Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Before the CIA man could comment, Ford said, "The computer's right inside this doorway. Let's get this over with while the building is still empty."

  * * * * *

  They stepped in. The physicist and the general showed the CIA man through the room-filling rows of massive consoles.

  "It's all transistorized and subminiaturized, of course," Ford explained. "That's the only way we could build so much detail into the machine and still have it small enough to fit inside a single building."

  "A single building?"

  "Oh yes; this is only the control section. Most of this building is taken up by the circuits, the memory banks, and the rest of it."

  "Hm-m-m."

  They showed him finally to a small desk, studded with control buttons and dials. The single spotlight above the desk lit it brilliantly, in harsh contrast to the semidarkness of the rest of the room.

  "Since you've never run the computer before," Ford said, "General LeRoy will do the controlling. You just sit and watch what happens."

  The general sat in one of the well-padded chairs and donned a grotesque headgear that was connected to the desk by a half-dozen wires. The CIA man took his chair slowly.

  When they put one of the bulky helmets on him, he looked up at them, squinting a little in the bright light. "This ... this isn't going to ... well, do me any damage, is it?"

  "My goodness, no," Ford said. "You mean mentally? No, of course not. You're not on the General Staff, so it shouldn't ... it won't ... affect you the way it did the others. Their reaction had nothing to do with the computer per se ..."

  "Several civilians have used the computer with no ill effects," General LeRoy said. "Ford has used it many times."

  The CIA man nodded, and they closed the transparent visor over his face. He sat there and watched General LeRoy press a series of buttons, then turn a dial.

  "Can you hear me?" The general's voice came muffled through the helmet.

  "Yes," he said.

  "All right. Here we go. You're familiar with Situation One-Two-One? That's what we're going to be seeing."

  Situation One-Two-One was a standard war game. The CIA man was well acquainted with it. He watched the general flip a switch, then sit back and fold his arms over his chest. A row of lights on the desk console began blinking on and off, one, two, three ... down to the end of the row, then back to the beginning again, on and off, on and off ...

  And then, somehow, he could see it!

  He was poised incredibly somewhere in space, and he could see it all in a funny, blurry-double-sighted, dream-like way. He seemed to be seeing several pictures and hearing many voices, all at once. It was all mixed up, and yet it made a weird kind of sense.

  For a panicked instant he wanted to rip the helmet off his head. It's only an illusion, he told himself, forcing calm on his unwilling nerves. Only an illusion.

  But it seemed strangely real.

  He was watching the Gulf of Mexico. He could see Florida off to his right, and the arching coast of the southeastern United States. He could even make out the Rio Grande River.

  Situation One-Two-One started, he remembered, with the discovery of missile-bearing Enemy submarines in the Gulf. Even as he watched the whole area--as though perched on a satellite--he could see, underwater and close-up, the menacing shadowy figure of a submarine gliding through the crystal blue sea.

  He saw, too, a patrol plane as it spotted the submarine and sent an urgent radio warning.

  The underwater picture dissolved in a bewildering burst of bubbles. A missile had been launched. Within seconds, another burst--this time a nuclear depth charge--utterly destroyed the submarine.

  It was confusing. He was everyplace at once. The details were overpowering, but the total picture was agonizingly clear.

  Six submarines fired missiles from the Gulf of Mexico. Four were immediately sunk, but too late. New Orleans, St. Louis and three Air Force bases were obliterated by hydrogen-fusion warheads.

  The CIA man was familiar with the opening stages of the war. The first missile fired at the United States was the signal for whole fleets of missiles and bombers to launch themselves at the Enemy. It was confusing to see the world at once; at times he could not tell if the fireball and mushroom cloud was over Chicago or Shanghai, New York or Novosibirsk, Baltimore or Budapest.

  It did not make much difference, really. They all got it in the first few hours of the war; as did London and Moscow, Washington and Peking, Detroit and Delhi, and many, many more.

  The defensive systems on all sides seemed to operate well, except that there were never enough anti-missiles. Defensive systems were expensive compared to attack rockets. It was cheaper to build a deterrent than to defend against it.

  The missiles flashed up from submarines and railway cars, from underground silos and stratospheric jets; secret ones fired off automatically when a certain airbase command post ceased beaming out a restraining radio signal. The defensive systems were simply overloaded. And when the bombs ran out, the missiles carried dust and germs and gas. On and on. For six days and six firelit nights. Launch, boost, coast, re-enter, death.

  * * * * *

  And now it was over, the CIA man thought. The missiles were all gone. The airplanes were exhausted. The nations that had built the weapons no longer existed. By all the rules he knew of, the war should have been ended.

  Yet the fighting did not end. The machine knew better. There were still many ways to kill an enemy. Time-tested ways. There were armies fighting in four continents, armies that had marched overland, or splashed ashore from the sea, or dropped out of the skies.

  Incredibly, the war went on. When the tanks ran out of gas, and the flame throwers became useless, and even the prosaic artillery pieces had no more rounds to fire, there were still simple guns and even simpler bayonets and swords.

  The proud armies, the descendents of the Alexanders and Caesars and Temujins and Wellingtons and Grants and Rommels, relived their evolution in reverse.

  The war went on. Slowly, inevitably, the armies split apart into smaller and smaller units, until the tortured countryside that so recently had felt the impact of nuclear war once again knew the tread of bands of armed marauders. The tiny savage groups, stranded in alien lands, far from the homes and families that they knew to be destroyed, carried on a mockery of war, lived off the land, fought their own countrymen if the occasion suited, and revived the ancient terror of hand-wielded, personal, one-head-at-a-time killing.

  The CIA man watched the world disintegrate. Death was an individual business now, and none the better for no longer being mass-produced. In agonized fascination he saw the myriad ways in which a man might die. Murder was only one of them. Radiation, disease, toxic gases that lingered and drifted on the once-innocent winds, and--finally--the most efficient destroyer of them all: starvation.

  Three billion people (give or take a meaningless hundred million) lived on the planet Earth when the war began. Now, with the tenuous thread of civilization burned away, most of those who were not killed by the fighting itself succumbed inexorably to starvation.

  Not everyone died, of course. Life went on. Some were lucky.

  A long darkness settled on the world. Life went on for a few, a pitiful few, a bitter, hateful, suspicious, savage few. Cities became pestholes. Books became fuel. Knowledge died. Civilization was completely gone from the planet Earth.

  * * * * *

  The helmet was lifted slowly off his head. The CIA man found that he was too weak to raise his arms and help. He was shivering and damp with perspiration.

  "Now you see," Ford said quietly, "why the military men cracked up when they used the computer."

  General LeRoy, even, was pale. "How can a man with any conscience at all direct a military operation when he knows that that will be the consequence?"

  The CIA man struck up a cigarette and pulled hard on it. He exhaled sharply. "Are all the war games ... like that? Every plan?"

  "Some are worse," Ford s
aid. "We picked an average one for you. Even some of the 'brushfire' games get out of hand and end up like that."

  "So ... what do you intend to do? Why did you call me in? What can I do?"

  "You're with CIA," the general said. "Don't you handle espionage?"

  "Yes, but what's that got to do with it?"

  The general looked at him. "It seems to me that the next logical step is to make damned certain that They get the plans to this computer ... and fast!"

  * * *

  Contents

  THE DUELING MACHINE

  By Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis

  The trouble with great ideas is that someone is sure to expend enormous effort and ingenuity figuring out how to louse them up.

  Dulaq rode the slide to the upper pedestrian level, stepped off and walked over to the railing. The city stretched out all around him--broad avenues thronged with busy people, pedestrian walks, vehicle thoroughfares, aircars gliding between the gleaming, towering buildings.

  And somewhere in this vast city was the man he must kill. The man who would kill him, perhaps.

  It all seemed so real! The noise of the streets, the odors of the perfumed trees lining the walks, even the warmth of the reddish sun on his back as he scanned the scene before him.

  It is an illusion, Dulaq reminded himself, a clever man-made hallucination. A figment of my own imagination amplified by a machine.

  But it seemed so very real.

  Real or not, he had to find Odal before the sun set. Find him and kill him. Those were the terms of the duel. He fingered the stubby cylinderical stat-wind in his tunic pocket. That was the weapon he had chosen, his weapon, his own invention. And this was the environment he had picked: his city, busy, noisy, crowded, the metropolis Dulaq had known and loved since childhood.

  Dulaq turned and glanced at the sun. It was halfway down toward the horizon, he judged. He had about three hours to find Odal. When he did--kill or be killed.

  Of course no one is actually hurt. That is the beauty of the machine. It allows one to settle a score, to work out aggressive feelings, without either mental or physical harm.

  Dulaq shrugged. He was a roundish figure, moon-faced, slightly stooped shoulders. He had work to do. Unpleasant work for a civilized man, but the future of the Acquataine Cluster and the entire alliance of neighboring star systems could well depend on the outcome of this electronically synthesized dream.

  He turned and walked down the elevated avenue, marveling at the sharp sensation of hardness that met each footstep on the paving. Children dashed by and rushed up to a toyshop window. Men of commerce strode along purposefully, but without missing a chance to eye the girls sauntering by.

  I must have a marvelous imagination, Dulaq thought smiling to himself.

  Then he thought of Odal, the blond, icy professional he was pitted against. Odal was an expert at all the weapons, a man of strength and cool precision, an emotionless tool in the hands of a ruthless politician. But how expert could he be with a stat-wand, when the first time he saw one was the moment before the duel began? And how well acquainted could he be with the metropolis, when he had spent most of his life in the military camps on the dreary planets of Kerak, sixty light-years from Acquatainia?

  No, Odal would be lost and helpless in this situation. He would attempt to hide among the throngs of people. All Dulaq had to do was to find him.

  The terms of the duel restricted both men to the pedestrian walks of the commercial quarter of the city. Dulaq knew the area intimately, and he began a methodical hunt through the crowds for the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Odal.

  And he saw him! After only a few minutes of walking down the major thoroughfare, he spotted his opponent, strolling calmly along a crosswalk, at the level below.

  Dulaq hurried down the next ramp, worked his way through the crowd, and saw the man again. Tall and blond, unmistakable. Dulaq edged along behind him quietly, easily. No disturbance. No pushing. Plenty of time. They walked along the street for a quarter hour while the distance between them slowly shrank from fifty feet to five.

  Finally Dulaq was directly behind him, within arm's reach. He grasped the stat-wand and pulled it from his tunic. With one quick motion he touched it to the base of the man's skull and started to thumb the button that would release the killing bolt of energy ...

  The man turned suddenly. It wasn't Odal!

  Dulaq jerked back in surprise. It couldn't be. He had seen his face. It was Odal--and yet this man was definitely a stranger.

  He stared at Dulaq as the duelist backed away a few steps, then turned and walked quickly from the place.

  A mistake, Dulaq told himself. You were overanxious. A good thing this is an hallucination, or else the auto-police would be taking you in by now.

  And yet ... he had been so certain that it was Odal. A chill shuddered through him. He looked up, and there was his antagonist, on the thoroughfare above, at the precise spot where he himself had been a few minutes earlier. Their eyes met, and Odal's lips parted in a cold smile.

  Dulaq hurried up the ramp. Odal was gone by the time he reached the upper level. He could not have gotten far, Dulaq reasoned. Slowly, but very surely, Dulaq's hallucination turned into a nightmare. He spotted Odal in the crowd, only to have him melt away. He saw him again, lolling in a small park, but when he got closer, the man turned out to be another stranger. He felt the chill of the duelist's ice-blue eyes on him again and again, but when he turned to find his antagonist, no one was there but the impersonal crowd.

  Odal's face appeared again and again. Dulaq struggled through the throngs to find his opponent, only to have him vanish. The crowd seemed to be filled with tall, blond men crisscrossing before Dulaq's dismayed eyes.

  The shadows lengthened. The sun was setting. Dulaq could feel his heart pounding within him and perspiration pouring from every square inch of his skin.

  There he is! Definitely, positively him! Dulaq pushed through the homeward-bound crowds toward the figure of a tall, blond man leaning against the safety railing of the city's main thoroughfare. It was Odal, the damned smiling confident Odal.

  Dulaq pulled the wand from his tunic and battled across the surging crowd to the spot where Odal stood motionless, hands in pockets, watching him.

  Dulaq came within arm's reach ...

  "TIME, GENTLEMEN. TIME IS UP, THE DUEL IS ENDED."

  * * * * *

  High above the floor of the antiseptic-white chamber that housed the dueling machine was a narrow gallery. Before the machine had been installed, the chamber had been a lecture hall in Acquatainia's largest university. Now the rows of students' seats, the lecturer's dais and rostrum were gone. The chamber held only the machine, the grotesque collection of consoles, control desks, power units, association circuits, and booths where the two antagonists sat.

  In the gallery--empty during ordinary duels--sat a privileged handful of newsmen.

  "Time limit is up," one of them said. "Dulaq didn't get him."

  "Yes, but he didn't get Dulaq, either."

  The first one shrugged. "The important thing is that now Dulaq has to fight Odal on his terms. Dulaq couldn't win with his own choice of weapons and situation, so--"

  "Wait, they're coming out."

  Down on the floor below, Dulaq and his opponent emerged from their enclosed booths.

  One of the newsmen whistled softly. "Look at Dulaq's face ... it's positively gray."

  "I've never seen the Prime Minister so shaken."

  "And take a look at Kanus' hired assassin." The newsmen turned toward Odal, who stood before his booth, quietly chatting with his seconds.

  "Hm-m-m. There's a bucket of frozen ammonia for you."

  "He's enjoying this."

  One of the newsmen stood up. "I've got a deadline to meet. Save my seat."

  He made his way past the guarded door, down the rampway circling the outer walls of the building, to the portable tri-di transmitting unit that the Acquatainian government had permitted for the newsm
en on the campus grounds outside the former lecture hall.

  The newsman huddled with his technicians for a few minutes, then stepped before the transmitter.

  "Emile Dulaq, Prime Minister of the Acquataine Cluster and acknowledged leader of the coalition against Chancellor Kanus of the Kerak Worlds, has failed in the first part of his psychonic duel against Major Par Odal of Kerak. The two antagonists are now undergoing the routine medical and psychological checks before renewing their duel."

  By the time the newsman returned to his gallery seat, the duel was almost ready to begin again.

  Dulaq stood in the midst of a group of advisors before the looming impersonality of the machine.

  "You need not go through with the next phase of the duel immediately," his Minister of Defense was saying. "Wait until tomorrow. Rest and calm yourself."

  Dulaq's round face puckered into a frown. He cocked an eye at the chief meditech, hovering at the edge of the little group.

  The meditech, one of the staff that ran the dueling machine, pointed out, "The Prime Minister has passed the examinations. He is capable, within the agreed-upon rules of the contest, of resuming."

  "But he has the option of retiring for the day, does he not?"

  "If Major Odal agrees."

  Dulaq shook his head impatiently. "No. I shall go through with it. Now."

  "But--"

  The prime minister's face suddenly hardened; his advisors lapsed into a respectful silence. The chief meditech ushered Dulaq back into his booth. On the other side of the room, Odal glanced at the Acquatainians, grinned humorlessly, and strode to his own booth.

  Dulaq sat and tried to blank out his mind while the meditechs adjusted the neurocontacts to his head and torso. They finished at last and withdrew. He was alone in the booth now, looking at the dead-white walls, completely bare except for the viewscreen before his eyes. The screen finally began to glow slightly, then brightened into a series of shifting colors. The colors merged and changed, swirled across his field of view. Dulaq felt himself being drawn into them gradually, compellingly, completely immersed in them.