed in the lead cup.