Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  "It is my considered opinion," Bergstrom went on, "that your lost memory will turn out to be no ordinary amnesia. I believe we will find that your mind has been tampered with."

  "Nothing I've seen under the drug fits into the past I do remember."

  "That's what makes me so certain," Bergstrom said confidently. "You don't remember what we have shown to be true. Conversely then, what you think you remember must be false. It must have been implanted there. But we can go into that later. For today I think we have done enough. This episode was quite prolonged."

  "I won't have any time off again until next week end," Zarwell reminded him.

  "That's right." Bergstrom thought for a moment. "We shouldn't let this hang too long. Could you come here after work tomorrow?"

  "I suppose I could."

  "Fine," Bergstrom said with satisfaction. "I'll admit I'm considerably more than casually interested in your case by this time."

  A work truck picked Zarwell up the next morning and he rode with a tech crew to the edge of the reclam area. Beside the belt bringing ocean muck from the converter plant at the seashore his bulldozer was waiting.

  He took his place behind the drive wheel and began working dirt down between windbreakers anchored in the rock. Along a makeshift road into the badlands trucks brought crushed lime and phosphorus to supplement the ocean sediment. The progress of life from the sea to the land was a mechanical process of this growing world.

  Nearly two hundred years ago, when Earth established a colony on St. Martin's, the land surface of the planet had been barren. Only its seas thrived with animal and vegetable life. The necessary machinery and technicians had been supplied by Earth, and the long struggle began to fit the world for human needs. When Zarwell arrived, six months before, the vitalized area already extended three hundred miles along the coast, and sixty miles inland. And every day the progress continued. A large percentage of the energy and resources of the world were devoted to that essential expansion.

  The reclam crews filled and sodded the sterile rock, planted binding grasses, grain and trees, and diverted rivers to keep it fertile. When there were no rivers to divert they blasted out springs and lakes in the foothills to make their own. Biologists developed the necessary germ and insect life from what they found in the sea. Where that failed, they imported microorganisms from Earth.

  Three rubber-tracked crawlers picked their way down from the mountains until they joined the road passing the belt. They were loaded with ore that would be smelted into metal for depleted Earth, or for other colonies short of minerals. It was St. Martin's only export thus far.

  Zarwell pulled his sun helmet lower, to better guard his hot, dry features. The wind blew continuously on St. Martin's, but it furnished small relief from the heat. After its three-thousand-mile journey across scorched sterile rock, it sucked the moisture from a man's body, bringing a membrane-shrinking dryness to the nostrils as it was breathed in. With it came also the cloying taste of limestone in a worker's mouth.

  Zarwell gazed idly about at the other laborers. Fully three-quarters of them were beri-rabza ridden. A cure for the skin fungus had not yet been found; the men's faces and hands were scabbed and red. The colony had grown to near self-sufficiency, would soon have a moderate prosperity, yet they still lacked adequate medical and research facilities.

  Not all the world's citizens were content.

  Bergstrom was waiting in his office when Zarwell arrived that evening.

  He was lying motionless on a hard cot, with his eyes closed, yet with his every sense sharply quickened. Tentatively he tightened small muscles in his arms and legs. Across his wrists and thighs he felt straps binding him to the cot.

  "So that's our big, bad man," a coarse voice above him observed caustically. "He doesn't look so tough now, does he?"

  "It might have been better to kill him right away," a second, less confident voice said. "It's supposed to be impossible to hold him."

  "Don't be stupid. We just do what we're told. We'll hold him."

  "What do you think they'll do with him?"

  "Execute him, I suppose," the harsh voice said matter-of-factly. "They're probably just curious to see what he looks like first. They'll be disappointed."

  Zarwell opened his eyes a slit to observe his surroundings.

  It was a mistake. "He's out of it," the first speaker said, and Zarwell allowed his eyes to open fully.

  The voice, he saw, belonged to the big man who had bruised him against the locker at the spaceport. Irrelevantly he wondered how he knew now that it had been a spaceport.

  His captor's broad face jeered down at Zarwell. "Have a good sleep?" he asked with mock solicitude. Zarwell did not deign to acknowledge that he heard.

  The big man turned. "You can tell the Chief he's awake," he said. Zarwell followed his gaze to where a younger man, with a blond lock of hair on his forehead, stood behind him. The youth nodded and went out, while the other pulled a chair up to the side of Zarwell's cot.

  While their attention was away from him Zarwell had unobtrusively loosened his bonds as much as possible with arm leverage. As the big man drew his chair nearer, he made the hand farthest from him tight and compact and worked it free of the leather loop. He waited.

  The big man belched. "You're supposed to be great stuff in a situation like this," he said, his smoke-tan face splitting in a grin that revealed large square teeth. "How about giving me a sample?"

  "You're a yellow-livered bastard," Zarwell told him.

  The grin faded from the oily face as the man stood up. He leaned over the cot--and Zarwell's left hand shot up and locked about his throat, joined almost immediately by the right.

  The man's mouth opened and he tried to yell as he threw himself frantically backward. He clawed at the hands about his neck. When that failed to break the grip he suddenly reversed his weight and drove his fist at Zarwell's head.

  Zarwell pulled the struggling body down against his chest and held it there until all agitated movement ceased. He sat up then, letting the body slide to the floor.

  The straps about his thighs came loose with little effort.

  The analyst dabbed at his upper lip with a handkerchief. "The episodes are beginning to tie together," he said, with an attempt at nonchalance. "The next couple should do it."

  Zarwell did not answer. His memory seemed on the point of complete return, and he sat quietly, hopefully. However, nothing more came and he returned his attention to his more immediate problem.

  Opening a button on his shirt, he pulled back a strip of plastic cloth just below his rib cage and took out a small flat pistol. He held it in the palm of his hand. He knew now why he always carried it.

  Bergstrom had his bad moment. "You're not going to ..." he began at the sight of the gun. He tried again. "You must be joking."

  "I have very little sense of humor," Zarwell corrected him.

  "You'd be foolish!"

  Bergstrom obviously realized how close he was to death. Yet surprisingly, after the first start, he showed little fear. Zarwell had thought the man a bit soft, too adjusted to a life of ease and some prestige to meet danger calmly. Curiosity restrained his trigger finger.

  "Why would I be foolish?" he asked. "Your Meninger oath of inviolable confidence?"

  Bergstrom shook his head. "I know it's been broken before. But you need me. You're not through, you know. If you killed me you'd still have to trust some other analyst."

  "Is that the best you can do?"

  "No." Bergstrom was angry now. "But use that logical mind you're supposed to have! Scenes before this have shown what kind of man you are. Just because this last happened here on St. Martin's makes little difference. If I was going to turn you in to the police, I'd have done it before this."

  Zarwell debated with himself the truth of what the other had said. "Why didn't you turn me in?" he asked.

  "Because you're no mad-dog killer!" Now that the crisis seemed to be past, Bergstrom spoke more calmly, even allowed h
imself to relax. "You're still pretty much in the fog about yourself. I read more in those comanalyses than you did. I even know who you are!"

  Zarwell's eyebrows raised.

  "Who am I?" he asked, very interested now. Without attention he put his pistol away in a trouser pocket.

  Bergstrom brushed the question aside with one hand. "Your name makes little difference. You've used many. But you are an idealist. Your killings were necessary to bring justice to the places you visited. By now you're almost a legend among the human worlds. I'd like to talk more with you on that later."

  While Zarwell considered, Bergstrom pressed his advantage. "One more scene might do it," he said. "Should we try again--if you trust me, that is?"

  Zarwell made his decision quickly. "Go ahead," he answered.

  All Zarwell's attention seemed on the cigar he lit as he rode down the escalator, but he surveyed the terminal carefully over the rim of his hand. He spied no suspicious loungers.

  Behind the escalator he groped along the floor beneath the lockers until he found his key. The briefcase was under his arm a minute later.

  In the basement lave he put a coin in the pay slot of a private compartment and went in.

  As he zipped open the briefcase he surveyed his features in the mirror. A small muscle at the corner of one eye twitched spasmodically. One cheek wore a frozen quarter smile. Thirty-six hours under the paralysis was longer than advisable. The muscles should be rested at least every twenty hours.

  Fortunately his natural features would serve as an adequate disguise now.

  He adjusted the ring setting on the pistol-shaped instrument that he took from his case, and carefully rayed several small areas of his face, loosening muscles that had been tight too long. He sighed gratefully when he finished, massaging his cheeks and forehead with considerable pleasure. Another glance in the mirror satisfied him with the changes that had been made. He turned to his briefcase again and exchanged the gun for a small syringe, which he pushed into a trouser pocket, and a single-edged razor blade.

  Removing his fiber-cloth jacket he slashed it into strips with the razor blade and flushed it down the disposal bowl. With the sleeves of his blouse rolled up he had the appearance of a typical workman as he strolled from the compartment.

  Back at the locker he replaced the briefcase and, with a wad of gum, glued the key to the bottom of the locker frame.

  One step more. Taking the syringe from his pocket, he plunged the needle into his forearm and tossed the instrument down a waste chute. He took three more steps and paused uncertainly.

  When he looked about him it was with the expression of a man waking from a vivid dream.

  "Quite ingenious," Graves murmured admiringly. "You had your mind already preconditioned for the shot. But why would you deliberately give yourself amnesia?"

  "What better disguise than to believe the part you're playing?"

  "A good man must have done that job on your mind," Bergstrom commented. "I'd have hesitated to try it myself. It must have taken a lot of trust on your part."

  "Trust and money," Zarwell said drily.

  "Your memory's back then?"

  Zarwell nodded.

  "I'm glad to hear that," Bergstrom assured him. "Now that you're well again I'd like to introduce you to a man named Vernon Johnson. This world ..."

  Zarwell stopped him with an upraised hand. "Good God, man, can't you see the reason for all this? I'm tired. I'm trying to quit."

  "Quit?" Bergstrom did not quite follow him.

  "It started on my home colony," Zarwell explained listlessly. "A gang of hoods had taken over the government. I helped organize a movement to get them out. There was some bloodshed, but it went quite well. Several months later an unofficial envoy from another world asked several of us to give them a hand on the same kind of job. The political conditions there were rotten. We went with him. Again we were successful. It seems I have a kind of genius for that sort of thing."

  He stretched out his legs and regarded them thoughtfully. "I learned then the truth of Russell's saying: 'When the oppressed win their freedom they are as oppressive as their former masters.' When they went bad, I opposed them. This time I failed. But I escaped again. I have quite a talent for that also.

  "I'm not a professional do-gooder." Zarwell's tone appealed to Bergstrom for understanding. "I have only a normal man's indignation at injustice. And now I've done my share. Yet, wherever I go, the word eventually gets out, and I'm right back in a fight again. It's like the proverbial monkey on my back. I can't get rid of it."

  He rose. "That disguise and memory planting were supposed to get me out of it. I should have known it wouldn't work. But this time I'm not going to be drawn back in! You and your Vernon Johnson can do your own revolting. I'm through!"

  Bergstrom did not argue as he left.

  Restlessness drove Zarwell from his flat the next day--a legal holiday on St. Martin's. At a railed-off lot he stopped and loitered in the shadow of an adjacent building watching workmen drilling an excavation for a new structure.

  When a man strolled to his side and stood watching the workmen, he was not surprised. He waited for the other to speak.

  "I'd like to talk to you, if you can spare a few minutes," the stranger said.

  Zarwell turned and studied the man without answering. He was medium tall, with the body of an athlete, though perhaps ten years beyond the age of sports. He had a manner of contained energy. "You're Johnson?" he asked.

  The man nodded.

  Zarwell tried to feel the anger he wanted to feel, but somehow it would not come. "We have nothing to talk about," was the best he could manage.

  "Then will you just listen? After, I'll leave--if you tell me to."

  Against his will he found himself liking the man, and wanting at least to be courteous. He inclined his head toward a curb wastebox with a flat top. "Should we sit?"

  Johnson smiled agreeably and they walked over to the box and sat down.

  "When this colony was first founded," Johnson began without preamble, "the administrative body was a governor, and a council of twelve. Their successors were to be elected biennially. At first they were. Then things changed. We haven't had an election now in the last twenty-three years. St. Martin's is beginning to prosper. Yet the only ones receiving the benefits are the rulers. The citizens work twelve hours a day. They are poorly housed, poorly fed, poorly clothed. They ..."

  Zarwell found himself not listening as Johnson's voice went on. The story was always the same. But why did they always try to drag him into their troubles?

  Why hadn't he chosen some other world on which to hide?

  The last question prompted a new thought. Just why had he chosen St. Martin's? Was it only a coincidence? Or had he, subconsciously at least, picked this particular world? He had always considered himself the unwilling subject of glib persuaders ... but mightn't some inner compulsion of his own have put the monkey on his back?

  "... and we need your help." Johnson had finished his speech.

  Zarwell gazed up at the bright sky. He pulled in a long breath, and let it out in a sigh.

  "What are your plans so far?" he asked wearily.

  * * *

  Contents

  THERE IS A REAPER ...

  By Charles V. De Vet

  Doctors had given him just one month to live. A month to wonder, what comes afterward? There was one way to find out--ask a dead man!

  The amber brown of the liquor disguised the poison it held, and I watched with a smile on my lips as he drank it. There was no pity in my heart for him. He was a jackal in the jungle of life, and I ... I was one of the carnivores. It is the lot of the jackals of life to be devoured by the carnivore.

  Suddenly the contented look on his face froze into a startled stillness. I knew he was feeling the first savage twinge of the agony that was to come. He turned his head and looked at me, and I saw suddenly that he knew what I had done.

  "You murderer!" he cursed me, and then his b
ody arched in the middle and his voice choked off deep in his throat.

  For a short minute he sat, tense, his body stiffened by the agony that rode it--unable to move a muscle. I watched the torment in his eyes build up to a crescendo of pain, until the suffering became so great that it filmed his eyes, and I knew that, though he still stared directly at me, he no longer saw me.

  Then, as suddenly as the spasm had come, the starch went out of his body and his back slid slowly down the chair edge. He landed heavily with his head resting limply against the seat of the chair. His right leg doubled up in a kind of jerk, before he was still.

  I knew the time had come. "Where are you?" I asked.

  This moment had cost me sixty thousand dollars.

  Three weeks ago the best doctors in the state had given me a month to live. And with seven million dollars in the bank I couldn't buy a minute more.

  I accepted the doctors' decision philosophically, like the gambler that I am. But I had a plan: One which necessity had never forced me to use until now. Several years before I had read an article about the medicine men of a certain tribe of aborigines living in the jungles at the source of the Amazon River. They had discovered a process in which the juice of a certain bush--known only to them--could be used to poison a man. Anyone subjected to this poison died, but for a few minutes after the life left his body the medicine men could still converse with him. The subject, though ostensibly and actually dead, answered the medicine men's every question. This was their primitive, though reportedly effective method of catching glimpses of what lay in the world of death.

  I had conceived my idea at the time I read the article, but I had never had the need to use it--until the doctors gave me a month to live. Then I spent my sixty thousand dollars, and three weeks later I held in my hands a small bottle of the witch doctors' fluid.

  The next step was to secure my victim--my collaborator, I preferred to call him.