Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Supposed: It is probably electronuclear in composition, and appears to be completely innocent. By that I mean it has no intention to harm, perhaps because it does not understand the difference between good and evil, harm and help, pain and pleasure.

  It has only one urge; the basic urge of all creation. To evolve, to develop. As the tree has but one basic urge--to grow and greaten; the flower but one desire--to bloom, to improve; to assert itself through evolution and become better.

  Perhaps--and who can successfully deny it?--this great space cloud could be a storage place of the Creator Himself; a storage place for mind stuff. When an infant or an animal or a plant is touched with the magic thing called life--where does that magic come from? Is it created at the very moment or does it come somehow from a source-pile? Is this cloud a source-pile of life itself? No one can say. But I think I've hit on a limitation of this mind stuff. I'm going to try an experiment and pray to God it works.

  I'm going to find Murdo and knock him unconscious.

  I have solved the mind-stuff. What just happened is the last bit of proof I need. I went to the galley. Murdo had wandered away. I found him in the lounge. I stepped casually in front of him, set myself, and drove a straight right to his jaw. He went down like a log.

  I closed my eyes and counted to twenty praying to God to make me right in my belief--in the crazy theory I evolved. I opened my eyes and turned to the storage locker. I looked inside.

  The dead leopard was gone.

  I went to the port and looked out. The huge ice bear had been ravening insanely among the shreds of the water buffalo's body. As I watched both bear and buff began fading.

  Before my eyes, they disappeared, evolved back into the stuff of the sparkling fog. I had proved my theory.

  Now all the parts dropped into place. The mind stuff has only the ability and the urge to evolve--nothing else--no imagination. It can evolve only if given something to reproduce.

  This it can get only from a human mind. It is able to see an image pictured in the human memory and reproduce it in a state of absolute reality.

  Witness: Jane saw a tiger in the companionway. Clear in her memory was the image of the tiger she had shot at in India. The mind-stuff saw it and reproduced it in reality. The water buffalo came from my own mind. I killed one exactly like it a year ago. The ice bear was out of Murdo's memory as was the black leopard and the snake.

  Witness: The three animals created inside the ship did not appear until the mind stuff from outside penetrated the hull and entered the ship. They were of normal size. But the animals created outside the ship were far out of proportion, the ice bear especially. Why? Because, I believe, the mind stuff is denser in the void. There it has more strength.

  My defense against the mind stuff was formulated almost accidentally. I remembered the sequence of Jane's tiger. She saw it, entered my cabin, realized its significance, and fainted. I looked into the companionway and saw the tiger fading.

  So I knocked out Murdo for final proof and got it. As soon as he lapsed into unconsciousness the recreations from his mind turned back into sparkling fog. Obviously, and a heaven-sent phenomenon it is--the mind stuff immediately loses its subject-image when the mind from which it came goes unconscious. The mind-stuff has no memory of its own and cannot hold its recreated image in the evolved form under conditions of unconsciousness. The answer now becomes simple.

  I drugged Murdo before he regained consciousness. I drugged the other three by means of whisky and food. They have been unconscious for twelve hours. Nothing has happened. I shall keep them that way.

  The mind-stuff is trying to complain to me. Almost petulantly; as a child. I sense it sharply. It does not understand the wrong it has done and feels it has been deprived of its right.

  I have no time for the mind-stuff. I guard myself against it and ignore it. There are other things on my mind. Shall I go back if we ever escape from the sparkling fog? I don't know. I don't want to go back. I want to go on and on forever just like this. But the others cannot go on like this. It would be murder. I don't know.--I don't know.

  I must keep awake. I use drugs. I must not sleep--not sleep.

  We have cleared the fog. The instruments are working again. Again the stars glow. What shall I do. Melody....

  * * * * *

  Kennedy looked up from his reading. "As I said,"--and he spoke severely--"you break off at an abrupt point. You did not complete the log."

  Holloway's red eyes were glazed. "I had other things to do. I was tired of keeping a log."

  Mason sought to draw Kennedy off his quarry. "There's an odd point," he said, looking at Holloway. "Only animals were recreated. Do you think the mind stuff was capable only of recreating animals?"

  Holloway spoke in an exhausted monotone. "It took the clearest image from the strongest minds. Murdo thought mainly of hunting. He pondered on his more spectacular kills. Thus the mind-stuff used his images."

  "I see."

  Holloway seemed to sag--to shrink. He said, "The mind-stuff could recreate anything. It brought Melody back to me."

  Kennedy sprang to his feet. "There is no reference in this log to--"

  Mason turned on him. "Shut up, you fool!" He laid a gentle hand on Holloway's shoulder. "Tell us about it, old chap."

  Holloway turned his burning eyes on the closed door to the next room. "She's in there. I wanted to get rid of you. I was afraid you would take her away from me. But it's no use. I can't hold my consciousness much longer. Then she will vanish."

  Holloway tried weakly to rise from his chair. He called, "Melody--Melody baby!"

  The door opened. A beautiful girl in a blue dressing gown came gracefully into the room. She walked straight to Holloway and took his tortured head into her soft hands. Her eyes pleaded with the men. "He suffers so. He will not sleep. I can't make him sleep. I--I don't understand."

  Holloway's head dropped suddenly onto his chest. He slumped down in his chair. And as he did so, a change took place. The two men stood rooted, staring.

  As Melody began to fade. Slowly, slowly, into a transparent image, into a mist, into a handful of sparkling fog.

  Then she was gone.

  Mason knelt by the bone-thin body in the chair. He made a quick examination and got wearily to his feet.

  "Holloway is dead," he murmured. "Drugs of that nature would kill an elephant. I can't understand how he lived so long."

  Kennedy blinked and seemed to come out of a trance. He frowned. "And the investigation hardly started."

  Mason shook his head and looked pityingly at Kennedy. It was just no use with a man like him. Mason said. "There's one point entirely apparent without an investigation."

  "What's that?"

  Mason's voice was sharp and cold. "That our little playboy, for all his reputation of frivolity, was a better man than you and I put together. Does that register, Mr. Kennedy?"

  Kennedy flared. "Now see here. I'm only doing my job!"

  "Oh shut up," Mason said.

  And strode out of the room.

  * * *

  Contents

  RASTIGNAC THE DEVIL

  By Philip José Farmer

  Enslaved by a triangular powered despotism--one lone man sets his sights to the Six Bright Stars and eventual freedom of his world.

  After the Apocalyptic War, the decimated remnants of the French huddled in the Loire Valley were gradually squeezed between two new and growing nations. The Colossus to the north was unfriendly and obviously intended to absorb the little New France. The Colossus to the south was friendly and offered to take the weak state into its confederation of republics as a full partner.

  A number of proud and independent French citizens feared that even the latter alternative meant the eventual transmutation of their tongue, religion and nationality into those of their southern neighbor. Seeking a way of salvation, they built six huge space-ships that would hold thirty thousand people, most of whom would be in deep freeze until they reached their destination.
The six vessels then set off into interstellar space to find a planet that would be as much like Earth as possible.

  That was in the 22nd Century. Over three hundred and fifty years passed before Earth heard of them again. However, we are not here concerned with the home world but with the story of a man of that pioneer group who wanted to leave the New Gaul and sail again to the stars....

  * * * * *

  Rastignac had no Skin. He was, nevertheless, happier than he had been since the age of five.

  He was as happy as a man can be who lives deep under the ground. Underground organizations are often under the ground. They are formed into cells. Cell Number One usually contains the leader of the underground.

  Jean-Jacques Rastignac, chief of the Legal Underground of the Kingdom of L'Bawpfey, was literally in a cell beneath the surface of the earth. He was in jail.

  For a dungeon, it wasn't bad. He had two cells. One was deep inside the building proper, built into the wall so that he could sit in it when he wanted to retreat from the sun or the rain. The adjoining cell was at the bottom of a well whose top was covered with a grille of thin steel bars. Here he spent most of his waking hours. Forced to look upwards if he wanted to see the sky or the stars, Rastignac suffered from a chronic stiff neck.

  Several times during the day he had visitors. They were allowed to bend over the grille and talk down to him. A guard, one of the King's mucketeers,[1] stood by as a censor.

  [Footnote 1: Mucketeer is the best translation of the 26th century French noun foutriquet, pronounced vfeutwikey.]

  When night came, Rastignac ate the meal let down by ropes on a platform. Then another of the King's mucketeers stood by with drawn épée until he had finished eating. When the tray was pulled back up and the grille lowered and locked, the mucketeer marched off with the turnkey.

  Rastignac sharpened his wit by calling a few choice insults to the night guard, then went into the cell inside the wall and lay down to take a nap. Later, he would rise and pace back and forth like a caged tiger. Now and then he would stop and look upwards, scan the stars, hunch his shoulders and resume his savage circuit of the cell. But the time would come when he would stand statue-still. Nothing moved except his head, which turned slowly.

  "Some day I'll ride to the stars with you."

  He said it as he watched the Six Flying Stars speed across the night sky--six glowing stars that moved in a direction opposite to the march of the other stars. Bright as Sirius seen from Earth, strung out one behind the other like jewels on a velvet string, they hurtled across the heavens.

  They were the six ships on which the original Loire Valley Frenchmen had sailed out into space, seeking a home on a new planet. They had been put into an orbit around New Gaul and left there while their thirty thousand passengers had descended to the surface in chemical-fuel rockets. Mankind, once on the fair and fresh earth of the new planet, had never again ascended to re-visit the great ships.

  For three hundred years the six ships had circled the planet known as New Gaul, nightly beacons and glowing reminders to Man that he was a stranger on this planet.

  When the Earthmen landed on the new planet they had called the new land Le Beau Pays, or, as it was now pronounced, L'Bawpfey--The Beautiful Country. They had been delighted, entranced with the fresh new land. After the burned, war-racked Earth they had just left, it was like coming to Heaven.

  They found two intelligent species living on the planet, and they found that the species lived in peace and that they had no conception of war or of poverty. And they were quite willing to receive the Terrans into their society.

  Provided, that is, they became integrated, or--as they phrased it--natural. The Frenchmen from Earth had been given their choice. They were told:

  "You can live with the people of the Beautiful Land on our terms--war with us, or leave to seek another planet."

  The Terrans conferred. Half of them decided to stay; the other half decided to remain only long enough to mine uranium and other chemicals. Then they would voyage onwards.

  But nobody from that group of Earthmen ever again stepped into the ferry-rockets and soared up to the six ion-beam ships circling about Le Beau Pays. All succumbed to the Philosophy of the Natural. Within a few generations a stranger landing upon the planet would not have known without previous information that the Terrans were not aboriginal.

  He would have found three species. Two were warm-blooded egglayers who had evolved directly from reptiles without becoming mammals--the Ssassarors and the Amphibs. Somewhere in their dim past--like all happy nations, they had no history--they had set up their society and been very satisfied with it since.

  It was a peaceful quiet world, largely peasant, where nobody had to scratch for a living and where a superb manipulation of biological forces ensured very long lives, no disease, and a social lubrication that left little to desire--from their viewpoint, anyway.

  The government was, nominally, a monarchy. The Kings were elected by the people and were a different species than the group each ruled. Ssassaror ruled Human, and vice versa, each assisted by foster-brothers and sisters of the race over which they reigned. These were the so-called Dukes and Duchesses.

  The Chamber of Deputies--L'Syawp t' Tapfuti--was half Human and half Ssassaror. The so-called Kings took turns presiding over the Chamber for forty day intervals. The Deputies were elected for ten-year terms by constituents who could not be deceived about their representatives' purposes because of the sensitive Skins which allowed them to determine their true feelings and worth.

  In one custom alone did the ex-Terrans differ from their neighbors. This was in carrying arms. In the beginning, the Ssassaror had allowed the Men to wear their short rapiers, so they would feel safe even though in the midst of aliens.

  As time went on, only the King's mucketeers--and members of the official underground--were allowed to carry épées. These men, it might be noticed, were the congenital adventurers, men who needed to swashbuckle and revel in the name of individualist.

  Like the egg-stealers, they needed an institution in which they could work off anti-social steam.

  From the beginning the Amphibians had been a little separate from the Ssassaror and when the Earthmen came they did not get any more neighborly. Nevertheless, they preserved excellent relations and they, too, participated in the Changeling-custom.

  This Changeling-custom was another social device set up millennia ago to keep a mutual understanding between all species on the planet. It was a peculiar institution, one that the Earthmen had found hard to understand and ever more difficult to adopt. Nevertheless, once the Skins had been accepted they had changed their attitude, forgot their speculations about its origin and threw themselves into the custom of stealing babies--or eggs--from another race and raising the children as their own.

  You rob my cradle; I'll rob yours. Such was their motto, and it worked.

  A Guild of Egg Stealers was formed. The Human branch of it guaranteed, for a price, to bring you a Ssassaror child to replace the one that had been stolen from you. Or, if you lived on the sea-shore, and an Amphibian had crept into your nursery and taken your baby--always under two years old, according to the rules--then the Guildsman would bring you an Amphib or, perhaps, the child of a Human Changeling reared by the Seafolk.

  You raised it and loved it as your own. How could you help loving it?

  Your Skin told you that it was small and helpless and needed you and was, despite appearances, as Human as any of your babies. Nor did you need to worry about the one that had been abducted. It was getting just as good care as you were giving this one.

  It had never occurred to anyone to quit the stealing and voluntary exchange of babies. Perhaps that was because it would strain even the loving nature of the Skin-wearers to give away their own flesh and blood. But once the transfer had taken place, they could adapt.

  Or perhaps the custom was kept because tradition is stronger than law in a peasant-monarchy society and also because egg-and-baby st
ealing gave the more naturally aggressive and daring citizens a chance to work off anti-social behavior.

  Nobody but a historian would have known, and there were no historians in The Beautiful Land.

  Long ago the Ssassaror had discovered that if they lived meatless, they had a much easier time curbing their belligerency, obeying the Skins and remaining cooperative. So they induced the Earthmen to put a taboo on eating flesh. The only drawback to the meatless diet was that both Ssassaror and Man became as stunted in stature as they did in aggressiveness, the former so much so that they barely came to the chins of the Humans. These, in turn, would have seemed short to a Western European.

  But Rastignac, an Earthman, and his good friend, Mapfarity, the Ssassaror Giant, became taboo-breakers when they were children and played together on the beach where they first ate seafood out of curiosity, then continued because they liked it. And due to their protein diet the Terran had grown well over six feet in height and the Ssassaror seemed to have touched off a rocket of expansion in his body with his protein-eating. Those Ssassarors who shared his guilt--became meat-eaters--became ostracized and eventually moved off to live by themselves. They were called Ssassaror-Giants and were pointed to as an object lesson to the young of the normal Ssassarors and Humans on the land.

  * * * * *

  If a stranger had landed shortly before Rastignac was born, however, he would have noticed that all was not as serene as it was supposed to be among the different species. The cause for the flaw in the former Eden might have puzzled him if he had not known the previous history of L'Bawfey and the fact that the situation had not changed for the worst until the introduction of Human Changelings among the Amphibians.

  Then it had been that blood-drinking began among them, that Amphibians began seducing Humans to come live with them by their tales of easy immortality, and that they started the system of leaving savage little carnivores in the Human nurseries.