Journey to Infinity - [Adventures in Science Fiction 02]

by Edited by Martin Greenburg

  They X-rayed his cranium, throat, chest and abdomen from front, back and both sides and dutifully recorded that something that wasn’t an appendix was located where his appendix ought to be. Down went the details, every one of them. Membraned epiglottis. Optical astigmatism: left eye point seven, right eye point four. Lapped glands in throat in lieu of tonsils. Crenated ear lobes. Cerebral serrations complex and deep.

  “Satisfied?” he asked when apparently they’d finished with him.

  “You can put on your clothes.”

  The head man of the seven studied the almost completed form thoughtfully. He watched the subject dressing himself, noted the careful, deliberate manner in which the garments were resumed one by one. He called three of his assistants, conferred with them in low tones.

  Finally he wrote at the bottom of the form: “Not necessarily a more advanced type, but definitely a variation. Possibly dangerous. Should be watched.” Unlocking the dispatch case, he shoved the form in on top of the other papers it contained, locked the case, gave it to an assistant. “Take him along to the next stage.”

  Stage two was another room almost as large as its predecessor and made to look larger by virtue of comparative emptiness. Its sole furnishings consisted of an enormous carpet with pile so heavy it had to be waded through, also a large desk of glossy plastic and two pneumatic chairs. The walls were of translucite and the ceiling emitted a frosty glow.

  In the chair behind the desk reposed a swarthy, saturnine individual with lean features and a hooked nose. His dress was dapper and a jeweled ring ornamented his left index finger. His black eyes gazed speculatively as the prisoner was marched the full length of the carpet and seated in the second chair. He accepted the leather case, unlocked it, spent a long time submitting its contents to careful examination.

  In the end, he said, “So it took them eight months to get you here even at supra-spatial speed. Tut tut, how we grow! Life won’t be long enough if this goes on. They’ve brought you a devil of a distance, eh? And they taught you our language on the way. Did you have much difficulty in learning it?”

  “None,” said the prisoner.

  “You have a natural aptitude for languages, I suppose?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  The dark man leaned forward, a sudden gleam in his eyes. A faint smell of morocco leather exuded from him. His speech was smooth.

  “Your answer implies that there is only one language employed on your home world.”

  “Does it?” The prisoner stared blankly at his questioner.

  The other sat back again, thought for a moment, then went on, “It is easy to discern that you are not in the humor to be co-operative. I don’t know why. You’ve been treated with every courtesy and consideration, or should have been. Have you any complaint to make on that score?”

  “No,” said the prisoner bluntly.

  “Why not?” The dark man made no attempt to conceal his surprise. “This is the point where almost invariably I am treated to an impassioned tirade about kidnaping. But you don’t complain?”

  “What good would it do me?”

  “No good whatever,” assured the other.

  “See?” The prisoner settled himself more comfortably in his chair. His smile was grim.

  For a while, the dark man contemplated the jewel in his ring, twisting it this way and that to catch the lights from its facets. Eventually he wrote upon the form the one word: “Fatalistic,” after which he murmured, “Well, we’ll see how far we can get, anyway.” He picked up a paper. “Your name is Harold Harold-Myra?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Mine’s Helman, by the way. Remember it, because you may need me sometime. Now this Harold-Myra—is that your family name?”

  “It is the compound of my father’s and mother’s names.”

  “Hm-m-m! I suppose that that’s the usual practice on your world?”

  “Yes.”

  “What if you marry a girl named Betty?”

  “My name would still be Harold-Myra,” the prisoner informed. “Hers would still be the compound of her own parents’ names. But our children would be called Harold-Betty.”

  “I see. Now according to this report, you were removed from a satellite after two of our ships had landed on its parent planet and failed to take off again.”

  “I was certainly removed from a satellite. I know nothing about your ships.”

  “Do you know why they failed to take off?”

  “How could I? I wasn’t there!”

  Helman frowned, chewed his lower lip, then rasped, “It is I who am supposed to be putting the questions.”

  “Go ahead then,” said Harold Harold-Myra.

  “Your unspoken thought being, ‘And a lot of good it may do you,’” put in Helman shrewdly. He frowned again, added the word: “Stubborn” to the form before him. “It seems to me,” he went on, “that both of us are behaving rather childishly. Mutual antagonism profits no one. Why can’t we adopt the right attitude toward each other? Let’s be frank, eh?” He smiled, revealing bright dentures. “I’ll put my cards on the table and you put yours.”

  “Let’s see yours.”

  Helman’s smile vanished as quickly as it had appeared. He looked momentarily pained. “Distrustful” went down on the form. He spoke, choosing his words carefully.

  “I take it that you learned a lot about the Empire during your trip here. You know that it is a mighty organization of various forms of intelligent life, most of them, as it happens, strongly resembling yours and mine, and all of them owing allegiance to the particular solar system in which you’re now located. You have been told, or should have been told, that the Empire sprang from here, that throughout many, many centuries it has spread over four thousand worlds, and that it’s still spreading.”

  “I’ve heard all of that,” admitted the other.

  “Good! Then you’ll be able to understand that you’re no more than a temporary victim of our further growth, but, in many ways, a lucky man.”

  “I fail to perceive the luck.”

  “You will, you will,” soothed Helman. “All in good time.” Mechanically, his smile had returned, and he was making an attempt at joviality. “Now I can assure you that an organization so old and so widespread as ours is not without a modicum of wisdom. Our science has given us incredible powers, including the power to blow whole worlds apart and desiccate them utterly, but that doesn’t make us disregard caution. After a wealth of experience covering a multitude of planets we’ve learned that we’re still not too great to be brought low. Indeed, for all our mighty power, we can err in manner disastrous to us all. So we step carefully.”

  “Sounds as if someone once put a scare into you,” commented Harold Harold-Myra.

  Helman hesitated, then said, “As a matter of fact, someone did. I’ll tell you about it. Many decades ago we made a first landing on a new planet. The ship failed to take off. Our exploratory vessels always travel in threes, so a second vessel went down to the aid of its fellow. That didn’t take off either. But the third ship, waiting in space, got a despairing message warning that the world held highly intelligent life of an elusive and parasitic type.”

  “And they confiscated the bodies you’d so kindly provided,” suggested Harold.

  “You know all about this life form?” Helman asked. His fingers slid toward an invisible spot on the surface of his desk.

  “It’s the first I’ve heard of them,” replied the other. “Confiscation was logical.”

  “I suppose so,” Helman admitted with some reluctance. He went on, his keen eyes on his listener. “They didn’t get the chance to take over everyone. A few men realized their peril in the nick of time, locked themselves in one vessel away from the parasites and away from their stricken fellows. There weren’t enough of them to take off, so they beamed a warning. The third ship saw the menace at once; if action wasn’t taken swiftly it meant that we’d handed the keys of the cosmos to unknown powers. They destroyed both ships
with one atomic bomb. Later, a task ship arrived, took the stern action we deemed necessary, and dropped a planet wrecker. The world dissolved into flashing gases. It was an exceedingly narrow squeak. The Empire, for all its wealth, ingenuity and might, could not stand if no citizen knew the real nature of his neighbor.”

  “A sticky situation,” admitted Harold Harold-Myra. “I see now where I come in—I am a sample.”

  “Precisely.” Helman was jovial again. “All we wish to discover is whether your world is a safe one.”

  “Safe for what?”

  “For straightforward contact.”

  “Contact for what?” Harold persisted.

  “Dear me! I’d have thought a person of your intelligence would see the mutual advantages to be gained from a meeting of different cultures”

  “I can see the advantages all right. I can also see the consequences.”

  “To what do you refer?” Helman’s amiability began to evaporate.

  “Embodiment in your Empire.”

  “Tut? said Helman impatiently. “Your world would join us only of its own free will. In the second place, what’s wrong with being part of the Empire? In the third, how d’you know that your opinions coincide with those of your fellows? They may think differently. They may prove eager to come in.”

  “It looks like it seeing that you’ve got two ships stuck there.”

  “Ah, then you admit that they’re forcibly detained?”

  “I admit nothing. For all I know, your crews may be sitting there congratulating themselves on getting away from the Empire—while my people are taking steps to throw them out.”

  Helman’s lean face went a shade darker. His long, slender hands clenched and unclenched while his disciplined mind exerted itself to suppress the retort which his emotion strove to voice.

  Then he said, “Citizens of the Empire don’t run away from it. Those who do run don’t get very far.”

  “A denial and an affirmative,” commented Harold amusedly. “All in one breath. You can’t have it both ways. Either they run or they don’t.”

  “You know perfectly well what I meant.” Helman, speaking slowly and evenly, wasn’t going to let this specimen bait him. “The desire to flee is as remote as the uselessness of it is complete.”

  “The former being due to the latter?”

  “Not at all!” said Helman sharply.

  “You damn your ramshackle Empire with every remark you make,” Harold informed. “I reckon I know it better than you do.”

  “And how do you presume to know our Empire?” inquired Helman. His brows arched in sarcastic interrogation. “On what basis do you consider yourself competent to judge it?”

  “On the basis of history,” Harold told him. “Your people are sufficiently like us to be like us—and if you can’t understand that remark, well, I can’t help it. On my world we’re old, incredibly old, and we’ve learned a lot from a past which is long and lurid. We’ve had empires by the dozens, though none as great as yours. They all went the same way—down the sinkhole. They all vanished for the same fundamental and inevitable reasons. Empires come and empires go, but little men go on forever.”

  “Thanks,” said Helman quickly. He wrote on the form: “Anarchistic,” then, after further thought, added: “Somewhat of a crackpot.”

  Harold Harold-Myra smiled slowly and a little sadly. The writing was not within line of his vision, but he knew what had been written as surely as if he’d written it himself. To the people of his ancient planet it was not necessary to look at things in order to see them.

  Pushing the form to one side, Helman said, “The position is that every time we make a landing we take the tremendous risk of presenting our secrets of space conquest to people of unknown abilities and doubtful ambitions. It’s a chance that has to be taken. You understand that?” He noted the other’s curt nod, then went on, “As matters stand at present, your world holds two of our best vessels. Your people, for all we can tell, may be able to gain a perfect understanding of them, copy them in large numbers, even improve on them. Your people may take to the cosmos, spreading ideas that don’t coincide with ours. Therefore, in theory, the choice is war or peace. Actually, the choice for your people will be a simple one: co-operation or desiccation. I hate to tell you this, but your hostile manner forces me to do so.”

  “Uncommunicative might be a better word than hostile,” suggested Harold Harold-Myra.

  “Those who’re not with us are against us,” retorted Helman. “We’re not being dictatorial; merely realistic. Upon what sort of information we can get out of you depends the action we take regarding your world. You are, you must understand, the representative of your kind. We are quite willing to accept that your people resemble you to within reasonable degree, and from our analysis of you we’ll decide whether—”

  “We get canonized or vaporized,” put in Harold.

  “If you like.” Helman refused to be disturbed. He’d now acquired the sang-froid of one conscious of mastery. “It is for you to decide the fate of your planet. It’s an enormous responsibility to place on one man’s shoulders, but there it is, and you’ve got to bear it. And remember, we’ve other methods of extracting from you the information we require. Now, for the last time, are you willing to subject yourself to my cross-examination, or are you not?”

  “The answer is,” said Harold carefully, “not!”

  “Very well then.” Helman accepted it phlegmatically. He pressed the spot on his desk. “You compel me to turn from friendly interrogation to forcible analysis. I regret it, but it is your own choice.” Two attendants entered, and he said to them, “Take him to stage three.”

  The escorting pair left him in this third and smaller room and he had plenty of time to look around before the three men engaged therein condescended to notice him. They were all in white, this trio, but more alert and less automatic than the white-garbed personnel of the medical examination room. Two of them were young, tall, muscular, and hard of countenance. The third was short, thickset, middle-aged and had a neatly clipped beard.

  Briskly they were switching on a huge array of apparatus covering one wall of the room. The set-up was a mass of plastic panels, dials, meters, buttons, switches, sockets with corded plugs, and multi-connection pieces. From inside or close behind this affair came a low, steady hum. Before it, centrally positioned, was a chair.

  Satisfied that all was in readiness, the bearded man said to Harold, “O.K., be seated.” He signed to his two assistants who stepped forward as if eager to cope with a refusal.

  Harold smiled, waved a negligent hand, sat himself in the chair. Working swiftly, the three attached cushioned metal bands to his ankles, calves, thighs, chest, neck and head. Flexible metal tubes ran from the bands to the middle of the apparatus while, in addition, the one about his head was connected to a thin, multicore cable.

  They adjusted the controls to give certain readings on particular meters, after which the bearded one fixed glasses on his nose, picked up a paper, stared at it myopically. He spoke to the subject in the chair.

  “I am about to ask you a series of questions. They will be so phrased that the answers may be given as simple negatives or affirmatives. You can please yourself whether or not you reply vocally—it is a matter of total indifference to me.”

  He glanced at Harold and his eyes, distorted into hugeness behind thick-lensed glasses, were cold and blank. His finger pressed a button; across the room a camera whirred into action, began to record the readings on the various meters.

  Disregarding everything else, and keeping his attention wholly on the man in the chair, the bearded one said, “You were discovered on a satellite—yes or no?”

  Harold grinned reminiscently, did not reply.

  “Therefore your people know how to traverse space?”

  No reply.

  “In fact they can go further than to a mere satellite. They can reach neighboring planets—yes or no?”

  No reply.

  “Alr
eady they have explored neighboring planets?”

  No reply.

  “The truth is that they can do even better than that—they have reached other solar systems?”

  He smiled once more, enigmatically.

  “Your world is a world by itself?”