Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume One

by Short Story Anthology

  "Yet you call it Earth?" the Ruler said.

  "I do," Korvin said, "for convenience."

  "Do you know its location?" the Ruler said.

  "Not with exactitude," Korvin said.

  There was a stir. "But you can find it again," the Ruler said.

  "I can," Korvin said.

  "And you will tell us about it?" the Ruler went on.

  "I will," Korvin said, "so far as I am able."

  "We will wish to know about weapons," the Ruler said, "and about plans and fortifications. But we must first know of the manner of decision on this planet. Is your planet joined with others in a government or does it exist alone?"

  Korvin nearly smiled. "Both," he said.

  A short silence was broken by one of the attendant experts. "We have theorized that an underling may be permitted to make some of his own decisions, leaving only the more extensive ones for the master. This seems to us inefficient and liable to error, yet it is a possible system. Is it the system you mean?"

  Very sharp, Korvin told himself grimly. "It is," he said.

  "Then the government which reigns over several planets is supreme," the Ruler said.

  "It is," Korvin said.

  "Who is it that governs?" the Ruler said.

  They key question had, at last, been asked. Korvin felt grateful that the logical Tr'en had determined to begin from the beginning, instead of going off after details of armament first; it saved a lot of time.

  "The answer to that question," Korvin said, "cannot be given to you."

  "Any question of fact has an answer," the Ruler snapped. "A paradox is not involved here; a government exists, and some being is the governor. Perhaps several beings share this task; perhaps machines do the work. But where there is a government, there is a governor. Is this agreed?"

  "Certainly," Korvin said. "It is completely obvious and true."

  "The planet from which you come is part of a system of planets which are governed, you have said," the Ruler went on.

  "True," Korvin said.

  "Then there is a governor for this system," the Ruler said.

  "True," Korvin said again.

  The ruler sighed gently. "Explain this governor to us," he said.

  Korvin shrugged. "The explanation cannot be given to you."

  The Ruler turned to a group of his experts and a short muttered conversation took place. At its end the Ruler turned his gaze back to Korvin. "Is the deficiency in you?" he said. "Are you in some way unable to describe this government?"

  "It can be described," Korvin said.

  "Then you will suffer unpleasant consequences if you describe it to us?" the Ruler went on.

  "I will not," Korvin said.

  It was the signal for another conference. With some satisfaction, Korvin noticed that the Tr'en were becoming slightly puzzled; they were no longer moving and speaking with calm assurance.

  The plan was taking hold.

  The Ruler had finished his conference. "You are attempting again to confuse us," he said.

  Korvin shook his head earnestly. "I am attempting," he said, "not to confuse you."

  "Then I ask for an answer," the Ruler said.

  "I request that I be allowed to ask a question," Korvin said.

  The Ruler hesitated, then nodded. "Ask it," he said. "We shall answer it if we see fit to do so."

  Korvin tried to look grateful. "Well, then," he said, "what is your government?"

  The Ruler beckoned to a heavy-set green being, who stepped forward from a knot of Tr'en, inclined his head in Korvin's direction, and began. "Our government is the only logical form of government," he said in a high, sweet tenor. "The Ruler orders all, and his subjects obey. In this way uniformity is gained, and this uniformity aids in the speed of possible action and in the weight of action. All Tr'en act instantly in the same manner. The Ruler is adopted by the previous Ruler; in this way we are assured of a common wisdom and a steady judgment."

  "You have heard our government defined," the Ruler said. "Now, you will define yours for us."

  Korvin shook his head. "If you insist," he said, "I'll try it. But you won't understand it."

  The Ruler frowned. "We shall understand," he said. "Begin. Who governs you?"

  "None," Korvin said.

  "But you are governed?"

  Korvin nodded. "Yes."

  "Then there is a governor," the Ruler insisted.

  "True," Korvin said. "But everyone is the governor."

  "Then there is no government," the Ruler said. "There is no single decision."

  "No," Korvin said equably, "there are many decisions binding on all."

  "Who makes them binding?" the Ruler asked. "Who forces you to accept these decisions? Some of them must be unfavorable to some beings?"

  "Many of them are unfavorable," Korvin said. "But we are not forced to accept them."

  "Do you act against your own interests?"

  Korvin shrugged. "Not knowingly," he said. The Ruler flashed a look at the technicians handling the lie-detector. Korvin turned to see their expression. They needed no words; the lie-detector was telling them, perfectly obviously, that he was speaking the truth. But the truth wasn't making any sense. "I told you you wouldn't understand it," he said.

  "It is a defect in your explanation," the Ruler almost snarled.

  "My explanation is as exact as it can be," he said.

  The Ruler breathed gustily. "Let us try something else," he said. "Everyone is the governor. Do you share a single mind? A racial mind has been theorized, though we have met with no examples--"

  "Neither have we," Korvin said. "We are all individuals, like yourselves."

  "But with no single ruler to form policy, to make decisions--"

  "We have no need of one," Korvin said calmly.

  "Ah," the Ruler said suddenly, as if he saw daylight ahead. "And why not?"

  "We call our form of government democracy," Korvin said. "It means the rule of the people. There is no need for another ruler."

  One of the experts piped up suddenly. "The beings themselves rule each other?" he said. "This is clearly impossible; for, no one being can have the force to compel acceptance of his commands. Without his force, there can be no effective rule."

  "That is our form of government," Korvin said.

  "You are lying," the expert said.

  One of the technicians chimed in: "The machine tells us--"

  "Then the machine is faulty," the expert said. "It will be corrected."

  Korvin wondered, as the technicians argued, how long they'd take studying the machine, before they realized it didn't have any defects to correct. He hoped it wasn't going to be too long; he could foresee another stretch of boredom coming. And, besides, he was getting homesick.

  It took three days--but boredom never really had a chance to set in. Korvin found himself the object of more attention than he had hoped for; one by one, the experts came to his cell, each with a different method of resolving the obvious contradictions in his statements.

  Some of them went away fuming. Others simply went away, puzzled.

  On the third day Korvin escaped.

  It wasn't very difficult; he hadn't thought it would be. Even the most logical of thinking beings has a subconscious as well as a conscious mind, and one of the ways of dealing with an insoluble problem is to make the problem disappear. There were only two ways of doing that, and killing the problem's main focus was a little more complicated. That couldn't be done by the subconscious mind; the conscious had to intervene somewhere. And it couldn't.

  Because that would mean recognizing, fully and consciously, that the problem was insoluble. And the Tr'en weren't capable of that sort of thinking.

  Korvin thanked his lucky stars that their genius had been restricted to the physical and mathematical. Any insight at all into the mental sciences would have given them the key to his existence, and his entire plan, within seconds.

  But, then, it was lack of that insight that had called for t
his particular plan. That, and the political structure of the Tr'en.

  The same lack of insight let the Tr'en subconscious work on his escape without any annoying distractions in the way of deep reflection. Someone left a door unlocked and a weapon nearby--all quite intent, Korvin was sure. Getting to the ship was a little more complicated, but presented no new problems; he was airborne, and then space-borne, inside of a few hours after leaving the cell.

  He set his course, relaxed, and cleared his mind. He had no psionic talents, but the men at Earth Central did; he couldn't receive messages, but he could send them. He sent one now.

  Mission accomplished; the Tr'en aren't about to come marauding out into space too soon. They've been given food for thought--nice indigestible food that's going to stick in their craws until they finally manage to digest it. But they can't digest it and stay what they are; you've got to be democratic, to some extent, to understand the idea. What keeps us obeying laws we ourselves make? What keeps us obeying laws that make things inconvenient for us? Sheer self-interest, of course--but try to make a Tr'en see it!

  With one government and one language, they just weren't equipped for translation. They were too efficient physically to try for the mental sciences at all. No mental sciences, no insight into my mind or their own--and that means no translation.

  But--damn it--I wish I were home already.

  I'm bored absolutely stiff!

  THE END

  Sight Gag, by Laurence Mark Janifer

  Intelligence is a great help in the evolution-by-survival--but intelligence without muscle is even less useful than muscle without brains. But it's so easy to forget that muscle--plain physical force--is important, too!

  Downstairs, the hotel register told Fredericks that Mr. John P. Jones was occupying Room 1014. But Fredericks didn't believe the register. He knew better than that. Wherever his man was, he wasn't in Room 1014. And whoever he was, his real name certainly wasn't John P. Jones. "P for Paul," Fredericks muttered to himself. "Oh, the helpful superman, the man who knows better, the man who does better."

  Fredericks had first known of him as FBI Operative 71-054P, under the name of William K. Brady. "And what does the K stand for?" Fredericks muttered, remembering. "Killer?" Brady wouldn't be the man's real name, either. FBI Operatives had as many names as they had jobs, that much was elementary. Particularly operatives like Jones-Brady-X. "Special talents," Fredericks muttered. "Psi powers," he said, making it sound like a curse. "Superman."

  Upstairs, in Room 1212, the superman sat in a comfortable chair and tried to relax. He wasn't a trained telepath but he could read surface thoughts if there were enough force behind them, and he could read the red thoughts of the man downstairs. They worried him more than he wanted to admit, and for a second he considered sending out a call for help. But that idea died before it had been truly born.

  Donegan had told him he could handle the situation. Without weapons, forbidden to run, faced by a man who wanted only his death, he could handle the situation.

  Sure he could, he thought bitterly.

  Of course, if he asked for reinforcements he would undoubtedly get them. The FBI didn't want one of its Psi Operatives killed; there weren't enough to go round as it was. But calling for help, when Donegan had specifically told him he wouldn't need it, would mean being sent back a grade automatically. A man of his rank and experience, Donegan had implied, could handle the job solo. If he couldn't--why, then, he didn't deserve the rank. It was all very simple.

  Unfortunately, he was still fresh out of good ideas.

  The notion of killing Fredericks--using his telekinetic powers to collapse the hotel room on the man, or some such, even if he wasn't allowed to bear arms--had occurred to him in a desperate second, and Donegan had turned it down very flatly. "Look," the Psi Section chief had told him, "you got the guy's brother and sent him up for trial. The jury found him guilty of murder, first degree, no recommendation for mercy. The judge turned him over to the chair, and he fries next week."

  "So let Fredericks take it out on the judge and jury," he'd said. "Why do I have to be the sitting duck?"

  "Because ... well, from Fredericks' point of view, without you his brother might never have been caught. It's logic--of a sort."

  "Logic, hell," he said. "The guy was guilty. I had to send him up. That's my job."

  "And so is this," Donegan said. "That's our side of it. Fredericks has friends--his brother's friends. Petty criminals, would-be criminals, unbalanced types. You know that. You've read the record."

  "Read it?" he said. "I dug up half of it."

  Donegan nodded. "Sure," he said. "And we're going to have six more cases like Fredericks' brother--murder, robbery, God knows what else--unless we can choke them off somehow."

  "Crime prevention," he said. "And I'm in the middle."

  "That's the way the job is," Donegan said. "We're not superman. We've got limits, just like everybody else. Our talents have limits."

  He nodded. "So?"

  "So," Donegan said, "we've got to convince Fredericks' friends--the unbalanced fringe--that we are supermen, that we have no limits, that no matter what they try against us they're bound to fail."

  "Nice trick," he said sourly.

  "Very nice," Donegan said. "And what's more, it works. Nobody except an out-and-out psychotic commits a crime when he hasn't got a hope of success. And these people aren't psychotics; most criminals aren't. Show them they can't get away with a thing--show them we're infallible, all-knowing, all-powerful supermen--and they'll be scared off trying anything."

  "But killing Fredericks would do that just as well--" he began.

  Donegan shook his head. "Now, hold on," he said. "You're getting all worked up about this. It's your first time with this stakeout business, that's all. But you can't kill him. You can't kill except when really necessary. You know that."

  "All right. But if he's going to kill me--"

  "That doesn't make it necessary, not this time," Donegan said. "This vengeance syndrome doesn't last forever, you know. Block it, and you're through with it. And think how much more effective it is, letting Fredericks go back alive to tell the tale."

  "Think how much more effective it would be," he said, "if Fredericks managed to get me."

  "He won't," Donegan said.

  "But without weapons--"

  "No Psi Operative carries weapons," Donegan said. "We don't need them. We're supermen ... remember?"

  He twisted his face with a smile. "Easy for you to talk about it," he said. "But I'm going to have to go out and face it--"

  "We've all faced it," Donegan said. "When I was an Operative I went through it, too. It's part of the job."

  "But--"

  "And I'm not going to tell you how to do the job," Donegan went on firmly. "Either you know that by now, or you don't belong here."

  He got up to leave, slowly. "It's a fine way to find out," he said mournfully.

  Donegan rose, too. "Good luck," he said. And meant it, too.

  That was the chief for you, he thought. Send you out into God knows what with no weapons, no instructions, lots of help planted for the man who wanted to kill you--and then wish you good luck at the end of it.

  Sometimes he wondered why he didn't go in for some nice, peaceful job of work--like rocket testing, for instance.

  * * * * *

  Fredericks, downstairs, was deciding to do things the subtle way. The man upstairs--Jones, Brady or whatever his name was--deserved what he was going to get. Psi powers were all very well, but there were defenses against them. Briefly he thought of the man who'd sold him the special equipment, and wondered why more criminals didn't know the equipment existed. It worked; he was sure of that. Fredericks knew enough of general psi theory to know when somebody was handing him a snow job. And the equipment was no snow job.

  A force shield, that was the basic thing. A shield with no points of entrance for anything larger than air molecules. Sight and sound could get through, because the shiel
d was constructed to allow selected vibrations and frequencies. But no psi force could crack the shield.

  Fredericks has sat through a long explanation. Psi wasn't a physical force; it was more like the application of a mental "set," in the mathematical sense, to the existing order. But it could be detected by specially built instruments--and a shield could be set up behind which no detection was possible. It wasn't accurate to say that a psi force was blocked by the shield; no construct can block that which has no real physical existence. It was, more simply, that the shield created a framework inside of which the universe existed in the absence of psi.

  That wasn't very clear, either, Fredericks thought; but mathematics was the only adequate language for talking about psi, anyhow. It had been the theory of sets that had led to the first ideas of structure and rationality within the field, and the math had gotten progressively more complex ever since.

  Psi couldn't get through the shield, at any rate; that was quite certain. And very little else could get in, or out. There was only one point of exit. Unholstering his gun and aiming it automatically keyed the shield to allow passage of a bullet, and the point of exit was controlled by the gun's aiming. It was efficient and simple to handle.

  But Fredericks wasn't depending on the shield alone. There was a binder field, too--a field which linked him to the surrounding area, quite tightly. That took care of the chance that the Psi Operative would try to pick him up, force shield and all, and throw him out a window or through the roof. With the binder field in operation, no psi force could move him an inch.

  A plug gas mask, too, inserted into the nostrils. The shield plus the mask's pack held two hours' worth of air--just in case the Psi Operative tried to throw poisonous molecules through the force shield, or deprive him of oxygen.

  And then there was the blindfold. Such a simple thing, and so effective.

  * * * * *

  Upstairs, the Psi Operative caught the sequence of thoughts. Did the FBI have to do such a thorough job, he wondered bitterly. The equipment, he knew, would do everything Fredericks thought it would do. It was important that Fredericks go up against the Operative thinking he was completely protected--in that way his final defeat would be most effective. He'd have guarded against every possible failure--so, when he failed, there would be nothing to explain it.