Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  STANDARD REWARD PLUS BONUS FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE ARREST OF THIS MAN

  The Guesser looked at the picture that accompanied the notice. It was an old one, taken nearly fifteen years before. It didn't look much like him any more. But that didn't matter; even if he was never caught, he still had no place to go. A runaway had almost no chance of remaining a runaway for long. How would he eat? Where would he live?

  He looked up from the sheet, into the woman's face. She looked back with a flat, unwavering gaze. He knew now why she had been addressing him as an equal, even though she knew he was Class Three.

  "Why haven't you tried to collect the reward?" he asked. He felt suddenly weak, and sat down again on the edge of the bed.

  "Me, I need you." Then her eyes widened a trifle. "Pale you look, you do. I get you something solid inside you. Nothing but soup I get down you so far, all three days. Soup. You sit, I be back."

  He nodded. He was feeling sickish.

  She went into the other room, leaving the door open, and he could hear noises from the small kitchen. The woman began to talk, raising her voice a little so he could hear her.

  "You like eggs?" she asked.

  "Some kinds," said The Guesser. "But it doesn't matter. I'm hungry." He hadn't realized how hungry he was.

  "Some kinds?" The woman's voice was puzzled. "They more than one kind of egg?" The kitchen was suddenly silent as she waited intently for the answer.

  "Yes," said The Guesser. "On other planets. What kind of eggs are these?"

  "Just ... just eggs."

  "I mean, what kind of animal do they come from?"

  "Chicken. What else lay eggs?"

  "Other birds." He wished vaguely that he knew more about the fauna of Viornis. Chickens were well-nigh universal; they could live off almost anything. But other fowl fared pretty well, too. He shrugged it off; none of his business; leave that to the ecologists.

  "Birds?" the woman asked. It was an unfamiliar word to her.

  "Different kinds of chickens," he said tiredly. "Some bigger, some smaller, some different colors." He hoped the answer would satisfy her.

  Evidently it did. She said, "Oh," and went on with what she was doing.

  The silence, after only a minute or two, became unbearable. The Guesser had wanted to yell at the woman to shut up, to leave him alone and not bother him with her ignorant questions that he could not answer because she was inherently too stupid to understand. He had wondered why he hadn't yelled; surely it was not incumbent on a Three to answer the questions of a Six.

  But he had answered, and after she stopped talking, he began to know why. He wanted to talk and to be talked to. Anything to fill up the void in his mind; anything to take the place of a world that had suddenly vanished.

  What would he be doing now, if this had not happened? Involuntarily, he glanced at his wrist, but the chronometer was gone.

  He would have awakened, as always, at precisely 0600 ship time. He would have dressed, and at 0630 he would have been at table, eating his meal in silence with the others of his class. At 0640, the meal would be over, and conversation would be allowed until 0645. Then, the inspection of the fire control system from 0650 until 0750. Then--

  He forced his mind away from it, tried not to think of the pleasant, regular orderly routine by which he had lived his life for a quarter of a century and more.

  When the woman's voice came again, it was a relief.

  "What's a Guesser?"

  He told her as best he could, trying to couch his explanation in terms that would be understood by a woman of her limited vocabulary and intelligence. He was not too sure he succeeded, but it was a relief to talk about it. He could almost feel himself dropping into the routine that he used in the orientation courses for young Guessers who had been assigned to him for protection and instruction.

  "Accurate predicting of this type is not capable of being taught to all men; unless a man has within him the innate ability to be a Guesser, he is as incapable of learning Guessing as a blind man is incapable of being taught to read." (It occurred to him at that moment to wonder how the Class Six woman had managed to read the Breach of Contract notice. He would have to ask her later.) "On the other hand, just as the mere possession of functioning eyes does not automatically give one the ability to read, neither does the genetic inheritance of Guesser potentialities enable one to make accurate, useful Guesses. To make this potentiality into an ability requires years of hard work and practice.

  "You must learn to concentrate, to focus your every attention on the job at hand, to--"

  He broke off suddenly. The woman was standing in the doorway, holding a plate and a steaming mug. Her eyes were wide with puzzlement and astonishment. "You mean me?"

  "No ... no." He shook his head. "I ... was thinking of something else."

  She came on in, carrying the food. "You got tears in your eyes. You hurt?"

  He wanted to say yes. He wanted to tell her how he was hurt and why. But the words wouldn't--or couldn't--come. "No," he said. "My eyes are just a little blurry, that's all. From sleep."

  She nodded, accepting his statements. "Here. You eat you this. Put some stuffing in you belly."

  He ate, not caring what the food tasted like. He didn't speak, and neither did she, for which he was thankful. Conversation during a meal would have been both meaningless and painful to him.

  It was odd to think that, in a way, a Class Six had more freedom than he did. Presumably, she could talk, if she wanted, even during a meal.

  And he was glad that she had not tried to eat at the same time. To have his food cooked and served by a Six didn't bother him, nor was he bothered by her hovering nearby. But if she had sat down with him to eat--

  But she hadn't, so he dropped the thought from his mind.

  Afterwards, he felt much better. He actually hadn't realized how hungry he had been.

  She took the dishes out and returned almost immediately.

  "You thought what you going to do?" she asked.

  He shook his head. He hadn't thought. He hadn't even wanted to think. It was as though, somewhere in the back of his mind, something kept whispering that this was all nothing but a very bad dream and that he'd wake up in his cubicle aboard the Naipor at any moment. Intellectually, he knew it wasn't true, but his emotional needs, coupled with wishful thinking, had hamstrung his intellect.

  However, he knew he couldn't stay here. The thought of living in a Class Six environment all the rest of his life was utterly repellent to him. And there was nowhere else he could go, either. Even though he had not been tried as yet, he had effectively been Declassified.

  "I suppose I'll just give myself over to the Corporation," he said. "I'll tell them I was waylaid--maybe they'll believe it."

  "Maybe? Just only maybe?"

  He shrugged a little. "I don't know. I've never been in trouble like this before. I just don't know."

  "What they going to do to you, you give up to them?"

  "I don't know that, either."

  Her eyes suddenly looked far off. "Me, I got an idea. Maybe get both of us some place."

  He looked at her quickly. "What do you mean?"

  Her gaze came back from the distance, and her eyes focused squarely on his. "The Misfits," she said in her flat voice. "We could go to the Misfits."

  III

  The Guesser had been fighting the Misfits for twenty years, and hating them for as long as he could remember. The idea that he could ever become one of them had simply never occurred to him. Even the idea of going to one of the Misfit Worlds was so alien that the very suggestion of it was shocking to his mind.

  And yet, the suggestion that the Sixer woman had made did require a little thinking over before he accepted or rejected it.

  The Misfits. What did he really know about them, anyway?

  They didn't call themselves Misfits, of course; that was a derogatory name used by the Aristarchy. But the Guesser couldn't remember off hand just what they did call themselve
s. Their form of government was a near-anarchic form of ochlocracy, he knew--mob rule of some sort, as might be expected among such people. They were the outgrowth of an ancient policy that had been used centuries ago for populating the planets of the galaxy.

  There are some people who simply do not, will not, and can not fit in with any kind of social organization--except the very flimsiest, perhaps. Depending on the society in which they exist and the extent of their own antisocial activities, they have been called, over the centuries, everything from "criminals" to "pioneers." It was a matter of whether they fought the unwelcome control of the society in power or fled from it.

  The Guesser's knowledge of history was close to nonexistent, but he had heard that the expansion to the stars from Earth--a planet he had never been within a thousand parsecs of--had been accomplished by the expedient of combining volunteers with condemned criminals and shipping them off to newly-found Earth-type planets. After a generation had passed, others came in--the civilizing types--and settled the planets, making them part of the Aristarchy proper.

  (Or was the Aristarchy that old? The Guesser had a feeling that the government at that time had been of a different sort, but he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was. Perhaps it had been the prototype of the Aristarchy, for certainly the present system of society had existed for four or five centuries--perhaps more. The Guesser realized that his knowledge of ancient history was as confused as anyone's; after all, it wasn't his specialty. He remembered that when he was a boy, he'd heard a Teacher Exec talk about the Geological Ages of Earth and the Teacher had said that "cave men were not contemporary with the dinosaur." He hadn't known what it meant at the time, since he wasn't supposed to be listening, anyway, to an Exec class, but he had realized that the histories of times past often became mixed up with each other.)

  At any rate, the process had gone along smoothly, even as the present process of using Class Sevens and Declassified citizens did. But in the early days there had not been the organization that existed in the prescent Aristarchy; planets had become lost for generations at a time. (The Guesser vaguely remembered that there had been wars of some kind during that time, and that the wars had contributed to those losses.) Some planets had civilized themselves without the intervention of the Earth government, and, when the Earth government had come along, they had fought integration with everything they could summon to help them.

  Most of the recalcitrant planets had eventually been subdued, but there were still many "hidden planets" which were organized as separate governments under a loose confederation. These were the Misfits.

  Because of the numerical superiority of the Aristarchy, and because it operated in the open instead of skulking in the darkness of space, the Misfits knew where Aristarchy planets were located, while the Aristarchy was unable to search out every planet in the multimyriads of star systems that formed the galaxy.

  Thus the Misfits had become pirates, preying on the merchantships of the Aristarchy. Why? No one knew. (Or, at least, The Guesser corrected himself, he didn't know.) Such a non-sane culture would have non-sane reasons.

  The Aristarchy occupied nearly all the planets of the galaxy that could be inhabited by Man; that much The Guesser had been told. Just why Earth-type planets should occur only within five thousand light-years of the Galactic Center was a mystery to him, but, then, he was no astrophysicist.

  But the Sixer woman said she had heard that the Aristarchy was holding back facts; that there were planets clear out to the Periphery, all occupied by Misfits; that the legendary Earth was one of those planets; that--

  A thousand things. All wrong, as The Guesser knew. But she was firmly convinced that if anyone could get to a Misfit planet, they would be welcomed. There were no Classes among the Misfits, she said. (The Guesser dismissed that completely; a Classless society was ridiculous on the face of it.)

  The Guesser had asked the woman why--if her statements were true--the Misfits had not conquered the Aristarchy long ago. After all, if they held the galaxy clear out to the Periphery, they had the Aristarchy surrounded, didn't they?

  She had had no answer.

  And it had only been later that The Guesser realized that he had an answer. Indeed, that he himself, was a small, but significant part of that answer.

  The Misfits had no Guessers. That was a fact that The Guesser knew from personal experience. He had been in space battles with Misfit fleets, and he had brought the Naipor through those battles unscathed while wreaking havoc and destruction among the massed ships of the Misfits. They had no Guessers. (Or no trained Guessers, he amended. The potential might be there, but certainly the actuality was not.)

  And it occurred to him that the Misfits might have another kind of trained talent. They seemed to be able to search out and find a single Aristarchy ship, while it was impossible to even detect a Misfit fleet until it came within attacking distance. Well, that, again, was not his business.

  * * * * *

  But none of these considerations were important in the long run; none of them were more than minor. The thing that made up The Guesser's mind, that spurred him into action, was the woman's admission that she had a plan for actually reaching Misfit planets.

  It was quite simple, really; they were to be taken prisoners.

  "They spaceships got no people inside, see you," she said, just as though she knew what she were talking about. "They just want to catch our ships, not kill 'em. So they send out a bunch of little ships on they own, just to ... uh ... cripple our ships. It don't matter, they little ships get hit, because they no one in them, see you. They trying to get our ships in good shape, and people in them and stuff, that's all."

  "Yes, yes," The Guesser had said impatiently, "but what's that to do with us?"

  She waved a hand, as though she were a little flustered by his peremptory tone. She wasn't, after all, used to talking with Class Threes as equals, even though she knew that in this case the Three was helpless.

  "I tell you! I tell you!" She paused to reorganize her thoughts. "But I ask you: if we get on a ship, you can keep it from shooting the Misfit ships?"

  The Guesser saw what she was driving at. It didn't make much sense yet, but there was a glimmer of something there.

  "You mean," he said, "that you want to know whether it would be possible for me to partially disable the fire-control system of a spaceship enough to allow it to be captured by Misfit ships?"

  She nodded rapidly. "Yes ... I think, yes. Can you?"

  "Ye-e-es," The Guesser said, slowly and cautiously. "I could. But not by just walking in and doing it. I mean, it would be almost impossible to get aboard a ship in the first place, and without an official position I couldn't do anything anyway."

  But she didn't look disappointed. Instead, she'd smiled a little. "I get us on the ship," she said. "And you have official position. We do it."

  When she had gone on to explain, The Guesser's mind had boggled at her audacity--at first. And then he'd begun to see how it might be possible.

  For it was not until then that the woman had given The Guesser information which he hadn't thought to ask about before. The first was her name: Deyla. The second was her job.

  She was a cleaning woman in Executive territory.

  And, as she outlined her plan for reaching the Misfits, The Guesser began to feel despair slipping from his mind, to be replaced by hope.

  * * * * *

  The Guesser plodded solemnly along the street toward the tall, glittering building which was near the center of Executive territory, his feet moving carefully, his eyes focused firmly on the soft, textured surface of the pavement. He was clad in the rough gray of a Class Six laborer, and his manner was carefully tailored to match. As he was approached by Fours and Fives, he stepped carefully to one side, keeping his face blank, hiding the anger that seethed just beneath the surface.

  Around his arm was a golden brassard indicating that he was contracted to a Class One, and in his pocket was a carefully forged card in
dicating the same thing. No one noticed him; he was just another Sixer going to his menial job.

  The front of the building bore a large glowing plaque which said:

  VIORNIS EXPORT CORPORATION

  But the front entrance was no place for a Sixer. He went on past it, stepping aside regularly for citizens of higher class than his own assumed Six. He made his way around to the narrow alley that ran past the rear of the building.

  There was a Class Five guard armed with a heavy truncheon, standing by the door that led into the workers entrance. The Guesser, as he had been instructed by Deyla, had his card out as he neared the doorway. The guard hardly even glanced at it before wagging a finger indicating that The Guesser was to pass. He didn't bother to speak.

  The Guesser was trembling as he walked on in--partly in anger, partly in fear. It seemed ridiculous that one glance had not told the guard that he was not a Class Six. The Guesser was quite certain that he didn't look like a Sixer. But then, Fives were not very perceptive people, anyway.

  The Guesser went on walking into the complex corridors of the lower part of the building, following directions that had been given him by Deyla. There was no hesitation on his part; his memory for things like that was as near perfect as any record of the past can be. He knew her instructions well enough to have navigated the building in the dark.

  Again, The Guesser found himself vaguely perturbed by the relative freedom of Sixers. As long as they got their jobs done there was almost no checking as to how they spent their time. Well, actually, the jobs to which they were suited were rather trivial--some of them were actually "made work." After all, in a well-run society, it was axiomatic that everyone have basic job security; that's what kept everyone happy.

  Of course, there were plenty of Sixers working in construction and on farms who were kept on their toes by overseers, but cleaning jobs and such didn't need such supervision. A thing can only be so clean; there's no quota to fill and exceed.

  After several minutes of walking and climbing stairs--Sixers did not use lift chutes or drop chutes--he found the room where Deyla had told him to meet her. It was a small storeroom containing cleaning tools and supplies. She was waiting for him.