Death Quotient and Other Stories

by John D. MacDonald

  Vonk Poogla was transported with delight at being able to show the wonders of the ancient capital city to Lambert. It had been sacked and burned over eight thousand Earth years before, and now it was mellowed by eighty-three centuries of unbroken peace. It rested in the pastel twilight, and there were laughter and soft singing in the broad streets. Never had Lambert felt such a warm aura of security and … love. No other word but that ultimate one seemed right.

  In the morning they went to the squat blue building where Vonk Soobuknoora, the important person, had his administrative headquarters. Lambert, knowing enough of Argonaut governmental structure to understand that Soobuknoora was titular head of the three-planet government, could not help but compare the lack of protocol with what he could expect were he to try to take Vonk Poogla for an interview with President Mize.

  Soobuknoora was a smaller, older edition of Poogla, his pink face wrinkled, his greening hair retaining only a trace of the original yellow. Soobuknoora spoke no Solian and he was very pleased to find that Lambert spoke Argonian.

  Soobuknoora watched the animated chart with considerable interest. After it was over, he seemed lost in thought.

  “It is something so private with us, Man Lambert, that we seldom speak of it to each other,” Soobuknoora said in Argonian. “It is not written. Maybe we have shame—a guilt sense. That is hard to say. I have decided to tell you what took place among us eight thousand years ago.”

  “I would be grateful.”

  * * * *

  “We live in contentment. Maybe it is good, maybe it is not so good. But we continue to live. Where did our trouble come from in the old days, when we were like your race? Back when we were brash and young and wickedly cruel? From the individuals, those driven ones who were motivated to succeed despite all obstacles. They made our paintings, wrote our music, killed each other, fomented our unrest, our wars. We live off the bewildering richness of our past.”

  He sighed. “It was a problem. To understand our solution, you must think of an analogy, Man Lambert. Think of a factory where machines are made. We will call the acceptable machines stable, the unacceptable ones unstable. They are built with a flywheel which must turn at a certain speed. If it exceeds that speed, it is no good. But a machine that is stable can, at any time, become unstable. What is the solution?” He smiled at Lambert.

  “I’m a bit confused,” Lambert confessed. “You would have to go around inspecting the machines constantly for stability.”

  “And use a gauge? No. Too much trouble. An unstable machine can do damage. So we do this—we put a little governor on the machine. When the speed passes the safety mark, the machine breaks.”

  “But this is an analogy, Vonk Soobuknoora!” Lambert protested. “You can’t put a governor on a man!”

  “Man is born with a governor, Man Lambert. Look back in both our histories, when we were not much above the animal level. An unbalanced man would die. He could not compete for food. He could not organize the simple things of his life for survival. Man Lambert, did you ever have a fleeting impulse to kill yourself?”

  Lambert smiled. “Of course. You could almost call that impulse a norm for intelligent species.”

  “Did it ever go far enough so that you considered a method, a weapon?”

  Lambert nodded slowly. “It’s hard to remember, but I think I did. Yes, once I did.”

  “And what would have happened,” the Argonaut asked softly, “if there had been available to you in that moment a weapon completely painless, completely final?”

  * * * *

  Lambert’s mouth went dry. “I would probably have used it. I was very young. Wait! I’m beginning to see what you mean, but—”

  “The governor had to be built into the body,” Soobuknoora interrupted, “and yet so designed that there would be no possibility of accidental activation. Suppose that on this day I start to think of how great and powerful I am in this position I have. I get an enormous desire to become even more powerful. I begin to reason emotionally. Soon I have a setback. I am depressed. I am out of balance, you could say. I have become dangerous to myself and to our culture.

  “In a moment of depression, I take these two smallest fingers of each hand. I reach behind me and I press the two fingers, held firmly together, to a space in the middle of my back. A tiny capsule buried at the base of my brain is activated and I am dead within a thousandth part of a second. Vonk Poogla is the same. All of us are the same. The passing urge for self-destruction happens to be the common denominator of imbalance. We purged our race of the influence of the neurotic, the egocentric, the hypersensitive, merely by making self-destruction very, very easy.”

  “Then that death rate—?”

  “At eighteen the operation is performed. It is very quick and very simple. We saw destruction ahead. We had to force it through. In the beginning the deaths were frightening, there were so many of them. The stable ones survived, bred, reproduced. A lesser but still great percentage of the next generation went—and so on, until now it is almost static.”

  In Argonian Lambert said hotly, “Oh, it sounds fine! But what about children? What sort of heartless race can plant the seed of death in its own children?”

  * * * *

  Never before had he seen the faintest trace of anger on any Argonaut face. The single nostril widened and Soobuknoora might have raged if he had been from Earth. “There are other choices, Man Lambert. Our children have no expectation of being burned to cinder, blown to fragments. They are free of that fear. Which is the better love, Man Lambert?”

  “I have two children. I couldn’t bear to—”

  “Wait!” Soobuknoora said. “Think one moment. Suppose you were to know that when they reached the age of eighteen, both your children were to be operated on by our methods. How would that affect your present relationship to them?”

  Lambert was, above all, a realist. He remembered the days of being “too busy” for the children, of passing off their serious questions with a joking or curt evasion, of playing with them as though they were young, pleasing, furry animals.

  “I would do a better job as a parent,” Lambert admitted. “I would try to give them enough emotional stability so that they would never—have that urge to kill themselves. But Ann is delicate, moody, unpredictable, artistic.”

  Poogla and Soobuknoora nodded in unison. “You would probably lose that one; maybe you would lose both,” Soobuknoora agreed. “But it is better to lose more than half the children of a few generations to save the race.”

  Lambert thought some more. He said, “I shall go back and I shall speak of this plan and what it did for you. But I do not think my race will like it. I do not want to insult you or your people, but you have stagnated. You stand still in time.”

  Vonk Poogla laughed largely. “Not by a damn sight,” he said gleefully. “Next year we stop giving the operation. We stop for good. It was just eight thousand years to permit us to catch our breath before going on more safely. And what is eight thousand years of marking time in the history of a race? Nothing, my friend. Nothing!”

  When Lambert went back to Earth, he naturally quit his job.

  THE MINIATURE

  by JOHN D. MACDONALD writing as PETER REED

  In the vault, he knew nothing of his long journey between birth and death … But what dreams disturbed the sleep of this man, whose body was more precious than diamonds?

  * * * *

  As Jedediah Amberson stepped through the bronze, marble and black-glass doorway of the City National Bank on Wall Street, he felt the strange jar. It was, he thought, almost a tremor. Once he had been in Tepoztlan, Mexico, on a Guggenheim grant, doing research on primitive barter systems, and during the night a small earthquake had awakened him.

  This was much the same feeling. Rut he stood inside the bank and heard the unruffled hum of activity, heard no shouts of surprise. And, even throu
gh the heavy door he could hear the conversation of passers-by on the sidewalk.

  He shrugged, beginning to wonder if it was something within himself, some tiny constriction of blood in the brain. It had been a trifle like that feeling which comes just before fainting. Jedediah Amberson had fainted once.

  Fumbling in his pocket for the checkbook, he walked, with his long loose stride, over to a chest-high marble counter. He hadn’t been in the main office of the bank since he had taken out his account. Usually he patronized the branch near the University, but today, finding himself in the neighborhood and remembering that he was low on cash, he had decided to brave the gaudy dignity of the massive institution of finance.

  For, though Jed Amberson dealt mentally in billions, and used such figures familiarly in dealing with his classes in economics, he was basically a rather timid and uncertain man and he had a cold fear of the scornful eyes of tellers who might look askance at the small check he would present at the window.

  He made it out for twenty dollars, five more than he would have requested had he gone to the familiar little branch office.

  Jedediah Amberson was not a man to take much note of his surroundings. He was, at the time, occupied in writing a text, and the problems it presented were so intricate that he had recently found himself walking directly into other pedestrians and being snatched back onto the curb by helpful souls who didn’t want to see him truck-mashed before their eyes. Just the day before he had gone into his bedroom in midafternoon to change his shoes and had only awakened from his profound thoughts when he found himself, clad in pajamas, brushing his teeth before the bathroom mirror.

  He took his place in the line before a window. He was mentally extrapolating the trend line of one of J. M. Keynes’ debt charts when a chill voice said, “Well!”

  He found that he had moved up to the window itself and the teller was waiting for his check. He flushed and said, “Oh! Sorry.” He tried to posh the check under the grill, but it fluttered out of his hand. As he stooped to get it, his hat rolled off.

  At last recovering both hat and check, he stood up, smiled painfully and pushed the check under the grill.

  The young man took it, and Jed Amberson finally grew aware that he was spending a long time looking at the check. Jed strained his neck around and looked to see if he had remembered to sign it. He had.

  Only then did he notice the way the young man behind the window was dressed. He wore a deep wine-colored sports shirt, collarless and open at the throat. At the point where the counter bisected him, Jedediah could see that the young man wore green-gray slacks with at least a six-inch waistband of ocher yellow.

  Jed had a childlike love of parties, sufficient to overcome his chronic self-consciousness. He said, in a pleased tone, “Ah, some sort of festival?”

  The teller had a silken wisp of beard on his chin. He leaned almost frighteningly close to the grill, aiming the wisp of beard at Amberson as he gave him a careful scrutiny.

  “We are busy here,” the teller said. “Take your childish little game across street and attempt it on them.”

  Though shy, Jedediah was able to call on hidden stores of indignation when he felt himself wronged. He straightened slowly and said, with dignity, “I have an account here and I suggest you cash my check as quickly and quietly as possible.”

  The teller glanced beyond Jedediah and waved the silky beard in a taut half circle, a “come here” gesture.

  Jedediah turned and gasped as he faced the bank guard. The man wore a salmon-pink uniform with enormously padded shoulders. He had a thumb hooked in his belt, his hand close to the plastic bowl of what seemed to be a child’s bubble pipe.

  The guard jerked his other thumb toward the door and said, “Ride off, honorable sir.”

  Jedediah said, “I don’t care much for the comic-opera atmosphere of this bank. Please advise me of my balance and I will withdraw it all and put it somewhere where I’ll be treated properly.”

  The guard reached out, clamped Jed’s thin arm in a meaty hand and yanked him in the general direction of the door. Jed intensely disliked being touched or pushed or pulled. He bunched his left hand into a large knobbly fist and thrust it with vigor into the exact middle of the guard’s face.

  The guard grunted as he sat down on the tile floor. The ridiculous bubble pipe came out, and was aimed at Jed. He heard no sound of explosion, but suddenly there was a large cold area in his middle that felt the size of a basketball. And when he tried to move, the area of cold turned into an area of pain so intense that it nauseated him. It took but two tiny attempts to prove to him that he could achieve relative comfort only by standing absolutely still. The ability to breathe and to turn his eyes in their sockets seemed the only freedom of motion left to him.

  The guard said, tenderly touching his puffed upper lip, “Don’t drop signal, Harry. We can handle this without flicks.” He got slowly to his feet, keeping the toy weapon centered on Jedediah.

  Other customers stood at a respectful distance, curious and interested. A fussy little bald-headed man came trotting up, carrying himself with an air of authority. He wore pastel-blue pajamas with a gold medallion over the heart.

  The guard stiffened. “Nothing we can’t handle, Mr. Greenbush.”

  “Indeed!” Mr. Greenbush said, his voice like a terrier’s bark. “Indeed! You seem to be creating enough disturbance at this moment. Couldn’t you have exported him more quietly?”

  “Bank was busy,” the teller said. “I didn’t notice him till he got right up to window.”

  Mr. Greenbush stared at Jedediah. He said, “He looks reasonable enough, Palmer. Turn it off.”

  Jed took a deep, grateful breath as the chill area suddenly departed. He said weakly, “I demand an explanation.”

  Mr. Greenbush took the check the teller handed him and, accompanied by the guard, led Jed over to one side. He smiled in what was intended to be a fatherly fashion. He said, glancing at the signature on the check, “Mr. Amberson, surely you must realize, or your patrons must realize, that City National Bank is not sort of organization to lend its facilities to inane promotional gestures.”

  Jedediah had long since begun to have a feeling of nightmare. He stared at the little man in blue pajamas. “Promotional gestures?”

  “Of course, my dear fellow. For what other reason would you come here dressed as you are and present this … this document.”

  “Dressed?” Jed looked down at his slightly baggy gray suit, his white shirt, his blue necktie and cordovan shoes. Then he stared around at the customers of the bank who had long since ceased to notice the little tableau. He saw that the men wore the sort of clothes considered rather extreme at the most exclusive of private beaches. He was particularly intrigued by one fellow who wore a cerise silk shirt, open to the waist, emerald green shorts to his knees, and calf-length pink nylons.

  The women, he noticed, all wore dim shades of deep gray or brown, and a standard costume consisting of a halter, a short flared skirt that ended just above the knees and a knit cap pulled well down over the hair.

  Amberson said, “Uh. Something special going on.”

  “Evidently. Suppose you explain.”

  “Me explain! Look, I can show you identification. I’m an Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia and I—” He reached for his hip pocket. Once again the ball of pain entered his vitals. The guard stepped over to him, reached into each of his pockets in turn, handed the contents to Mr. Greenbush.

  Then the pressure was released. “I am certainly going to give your highhanded procedures here as much publicity as I can,” Jed said angrily.

  But Greenbush ignored him. Greenbush had opened his change purse and had taken out a fifty-cent piece. Greenbush held the coin much as a superstitious savage would have held a mirror. He made tiny bleating sounds. At last he said, his voice thin and strained, “Nineteen forty-nine mint condition! What
do you want for it?”

  “Just cash my check and let me go,” Jed said wearily. “You’re all crazy here. Why shouldn’t this year’s coins be in mint condition?”

  “Bring him into my office,” Greenbush said in a frenzy.

  “But I—” Jed protested. He stopped as the guard raised the weapon once more. Jed meekly followed Greenbush back through the bank. He decided that it was a case of mistaken identity. He could call his department from the office. It would all be straightened out, with apologies.

  * * * *

  With the door closed behind the two of them, Jed looked around the office. The walls were a particularly liverish and luminescent yellow-green. The desk was a block of plastic balanced precariously on one slim pedestal no bigger around then a lead pencil. The chairs gave him a dizzy feeling. They looked comfortable, but as far as he could see, they were equipped only with front legs. He could not see why they remained upright.

  “Please sit there,” Greenbush said.

  Jed lowered himself into the chair with great caution. It yielded slightly, then seemed to clasp him with an almost embarrassing warmth, as though he sat on the pneumatic lap of an exceptionally large woman.

  Greenbush came over to him, pointed to Zed’s wristwatch and said, “Give me that, too.”

  “I didn’t come for a loan,” Jed said.

  “Don’t be ass. You’ll get all back.”

  Greenbush sat behind his desk, with the little pile of Jed’s possessions in front of him. He made little mumbling sounds as he prodded and poked and pried. He seemed very interested in the money. He listened to the watch tick and said, “Mmm. Spring mechanical.”

  “No. It runs on atomic power,” Jed said bitterly. Greenbush didn’t answer.

  From the back of Jed’s wallet, Greenbush took the picture of Helen. He touched the glossy surface, said, “Two-dimensional.”

  After what seemed an interminable period, Mr. Greenbush leaned back, put the tips of his fingers together and said, “Amberson, you are fortunate that you contacted me.”