Astounding Science Fiction Stories Vol 1

by Anthology

  Doak coughed and walked out again onto the porch. The girl standing there was as dark as her mother but slim and long-legged and vividly beautiful.

  Mrs. Klein said, "My daughter Martha, Mr. Parker. You liked the room?"

  "It's fine," he said and to Martha, "How do you do?"

  "How do you do, Mr. Parker? You've had supper?"

  He nodded and lied, "In Milwaukee. I'm up here to try and get some money out of Senator Arnold. I wonder if this might be a good time to see him."

  Mrs. Klein said, "I doubt if anytime is a good time to see him. You're a salesman, Mr. Parker?"

  "No, no. It's philanthropy I'm concerned with. Mr. Arnold's old enough to start thinking about his benefactors."

  "He'll probably leave it all to the dogs," Mrs. Klein said. "And you be careful of them, Mr. Parker."

  "That I will," Doak said. "I think I'll walk up there now. Not much of a walk, I understand. Just over the hill, isn't it?"

  It was the girl who answered. "That's right. I'm going that way myself. I'll be glad to show you the house."

  Mrs. Klein said, "You're leaving so soon, Martha?"

  "Right now. I'll be home early. Don't fret about me, Mother."

  They went down the walk together, Doak and Martha, and he had forgotten June and the Department and all the girls who would be out, looking, tonight in Washington.

  She walked easily at his side, poised and quiet.

  He said, "Do you work in town?"

  She nodded. "For an attorney. I was going to law school myself until Dad died."

  "Oh," he said.

  He wondered at his lack of words, and the strange sense of--almost of inferiority glimmering in him. She hadn't said anything or done anything to place him at a disadvantage but he knew this was no lass for the casual pitch.

  They came to the crest of the hill and saw the dying sun low in the west. The quiet was almost absolute. About a hundred yards on the other side of the ridge was a road leading off to the south. On the right side of this road was the big house with the high stone fence.

  Doak said quietly, "There's a few sentences that have been bothering me all day. I wonder if you'd recognize them. They're, 'Studious, let me sit and hold high converse with the mighty dead.' One of the Scotch poets probably."

  "Thomson," she said, "from his Seasons." She looked straight ahead.

  "I'm not sure I understand exactly what he meant," Doak said.

  "He meant--reading." She turned to look at him. "This is Senator Arnold's house, Mr. Parker. You might ask him what Thomson meant."

  Her smile was brief and cool. She walked on.

  Behind the fence, the dogs started to bark. In the huge gatepost was a pair of paneled doors about three feet high, the lower edges about four feet from the ground. A sign read, Visitors, kindly use this phone.

  Doak opened the double doors and lifted the phone. As he did so a scanning light went on in the weatherproof niche. Someone said, "Yes?"

  "Officer Parker of Security. I believe I'm expected."

  "One moment, sir."

  Silence, except for the sniffing dogs. And then the sniffing stopped and he heard the pad of their feet, as they raced for the house and the voice in the phone said, "The gates will be open soon, Mr. Parker."

  They opened in less than a minute. At the far end of the gravel drive a turreted monstrosity loomed, a weathered wooden structure that had undoubtedly once been white.

  It was now as ashen as the face of Senator Arnold, bleak against the skyline, set back on a dandelion-covered lawn. Behind the wrought-iron fence, to the right of the house, the dogs watched him approach.

  They were German Boxers, formidable creatures and great slobberers. They drooled as he walked up to the low porch but uttered not a sound.

  The man who opened the door was fat and needed a shave. He wore a shiny, duraserge suit. "Follow me, please, Mr. Parker."

  III

  Doak followed him through a high musty living room into a small room off this. There was a small hynrane heater in here, and the room was stifling.

  Senator Arnold sat in a wheel chair, his feet elevated. He wore a greasy muffler around his thin neck and a heavy reefer buttoned all the way up.

  The fat man left, closing the door behind him. Arnold looked Doak over from head to feet and came back up. "It's about time. Your credentials?"

  Doak handed over his wallet. There was, he saw, no chair in the room. Evidently, he was supposed to stand through the interview.

  The old man handed the wallet back. "The place is right up that road to the south. First house, only house in sight."

  Doak put his wallet in his pocket. "Just what kind of business do you think is going on up there, Senator?"

  The old man seemed to spit the word. "Readers."

  Doak exhaled, saying nothing.

  "And maybe more," the old man said and his eyes were unholy. "Maybe--I wouldn't be surprised if they're--they're printing something up there." He coughed.

  Sweat poured off Doak as the glowing hynrane heater made an oven of the windowless room.

  The old man closed his eyes. "In my home town, the vermin, in my own town! They always laughed at me here but, by God, that was before the state saw fit to send me to the Senate. The last laugh's been mine. But now--right under my nose, you might say!" He opened his eyes and glared at Doak.

  "Subversive reading, you think?" Doak asked.

  The old man stared at him. "Is there another kind? I shouldn't have to ask that of a Security Officer. What kind of men is the Department hiring these days?"

  Doak thought of something to say and decided not to. He said, "I wondered about how dangerous they were. If I'd need additional men."

  "For readers? Young man, there must be some red blood in your veins. By God, if I was two years younger, I'd go along just for the joy of smashing them." He was trembling, leaning forward in his chair. "Go now, go and trap the filthy scum."

  Doak went. He left the hot and odorous room and went out through the cool and odorous room to the front hall and out the front door. There his nausea quieted a little under the sun-warmed air from the east.

  Behind the wrought-iron fence the dogs slobbered and watched, only their heads moving. As he went down the gravel drive to the heavy gate he was conscious of their stares and a coldness moved through him. The gates opened when he was twenty feet away.

  It was growing dark and the breeze seemed stronger. On the road to the south, the Range Road, the house identified as the old Fisher place revealed one light in a first-floor room. There were two cars in the yard.

  Doak turned back toward town but paused over the crest of the hill and sought cover. There was a small grove of hickory and oak to his left. He walked into their shelter until he was out of any passerby's range of vision.

  Readers wouldn't be any trouble. But printers? If the old mummy was right in his guess Doak could have more trouble than one man could handle.

  He put his back up against the rough bark of an oak tree and sat hugging his knees, waiting for the darkness. Studious let me sit.... Oh, yes.

  Printers--and what would they print? Had any poets been born since the Arnold Law, any writers? Was there some urge to write in a readerless world? In the Russian homes, he'd heard, under the machine gods, the old religion persisted, from parent to child, by word of mouth.

  But writers without an audience? An art that persisted without followers?

  That girl, that lovely poised girl-creature had been quick to identify Thomson and he wasn't one of the giants. If there were others with equally fertile memories, and they got together, it would be like a small--what was the word?--a small library.

  They could write or print or type the remembered offerings of all the readers and have a book. Or at least a pamphlet.

  It grew darker and he thought of June and wondered, if her memory were searched, just what would be dredged up. He'd bet it would be one word--no.

  And now it was dark enough and he rose and made
his way back over the hill, toward the Fisher place, following the field instead of the road, keeping to the tall grass, conscious of the crickets and the night breeze and the light in the first floor room of the Fisher place.

  There was another car in the drive now and he could see a few people in the room. He could see Martha and next to her an aged man with a beard like snow. He went past the window and around in back of the house.

  There was an unlatched rear door and he entered a dark rear hall and put on his infra-scope. Now he could see the three steps leading to an open door and he went up the steps to the kitchen. There he could hear their voices.

  Martha was talking. "As Dan has told you there's nothing to fear from an injection of lucidate. It's a perfectly harmless drug with no serious aftereffects that promotes total recall. Total recall is what we need unless we get a much larger group of donors than we have presently.

  "Readers are no problem. We've had more requests for our magazine than we can fill. Our biggest problem, more important than getting memory donors, is to find someone who can contribute significant original work. For that kind of man we're still searching. Or woman."

  Doak moved quietly, very slowly, past the kitchen sink and along the short hall that led to the dining room. There was a swinging door here, closed, but the upper half was glass and he could see through the dining room into the lighted living room. He took off the infra-scope glasses.

  Nine people were in the room, seven men and two women. The men ranged in age from about twenty-three to the old gent with the beard, who seemed ageless. The other woman was a gray-haired lady of about fifty with fine features and a rich contralto voice.

  She was saying, "I'd like to be the first to go under the lucidate."

  Next to a maple fireman's chair a man who looked about forty nodded and the woman came forward to sit in the chair. He had a hypodermic in his hand and she extended her arm.

  On the far side of the room Martha was wheeling up a small recording machine.

  Now the woman's eyes were closed and the others sat back, watching her. The contralto voice was clear and resonant.

  "'... 'tis but thy name that is my enemy Thou art thyself though, not a Montague. What's Montague? It is nor hand nor foot, Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part Belonging to a man. O, be some other name! What's in a name? that which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet...'"

  The rich voice, the flowing rhythm, the silence--was it Burns she quoted? No--he knew all of Burns--but this was some giant of the past; this was almost up to vintage Burns.

  He left his vantage point and went quietly back to the kitchen, donning his infra-scope once more. In some of these old houses there was a back steps, leading to the second floor.

  Another door leading off the kitchen, another hall--and the steps.

  They would undoubtedly creak. But they might not creak loudly enough to disturb that circle of mesmerized individuals listening to the contralto magic.

  There was only one small creak, halfway up.

  Three rooms led off a narrow hall. One held a cot and a dresser and a straight-backed chair. The second room he entered had a strange smell. A smell he didn't recognize. Ink? Was that a mimeograph machine? Something stirred in his memory, some picture he had seen of a duplicating machine somewhere. This other dingus was undoubtedly a typewriter--and this small gadget on the desk a stapler.

  And here, on a small pine table, was a sheaf of four mimeographed pages, stapled together.

  The heading read, The Heritage Herald.

  That was the name of their magazine. Printers, under the technical interpretation of the law. A typewriter and a duplicating machine and stencils and ink--and words.

  Shakespeare, whoever he was, and Robert W. Service and Milton and an original by S. Crittington Jones.

  The original was a short-short tale about a wrestler and a cowboy and a video comedian, a space-farce. There was a piece headed Editorial by Martha Klein. It had a sub-heading--For Those Who Are Willing To Fight.

  It was a stirring and vigorous call to arms against the Arnold Law. It was as subversive as anything Doak had seen in his Department career.

  He folded the magazine, and put it into an upper jacket pocket. He went to the third room and saw the paper stacked there and the bottles of ink and new stencils.

  He went back to the stairs, and quietly down them. From the living room, he heard--

  "'... From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs, That makes her loved at home, revered abroad; Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, An honest man's the noblest work of God!'"

  This was more like it, except for that last line the bard had borrowed. This was the true giant, and who was quoting him? It was not the contralto voice. Who?

  He moved out to the kitchen and back to his vantage point. He took off the infra-scope and looked into the living room. It was the old gent, with the beard. And who else could it be? For wasn't he the cream of the lot, the most obvious scholar, the most evident gentleman? Scholarship and breeding seemed to flow from every hair in his beard.

  "O Scotia! my dear, my native soil! From whom my warmest wish to heaven is sent, Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil Be blessed with health and peace and sweet content! And, O, may heaven their--"

  Doak felt a stirring in him and tears moved down his cheeks and he turned, quickly and silently, and went out the back door. He was no child at his mother's knee, he was no mewling kitten--he was a Security Officer and this was subversion.

  Outside the stars were bright in a black sky. He stood in the back yard, breathing heavily, ashamed at the sudden surge of feeling that had moved through him. Some streak of adolescence, he thought, stirred by the words he had remembered from his mother's lips.

  He walked slowly back toward town. He could call in local help and round up the gang back there in the house. He could wash this up tonight and be back in Washington tomorrow morning. With June.

  The prospect of being with June had lost its flavor somehow. And if this was a widely published magazine, he had a larger duty than merely apprehending the gang. All of the magazine's readers were breaking the law and a real operative comes in with a complete, clean case.

  Mrs. Klein still sat on her front porch. "Any luck?" she asked, as he came up to sit on the glider near her chair.

  "Some. I'll see him again tomorrow."

  Her voice was dry. "One of our most prominent citizens, the Senator. The other's Glen Ryder. I guess you know who he is."

  He stiffened, trying to see her face in the dark. "Ryder? Oh, yes, in the Security Department."

  "That's right. Glen isn't anything to be ashamed of really. But that Senator Arnold--my, the stories my mother told me about him!"

  "I've heard," Doak said, "he was pretty wild as a young man."

  "Wild?" Mrs. Klein sniffed. "Degraded would be a better word. If his father didn't have all the money in the county he'd have gone to jail more than once, that man. And then the people of this state sending him to the Senate."

  Doak said nothing, staring out at the quiet night.

  "Would you like a little snack?" Mrs. Klein asked. "I've some baked ham and rolls out in the kitchen."

  "No thanks," Doak said. "I'm not very hungry. Was Glen Ryder a friend of Senator Arnold's?"

  "Not until Glen went to work for the government. I don't think the Senator had any friends except those who could profit by it."

  "This Ryder was something of an--opportunist?"

  "If that means what it sounds like, I guess that would describe Glen. He wasn't one to overlook any opportunity to better himself and he cut it pretty thin at times."

  Doak looked over but could not see her face in the darkness. He said slowly, "I guess we all have to look out for ourselves and the devil take the hindmost."

  "I suppose," she said placidly. "Though it would depend on what you wanted out of life. Here in Dubbinville I think we're a little more neighborly than that."

  "It's a nice
town," Doak said. "A real nice town."

  In front a car was stopping on the other side of the road. Someone got out from the door on the far side and the car moved on.

  "That would be Martha, I guess," Mrs. Klein said. "She'll want some of that ham, I know. You may as well have a cup of coffee with us anyway."

  IV

  Doak had some coffee and some rolls and ham. And some talk with both of them in the bright comfortable kitchen. They talked about the ridiculous price of food in the city and how cool the house was after the heat of the day and what was it like on Venus?

  Neither of the women had ever been to Venus. Doak told them about the lakes, the virgin timber, the glareless warmth that came from the generative earth.

  And about the lack of communication facilities.

  "There isn't enough commerce to make any video installations worthwhile," he explained, "and the only information transmission is by amateur radio operators. But nobody seems to miss it. It's got enough vacation facilities without video."

  Martha looked at him evenly. "The--Arnold Law applies there, too, doesn't it?"

  Doak met her gaze. "Of course." And then, "Why do you ask?"

  She smiled. "I was thinking it would be a good place to curl up with a book." Her chin lifted. "Or establish a newspaper."

  He didn't answer. He took another roll and buttered it.

  Mrs. Klein said, "Martha's too young to know what a newspaper is--or a book. And so are you, Mr. Parker. I say we're not missing much."

  He grinned at her. "Bad, were they?"

  "There was a paper in Chicago so bad you'd think I was lying if I tried to describe it to you. And all the books seemed to be concerned with four-letter words."

  He carefully put a piece of ham between the broken halves of the roll. "Even Bobbie Burns? From what my mother told me he was quite a lad."

  "He was dead before your mother was born," Mrs. Klein said. "All the good ones were, all the ones who tried to entertain instead of shock or corrupt."

  Martha said lightly, "Mama's an admirer of Senator Arnold, the way it sounds."

  "I'll thank you not to mention his name while I'm eating," Mrs. Klein said acidly. "And I'm not forgetting why he hated the printed word. But that's looking a gift horse in the mouth."