The Journey of Joenes

by Robert Sheckley

  “Seeing that the situation showed signs of seriousness,” Oruthi said, “we called in reserves. These came to no less than twenty Russian armies. With these we gloriously slaughtered an uncountable number of rebels, and pushed the rest back completely across Sinkiang into Szechuan.”

  “We thought that took care of the matter,” Marshal Trigask said. “We were marching to Peking to exchange views with the Chinese People’s Government when the rebels suddenly renewed the attack. Their force now numbered some fifty million men. Luckily, not all of these were armed.”

  “Even the gold of the West has its limits,” Oruthi said.

  “We received another note from Peiping,” Marshal Trigask said. “In translation, this one told us to leave the territory of China immediately, and to cease our warlike assaults against the defensive elements of the Chinese People’s Army.”

  “We think that’s what the note meant,” Oruthi said. “But with fiendish cleverness, they had constructed their message so that, when read upside down, it became a poem which went: ‘How beautiful is the mountain/ floating in the river/ past my garden.’ ”

  “Most ironic,” Marshal Trigask said, “was the fact that, by the time we had deciphered their message, we had been pushed back many thousands of miles from the borders of China, all the way across high Asia to Stalingrad. There we made a stand, slaughtered millions, and were thrown back again to Kharkov, where we made a stand, and were once more thrown back to Kiev. Again we were forced back, making another stand outside of Warsaw. By this time we considered the situation to be serious. We gathered together volunteer armies from Eastern Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary, and Bulgaria. The Albanians treacherously joined the Greeks who, with the Yugoslavs, attacked us from the rear. We threw off the attack and concentrated our forces for the main effort to the east. This time we attacked the Chinese rebels with our full armies and reserves, along a seven-hundred-mile front. We rolled the rebel forces back the entire way they had come, and farther, all the way to Canton, which we devastated.”

  “There,” Oruthi continued, “the rebels threw in their last few million reserves, and we fell back to the border. After regrouping, we fought a series of border engagements for several months. At last, by mutual consent, we both withdrew.”

  “I still wanted to press the attack,” Marshal Trigask said. “But more cautious leaders pointed out that I had only a few thousand ragged men left with which to oppose the decimated but still determined rebels. This would not have stopped me; but my colleague Oruthi pointed out, most correctly, that it was now a purely internal matter for the Chinese. That ended the Yingdraw incident.”

  “We have been unable to contact Peking since that time,” Oruthi said. “But the pique of our great ally will pass.”

  “I must add only,” Trigask said, “that no one in the West knows the full extent of this incident, since neither we nor the Chinese told about it, and the few informers who did were not believed. You might, I suppose, wonder why we tell you the story in such detail?”

  “I was wondering that,” Joenes said.

  “We tell it because we know where your true sympathies lie, Comrade Jonski.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Joenes said.

  “Oh, we know,” Oruthi said. “We have our ways of finding things out. Not even the darkest machinations of the American Congress can be hidden from us. We know of the Communist speech you made in San Francisco, and of your subsequent inquisition by a Congressional committee. We saw how the American secret police followed you, since we followed them. And of course, the associates of Arnold and Ronald Black told us of the great services you had done for the cause, and of the cleverness with which you avoided all contacts with them. Finally, we observed how successful you were in re-establishing yourself in the government’s favor and in acquiring a key position. Therefore we say, welcome home, comrade!”

  “I am not a comrade,” Joenes answered. “And I am serving the American cause to the best of my ability.”

  “Well said,” Trigask said. “Who knows who may be listening, eh? You did right in keeping your cover, and I for one shall not bring the matter up again. We want you to keep that cover, Mister Joenes, because in that way you are most valuable to us.”

  “Correct,” Oruthi said. “The matter is closed. You will use your own judgment, Mister Joenes, as to what portion of the events of Yingdraw to tell. Word of apparent dissension with our allies might make your government more eager to negotiate, eh?”

  “Remember to tell them,” Trigask said, “that our missile arm is fully prepared, even though our conventional infantry forces may be somewhat reduced. We also have fully armed missile forces on the moon, Mars, and Venus. They are ready to rain down destruction whenever we give the word.”

  “Of course, giving the word is a little difficult,” Oruthi said. “Speaking only among ourselves, there are certain adverse conditions that our spacemen have found. On the moon, they live deep underground in order to avoid solar radiation, and are continually occupied in trying to manufacture food, water, and air. This state of affairs renders communication difficult.”

  “On Venus,” Slavski said, “the climate is so unbelievably humid that metal rusts with extreme rapidity, and plastic or vegetable products rot under one’s very nose. This is hard on radio equipment.”

  “On Mars,” Trigask said, “there are tiny, wormlike creatures of great malevolence. Although mindless, they eat their way into anything, even solid metal. Without unusual precautions, all of the equipment, to say nothing of the men themselves, can become honeycombed with these horrible creatures.”

  “I’m glad the Americans face the same problems,” Oruthi said. “They also have sent expeditionary forces to the moon, Mars, and Venus. But we got there first, and therefore the planets belong to us. But now, Joenes, we really must offer you some refreshment.”

  Joenes was fed with great quantities of yogurt and black bread, which was all that was available at the moment. Then they went with Joenes in his own jet to show him the fortifications.

  Soon Joenes could look down and see row upon row of cannon, minefields, barbed wire, machine guns, and pill-boxes, extending endlessly to the horizon, disguised as farms, villages, towns, troikas, droshkys, and the like. Joenes saw no people, however, and this reminded him of what he had heard earlier about the state of affairs in Western Europe.

  They returned to Moscow Airport and the Russians disembarked, wishing Joenes good fortune on his return to Washington.

  Just before he left, Comrade Slavski said to him, “Remember, my friend, that all men are brothers. Oh, you may laugh at such fine sentiments coming from a drunkard who cannot even be counted on to do his work properly. Nor would I blame you for laughing, no more than I blamed my chief, Rosskolenko, for clubbing me over the ear yesterday and saying that I would lose my job if I showed up drunk again. I do not blame Rosskolenko, I love that terrible man as a brother, even though I know that I will get drunk again, and that he will fire me. And what will happen then to my eldest daughter, Grustikaya, who patiently mends my shirt and does not curse me when I steal her savings for drink? I can see that you despise me, and I do not blame you. No man could be more despicable than I. You may abuse me, gentlemen, and yet I am an educated man, I have noble sentiments, a great future once lay before me. …”

  At this point Joenes’s jet took off, and Joenes was unable to hear the end of Slavski’s speech, if that speech had an end.

  It was only later that Joenes reviewed all he had seen and heard, and realized that there was no need for a war, nor even an excuse for fighting under present circumstances. The forces of chaos had overwhelmed the Soviets and Chinese, just as it had the West Europeans. But there was no reason now for that to happen in America.

  This message, with full details, Joenes sent ahead of him to Washington.

  XIII

  THE STORY OF THE WAR

  (As told by Teleu of Huahine)

  It is sad to relate that as
Joenes flew over California an automatic radar station identified his jet as an invader, and fired a number of air-to-air missiles at it. This tragic incident marked the opening phase of the great war.

  Mistakes of this kind have occurred throughout the history of warfare. But in twenty-first-century America, due to the great confidence and affection men had for their machines, and due also to the semi-autonomous nature of those machines, such a mistake was bound to have dire consequences.

  Joenes watched with horror and fascination as the missiles speeded towards his jet. Then he felt a violent lurch as the jet’s automatic pilot, sensing the danger, fired its own anti-missiles in defense.

  This attack brought other ground-based missile stations to the attack. Some of these stations were automatic and others were not, but all responded instantly to the emergency call. Joenes’s jet, in the meantime, had expended its entire armament.

  But it had not lost the guile its planners had built into it. It switched its radio to the missile-dispatching frequency and broadcast an alarm, declaring itself under attack and naming the airborne missiles as enemy targets to be destroyed.

  These tactics met with some success. A number of the older, more simple-minded missiles would not destroy a craft they considered their own. The newer, more sophisticated missiles, however, had been alerted to just such an attempt on the part of an enemy. Therefore they pressed the attack, while the older missiles fiercely defended the solitary jet.

  When the battle between the missiles was fully underway, Joenes’s jet glided away from the area. With the battle zone far behind, the jet streaked for its home airport in Washington, D.C.

  Upon arrival, Joenes was taken by elevator to the Service Command Post, seven hundred feet underground. Here he was questioned as to the nature of the assault upon him and the identity of the assailants. But all Joenes could say for certain was that he had been attacked by some missiles and defended by others.

  This was already known, so the officers questioned the automatic pilot of Joenes’s jet.

  For a time the automatic pilot gave evasive answers, since the proper security code had not been read to it. But after this was done, it stated that ground-based missiles had attacked it over California, and that some of these missiles were of a type it had never seen before.

  This and all other data concerning the battle were given to the War Probabilities Calculator, which quickly presented the following choices in order of apparent probability:

  1. The Communist Bloc had attacked California.

  2. The neutralist countries had attacked California.

  3. The members of the Western Alliance had attacked California.

  4. Invaders from outer space had attacked California.

  5. There was no attack upon California.

  The calculator also gave all possible combinations and permutations of these five possibilities, and ranked them as alternative sub-possibilities.

  Joenes’s earlier report on the state of affairs in Russia and China had also been received in Washington, but had not yet been processed and approved by the slow and methodical Human Factors and Reliability Assessment Calculator. This was a shame, since the War Probabilities Calculator could only use material that had been verified by other calculators.

  The attending officers found themselves bewildered by the many probabilities, sub-probabilities, possibilities and sub-possibilities they were given. They had hoped to choose the statement rated most probable, and to act upon it. But the War Probabilities Calculator rendered that impossible. As new data came in, the calculator revised and refined its probabilities, ranking and grouping them in ever-changing sequences. Reappraisal sheets marked most urgent spewed from the machine at the rate of ten a second, no two alike, to the annoyance of the attending officers.

  Still, the machine was only doing what an ideal intelligence officer would have done—taking into account all approved reports, weighing their meaning and their probability, making recommendations on the basis of all pertinent and verifiable information, and never holding to an opinion out of mere pride or stubbornness, but remaining always ready and willing to revise any judgment on the basis of new data.

  To be sure, the War Probabilities Calculator issued no orders; the issuing of orders was the glory and responsibility of men. Nor could the calculator be blamed for not presenting a unified, true, and consistent picture of the hostilities over California; it was impossible to give such a picture. The very nature of warfare in the twenty-first century had created this impossibility.

  No longer did a commander march at the head of his army and see before him the men of an opposing army, standing behind their own general, dressed in their own particular colors, flying battle flags, singing martial airs—all these things giving unmistakable sensory proof as to the existence, nature, and identity of the enemy. Those days were past, and warfare had moved in step with industrial civilization, becoming more complex and more mechanical, and receding further from the men who were in command. Over the years, the generals were forced to stay at greater and greater distances from the actual clash of arms, in order to maintain a sure communication with all the interlocking men and machines that a battle utilized.

  This had reached its epitome in Joenes’s time. So it is no wonder that the officers took the Calculator’s first five major possibilities, rated them equally, and brought them to General Voig, Commander of the Armed Forces, for him to render final decision.

  Voig, studying the five alternatives before him, was aware of the problems of modern warfare, and sadly recognized how dependent he was on information upon which to base a sound decision. He also knew that most of his information came to him from extremely expensive machines that sometimes could not tell the difference between a goose and a rocket; machines that required regiments of highly trained men to minister to them, repair them, improve them, and to soothe them in every way. And even with all this lavish attention, Voig knew that the machines could not really be trusted. The creations were no better than the creators, and indeed resembled them in many of the worst ways. Like men, the machines were frequently subject to something resembling emotional instability. Some became over-zealous, others had recurring hallucinations, functional and psychosomatic breakdowns, or even complete catatonic withdrawals. And aside from their own problems, the machines tended to be influenced by the emotional states of their human operators. In fact, the more suggestible machines were nothing more than extensions of their operators’ personalities.

  General Voig knew, of course, that no machine possessed a real consciousness, and therefore no machine really suffered from the diseases of consciousness. But they seemed to, and that was just as bad as the real thing.

  Men of the early industrial age had always assumed that machines would be cold, efficient, uncaring, and invariably correct. These romantics had been wrong, and General Voig knew that machines, despite their special senses and abilities, could not be trusted any more than men. So he sat and studied the five alternatives, thousands of miles from the battle, while dubious machines sent in their information, and hysterical men confirmed it.

  In spite of the problems, General Voig was a man who had been trained to make decisions. And now, after a last look at the five alternatives, and a rapid questioning of his own knowledge and opinions, Voig picked up a telephone and issued his orders.

  We do not know which of the five alternatives the General chose, or what his orders were. It made no difference. The battle had moved entirely out of the General’s hands, and he was powerless to press the attack or to order it stopped, or to have any important effect upon the hostilities. The fight had become uncontrollable, and his condition had been hastened because of the semi-autonomous nature of the machines.

  A wounded California missile screamed high into the heavens and crashed at Cape Canaveral in Florida, destroying half the base. The remaining half rallied and launched retaliatory missiles at an enemy apparently entrenched in California. Other missiles, damaged but not des
troyed, crashed in all parts of the country. Local commanders in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and many other states, struck back on their own authority, as did the automatic missile stations. Both men and machines had no lack of intelligence reports upon which to base this decision. In fact, before their communications were disrupted, they had received a deluge of reports covering every possibility. Being soldiers, they chose the most dire.

  Throughout California and all of Western America, this retaliation was retaliated against. Local commanders believed that the enemy, whoever he was, had established beachheads on America’s east coast. They sought to destroy these beachheads, not hesitating to use atomic warheads when they deemed it necessary.

  All of this took place with a terrible rapidity. The local commanders and their machines, subjected to a hellish rain of fire, tended to fight back as long as they could. Some may have waited for specific orders; but in the end all fought who could fight, compounding destruction and confusion, and spreading it to all corners of the world. And soon the civilization of proliferating machinery had vanished from the face of the earth.

  While this was taking place; Joenes stood bewildered in the Services Command Post, watching generals give orders and other generals countermand them. All of this Joenes saw, and still could not say of his own knowledge who or what the enemy was.

  At this point Command Post gave a vast shudder. Although situated many hundreds of feet underground, it had now come under attack by special burrowing machines.

  Joenes flung out a hand to keep his balance, and grasped the shoulder of a young first lieutenant. The lieutenant turned, and Joenes recognized him at once.

  “Lum!” he cried.

  “Hey, Joenesy!” Lum said in reply.

  “How did you get here?” Joenes asked. “And what are you doing in the Army as a lieutenant?”