The Paradox Men

by Charles L. Harness

  “Do you predict destruction, your majesty?” queried Shimatsu behind narrowing eyes.

  “Destruction of what?” queried Juana-Maria. “The soul is indestructible, and that’s all that’s important to an old woman. As to whether my chancellor intends to destroy everything else…” She shrugged her fragile shoulders.

  Shimatsu bowed, then murmured, “If your new super-secret bomb is as good as our agents say, we have no defense against it. And if we have no defense we must meet the attack of Haze-Gaunt with our own attack as long as we are able. And we have two advantages over you imperials.

  “You are so certain that you have an overwhelming balance of force that you have never troubled to evaluate the weapons that may be used against you. Also, you have assumed that we must wait politely and let you choose the moment. May I suggest, your majesty, and gentlemen, that the Imperium is run, not by the famed ‘wolf pack’ but by credulous children?”

  Donnan laughed uproariously. “There you have us!” he cried. “Credulous children!”

  Shimatsu picked up the bear cape that he had been carrying over one arm and threw it around his shoulders in a gesture of finality. “You are amused, now. But when your zero hour draws close, prepare for a shock.” He bowed deeply and passed on.

  Alar knew that the man had issued a deadly warning.

  “Now isn’t that an odd coincidence?” observed Juana-Maria. “Dr. Talbot was telling me only a few minutes ago that the Imperium stands at this moment with the Assyrian Empire as of Six Hundred and Fourteen B.C. Perhaps Shimatsu knows whereof he speaks.”

  “What happened in Six Hundred and Fourteen B.C., Dr. Talbot?” asked Alar.

  “The world’s leading civilization was blasted to bits,” replied the Toynbeean, stroking his goatee thoughtfully. “It’s quite a story. For over two thousand years the Assyrians had fought to rule the world as they knew it. By Six Hundred and Fourteen B.C. the Assyrian ethos dominated an area extending from Jerusalem to Lydia. Four years later not one Assyrian city remained standing. Their destruction was so complete that when Xenophon led his Greeks by the ruins of Nineveh and Calah two centuries later, no one could tell him who had lived in them.”

  “That’s quite a knockout, Dr. Talbot,” agreed Alar. “But how do you draw a parallel between Assyria and America Imperial?”

  “There are certain infallible guides. In Toynbeean parlance they’re called ‘failure of self-determination,’ ‘schism in the body social’ and ‘schism in the soul.’ These phases of course all follow the ‘time of troubles,’ ‘universal state’ and the ‘universal peace.’ These latter two, paradoxically, mark every civilization for death when it is apparently at its strongest.”

  Donnan grunted dubiously. “Amalgamated Nuclear closed at five hundred and six this morning. If you Toynbeeans think the Imperium is on the skids you’re the only ones.”

  Dr. Talbot smiled. “We Toynbeeans agree with you. Yet we don’t try to force our opinions on the public, for two reasons. In the first place Toynbeeans only study history— they don’t make it. In the second place nobody can stop an avalanche.”

  Donnan remained unconvinced. “You long-haired boys are always getting lost in what happened in ancient times. This is here and now—America Imperial, June Sixth, Two Thousand One Hundred Seventy-seven. We got the Indian sign on the world.”

  Dr. Talbot sighed. “I hope to God you’re right, Senator.”

  Juana-Maria said, “If I may interrupt…”

  The group bowed.

  “The Senator may be interested in learning that for the past eight months the Toynbeeans have devoted themselves to but one project—a re-examination of their main thesis that all civilizations follow the same inevitable sociologic pattern. Am I right, Dr. Talbot?”

  “Yes, your majesty. Like other human beings we want to be right. But in our hearts we hope rather desperately that we’ll be proved wrong. We grasp at any straw. We examine the past to learn if there weren’t some instances where the universal state was not followed by destruction.

  “We search for examples of civilizations that endured despite spiritual stratification. We look at the history of slavery to see whether the enslaving society ever escaped retribution.

  “We compare our time of troubles—the Crises—with the Punic Wars that reduced the sturdy Roman farmer class to slavery and we study the Civil War of our North American ancestors over the slavery question. We consider then how long the Spartan Empire continued after the Peloponnesian War ground its once proud soldiery into serfdom.

  “We seek comparisons in the past for our divided allegiance between the ancestor-worship taught our boys and girls in the Imperial Schools and the monotheism followed by our older people. We know what a divided spiritualism did to the Periclean Greeks, the Roman Empire, the budding Scandinavian society, the Celts of Ireland and the Nestorian Christians.

  “We compare our present political schism—the Thieves versus the Government—with the bitterly opposed but unrepresented minorities that finally erased the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian League and the Later Indic society, as well as various other civilizations.

  “But we have found no exceptions to the pattern so far.”

  “You mentioned the institution of slavery several times as though it were undermining the Imperium,” objected Donnan. “How do you arrive at that conclusion?”

  “The rise of slavery in the Imperium precisely parallels its rise in Assyria, Sparta, Rome and all the other slave-holding empires,” answered Talbot carefully. “No culture can aggrandize its ruling classes generation after generation without impoverishing its peasantry. Eventually these wretches are left with no assets except their own bodies.

  “They are swallowed up by their richer brethren under contracts of bondage. Since their produce is not their own they have no means to better the lot of their numerous progeny and a perpetual slave class is born. The present population of the Imperium is over one and a half billion. One third of these souls are slaves.”

  “True,” agreed Donnan, “but they don’t really have such a hard lot. They have enough to eat, and a place to sleep—something a great many freemen don’t have.”

  “That, of course,” observed Juana-Maria dryly, “is a great recommendation for both free enterprise and for the slave system. To buy bread for his starving children, their father can always sell them to the highest bidder. But we’re getting off the main track. Will there be a Toynbee Twenty-two?”

  “We hope, your majesty. But, of course, a mere historian can make no guarantees.”

  “If there is to be a Twenty-two,” she continued, “how would it differ from, say, our present Toynbee Twenty-one?”

  “We think Twenty-two would successfully challenge our present drive to suicide,” said Dr. Talbot simply.

  “Interesting. To take it a little further, let us look back a bit. The Egyptaic Society was brought in by Imhotep, the Sinic by Confucius, the Andean by Virachoa, the Sumerian by Gilgamesh, the Islamic by Mohammed, and so on. Will a specific person usher in Twenty-two?”

  The savant’s eyes sparkled with admiration. “Your majesty is well read. But the answer isn’t clear cut. Some civilizations are ‘brought in,’ as you say, by a given person. But many of them were not. Many are clearly group efforts.”

  “So we’re back to groups,” said the old woman. “How do you evaluate a given group, Dr. Talbot? How do you determine what cultural samples to take and what weight to give each?”

  “The historian can evaluate his own society only as a weighted synthesis of its microcosmic components,” admitted Talbot, tugging again at his goatee. “He can establish at best a probability as to the stage it has reached in the invariant pattern for civilizations. However, when he studies group after group, as I have, from the noblest families—your pardon, your majesty—right down to the bands of escaped slaves in the waste provinces of Texas and Arizona—”

  “Ever studied the thieves, Dr. Talbot?” interrupted Alar.

 
; 7

  The Wolf Pack

  THE TOYNBEEAN STUDIED the masked man curiously. “The Thieves are unapproachable, of course, but the Society is just a rubber stamp of Kennicot Muir and I knew him well some years before he was killed. He realized all along that the Imperium was living on borrowed time.”

  “But how about our tiny settlements on the Moon, Mercury and the Sun?” insisted Alar. “There you ought to find enough vaulting optimism to negate the whole of the fatalism you’ve found here on Earth.”

  “For our Lunar Observatory Station I expect that’s true,” agreed Talbot, “assuming that you consider them as an independent society separate from the lunar fortifications. The morale of the few hundred men there should be high, owing to the flood of knowledge that continues to flow into the two-hundred meter reflector.

  “The Mercury station is of course purely derivative of the solar stations and stands or falls with them. Your suggestion is interesting, because it so happens the Toynbeeans have finally received permission from Minister of War Eldridge to let one of our staff visit a solarion on the sun for twenty days, and I have been selected to go.”

  “How delightful!” exclaimed the Imperatrix. “What do you expect to find?”

  “The very apotheosis of our civilization,” replied Talbot gravely, “with all pretense and indirection thrown to the winds. Our present day phase of civilization, you know, we refer to as Toynbee Twenty-one. It is, of course, an attempt to categorize an extremely complex situation with the exclusion of irrelevant factors. But the solarions are unique. They are most directly a product purely of our own day. Specifically, I expect to find in Solarion Nine the distilled essence of Toynbee Twenty-one—thirty madmen hell-bent on suicide.”

  Intriguing, thought the Thief, but academic as far as he personally was concerned. He never expected to visit a solarion. “Could we take it one step further,” he said. “What is the absolute minimum sample for a highly restricted zone? Say—a space ship?”

  “We’ve worked it out on the computer,” said Talbot. “According to the extrapolations, three is the minimum that would demonstrate significant societal change.”

  “Change to what?” persisted Alar.

  “One degenerates, one progresses.”

  “The third?”

  “The third dies.”

  Alar heard the last few words only perfunctorily, because his heartbeat was accelerating alarmingly. Shey, Thurmond, and a man he took to be Haze-Gaunt were passing by his elbow. He turned his back and shrank toward the wall.

  The three paid him no attention whatever but walked rapidly toward the orchestra pit. From the corner of his eye Alar saw Thurmond say something to the conductor. The music stopped.

  “May I apologize for this interruption, my lords and ladies?” came the chancellor’s rich baritone over the speakers. “A very dangerous enemy of the Imperium is believed to be in the ballroom at this moment. I must ask, therefore, that all men who have not already done so remove their masks in order that the police may apprehend the intruder. This need not mar nor delay our festivities! On with the dance!” The chancellor nodded to the conductor and the great orchestra crashed into Taya of Tehuantepec.

  An excited buzz sprang up everywhere as the bright-plumaged males began removing their masks and looking about the room. Gradually the couples were reabsorbed on the dance floor. As Alar slid along the wall his hand went to his mask, then dropped slowly. His strange heart began to beat even faster.

  Several things were clamoring for his attention. The dancers were now taking notice of him even in the shadowed portion of the tapestried wall where he leaned. From the air, it seemed, several men in gray with I.P. service sabers crystallized a few feet from him on either side.

  They were just standing there quietly, seemingly absorbed in the whirling gaiety. Two more leaned unobtrusively against a great column some twelve feet ahead. Alar’s brown Thief mask was about as inconspicuous here as a red rag in front of a bull. He must have been mad to wear it.

  His tongue worked dryly in his mouth. He carried an unfamiliar blade. He was exhausted—living on pure nervous energy. Even if his roving eyes could spot an exit opening on the gardens, he wasn’t at all sure he could break out unscathed.

  “Your mask, sir?”

  It was Thurmond—standing squarely before him, hand on rapier pommel.

  For a long, horrid moment the Thief thought his legs would give way and drop him to the marble flagging. At best he could not avoid the reflex action of licking his lips.

  The police minister’s feral eyes missed nothing. His mouth curled faintly. “Your mask, sir?” he repeated softly.

  The man must have approached him from behind the column, and made one of the shadowy catleaps for which he was famous—and feared. He was drawing his blade slowly, seeming to take an almost sensuous pleasure in the Thief’s rapid breathing.

  “Faut-il s’éloigner le masque? Pourquoi?” asked Alar huskily. “Qu’êtes-vous?”

  The barest shadow of doubt crossed Thurmond’s face. But his blade was now out. Its point flashed even in the subdued light of the ballroom. “The chancellor would still like a conference with you,” continued Thurmond. “If I can’t arrange that, I’m to kill you. Conferences are just so much idle chatter and you might get lost on the way. So I’m going to kill you. Here. Now.”

  Alar finally got a deep breath.

  There were other flashes of steel around him now. The gray men along the wall had drawn their blades and were sidling toward him. Two or three couples had stopped dancing and were staring in fascination at his approaching murder.

  A blur! And Thurmond was suddenly one step closer. It was simply impossible for a human being to move so fast. It was clear now why poor Corrips—no mean swordsman—had lasted but seconds before the slashing wizardry of Giles Thurmond. And yet the man held back. Why? That phony diplomatic French must have removed his one-hundred-percent certainty. Thurmond evidently did not intend to kill him until the mask was off.

  “Vous m’insulte, tovarich,” clipped Alar. “Je vous demande encore, pourquoi dois-je déplacer le masque? Qu’êtes-vous? Je demande votre identité. Si vous désirez un duel, mes séconds—”

  Thurmond hesitated. “Il faut déplacer le masque,” he said curtly, “parceque il y a un énémi de l’état au bal. C’est mon devoir, de l’apprendre. Alors, monsieur, s’il vous plaît, le masque—”

  The police minister had now taken care of the one-in-a-million possibility that Alar was actually a visiting dignitary who had not understood the chancellor’s announcement. He was now ready to kill the Thief whether or not he removed his mask.

  Alar’s mind began to float in that curiously detached way that ignored time. His heart, he noted, had leveled off at 170. Within one or two seconds he would be impaled by Thurmond’s blade against the thick tapestries, writhing like an insect. That was no way for a Thief to die.

  “Madame, messieurs!” he bowed in utter gratitude. Keiris had rounded the column with the chancellor and Ambassador Shimatsu on either arm. Thurmond’s blade, an inch in front of his heart, wavered.

  “Madame,” continued the Thief smoothly, “voulez-vous expliquer à cet homme mon identité?”

  Keiris’s eyes were wide with something nameless. This moment, one that she had dreaded for years, had finally come. If she saved the life of the Thief her double life must soon be discovered. What would happen to her then? Would Haze-Gaunt sell her to Shey?

  She said quietly, “You have made a grave mistake, General Thurmond. May I introduce Dr. Hallmarck, of the University of Kharkov?”

  Alar bowed. Thurmond sheathed his weapon slowly. It was clear that he was unconvinced.

  Shimatsu, too, was studying Alar dubiously. He started to speak, then hesitated, finally said nothing.

  Haze-Gaunt fixed hard eyes on the Thief. “We are honored sir. But as a matter of courtesy, it might be well to—”

  “Comment, monsieur?” Alar shrugged his shoulders. “Je ne parle pas l
’anglais. Veuillez, madame, voulez-vous traduire?”

  The woman laughed artificially and turned to the chancellor. “The poor dear doesn’t know what it’s all about. He has this dance with me. I’ll get his mask from him. And you really ought to be more careful, General Thurmond.”

  She was talking before they were well away. “I doubt that you can escape now,” she said hurriedly. “But your best chance will be to do exactly as I say. Remove your mask immediately.”

  He did so, placed it in his jacket pocket. She had maneuvered him carefully, so that he faced away from the chancellor’s group.

  His arm was around her now and they glided in a slow whirl across the room. To have her so close, with her body continuously touching his, reactivated the tantalizing memory syndrome of the balcony—only now it was doubled, redoubled.

  He was not much taller than she and his nostrils once got buried in the fine black hair at her temple. Even its odor was exasperatingly familiar. Had he known this woman at some time in his phantom past? No way to tell. She had given no hint of recognition.

  “Whatever you have in mind,” he urged nervously, “do it quickly. As we left them Shimatsu was telling Haze-Gaunt that I spoke English. That’s all Thurmond needs.”

  They were through the milling crowd now and in the shadowed fountain gallery.

  “I can’t go any further, Alar,” said the woman rapidly. “At the end of this corridor is a refuse chute. It will drop you into one of the incinerator pits in the bowels of the palace. The incinerators will be fired at any moment but you’ll have to take the chance. You’ll find friends in a great vault adjoining the incinerators. Are you afraid?”

  “A little. But who are these ‘friends’?”

  “Thieves. They’re building a strange space-ship.”

  “The T-twenty-two? But that’s an imperial project. It’s guarded tighter than a drum. The Undersecretary for Space, Gaines, is in charge himself.”