A for Anything

by Damon Knight

  The sweat broke out on his forehead and he began to feel dizzy. Was he a dupe, without knowing it? He searched his memory, his physical sensations. He felt just the same as he always had, but that did not comfort him: he knew dupes always thought they were the originals, until told differently.

  “I’ll tell you the answer, sometime,” the Old Man said. “Not now. I wawnt you to think about it.”

  “If you did—” said Dick, in a choked voice.

  “If I did, what difference does it make? That’s what I wawnt you to think about.” The Old Man rose, and without haste left the room. Dick caught a glimpse of a Frankie on guard as the door closed.

  He hunched over in furious thought, chin on his fists. “Dick?” said the girl, squeezing his arm.

  He moved away. “Let me alone, just now.” After a moment, he felt her withdrawing in a hurt silence. Time enough to apologize for that later: he had to think.

  Down in the gulf of the Concourse, a few people were straggling out into view. At this distance he could not recognize any faces, but they were all dressed in the fashion and it might have been any normal gathering—except that there were so few, and that they moved so hesitantly.

  After a while there were more of them, gathering in small groups to talk, some moving aimlessly. The Frankies and other slobs passed among them on various errands. When there was not enough room, it was the freemen who moved aside, as if trying to avoid contamination.

  Suppose he was a dupe—a slave, then, or some horrible mixture, a quasi-slave. It was one thing to fall in love with a dupe, but it was another to imagine that you might be one.

  What difference would it make? Why, all the difference. Between freedom and slobbery—between all the good, decent, proud things and all the abased, slovenly, subhuman things. If he was still Dick Jones of Buckhill, that was something in itself, no matter how bad things got: he was a man, able to look out for himself, with a name and a place to fight for.

  He had to find out—but how? Suppose the Old Man should come back and say, “I lied to you,” or “I told the truth.” Either way, he might be lying, and Dick would be left to guess, as before.

  He shivered. Down in the Concourse, the few brightly-robed people were moving with maddeningly dull slowness. The world had grown dim and hateful, all the colors were flat, and time seemed to be dragging endlessly.

  What could the Old Man’s motive have been? He must want something, or he wouldn’t bother. If he wanted some lever to use on Dick, then he might have had him duped—but what for, actually, since he could say he had done it just the same? Dick’s spirits rose a trifle, then fell again. Suppose the Old Man was planning to produce some proof, later on, that the thing had been done …

  Now what had he said, exactly? “Suppose I then had your own body destroyed—” He had emphasized that; and then, “Do you have any way of knowing, inside yourself, whether I did that or not?”

  Well, no, of course not. A dupe couldn’t tell.

  And then, just before he left, the Old Man had said, “If I did, what difference does it make?” What difference—?

  Suppose he was a dupe. He let himself frame the thought with the tense hesitancy of a man stepping close to a dangerous edge. If no one knew it, or could prove it, or even accuse him of it—in short, if he was a freemen in the eyes of the world—then effectively he was a freeman.

  He shook his head in bewilderment. It all seemed perfectly reasonable even when it was most paradoxical. It was a side of things that had always been there, waiting to be seen, but he had never seen it before. That in itself was matter for thought.

  Eagles had made a realist of him. He believed in facts, and in altering your viewpoint to fit them, no matter what they were. That was the way you survived and stayed sane; it was hard, it meant sacrifices—he had already lost many things that he valued deeply—but it was the only way.

  Now, if the only essential difference between a freeman and a slave was an arbitrary distinction—Dick’s world rocked on its foundations.

  He looked down thoughtfully at the two gnome-like Frankies who happened to be on the Concourse at the moment. They were uneducated, short-sighted, vulgar and simple—typical of the lowest kind of house slob. But the Old Man himself was a Frankie—a Frankie grown to middle age, selftrained and educated into a personality of extraordinary depth and power. If you could make that out of such material, then there was no real, intrinsic difference—no reason why a Frankie should not be a freeman, or a freeman a servant.

  What was happening down on the Promenade, and in the courtyards and plazas? What were people thinking, now that Eagles was in the hands of slaves? What plans and adjustments were being made; who was alive and who dead? What did it feel like—how was it shaping up? Dick felt an impatience to be down there, moving, taking part, on any terms.

  Now: The Old Man knew who Elaine was, and it was not hard to guess that he meant to make some political use of her. Furthermore, whatever it was, it was obvious that it had something to do with Dick. There would be a role for him to play; and an important one, or the Old Man would not have been at such pains to change his opinions… . Dick’s heart began to beat faster. He thought he saw the pattern forming.

  After a while the door opened again and the Old Man’s heavy outline appeared. He paused to speak to the Frankies in the doorway, then the door closed behind him. He came forward and sat down.

  “Have you thawt it over?” he asked.

  Dick nodded. “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “I’m willing to listen,” said Dick.

  The Old Man leaned back. “Awl right. You remember I said the only way is for us awl to learn to live together peacefully, as equals. I say now that is the only way out for Eagles, not only on moral grounds but as a practical matter. We can’t hope to survive in any other way. But on a larger scale it is also the only way out for the human race. If we lose, here, there will be another slave uprising somewhere else, some other time, and another if necessary, and eventually one of them will win.”

  Dick said, “I don’t know—we did all right for over a century.”

  “But you see how unstable it was,” the Old Man said earnestly. “This is the point: the slavery system breaks down into freedom. The freedom system, if it’s properly established, never will break down into slavery again. It’ll be too strawng. Now in the abstract, I know you appreciate the desirability of something stable, something that will last.”

  Dick grinned. “Maybe, in the abstract.”

  “Just so. Now, coming a little nearer, do you agree with me that a mixed society could be stable, could work here in Eagles?”

  Dick hesitated. “Yes.”

  “You understand that would mean former freemen working closely, sharing responsibilities with former slaves?”

  “Yes.”

  “That would be repugnant to you?”

  “… Certainly.”

  “But you would do it, under certain circumstances?”

  They looked at each other. Dick said, “Tell me plainly what you mean.”

  The Old Man answered, “You and Miss Elaine would be married. I think that would not be repugnant to either of you.” Dick glanced at the girl; she flushed, smiling, and looked down. “Your family connections would make it very hard for any hotheads to raise a punitive force against Eagles. The fact that she is a dupe would make her acceptable to my people. It would be an ideal union for our purposes. You would serve as head of the internal governing committee, represent us in dealing with other heads of houses, and so awn.”

  Dick was tense with suppressed excitement. “But you’d be behind the scenes.”

  The Old Man inclined his head. “For a while. Later awn there are going to be elections, and if you wawnt another office than the one I give you, you can run for it. But nobody is going to have absolute power.” He added, “I can honestly say that you will have more power than you were ever likely to get under the old system.”

  Dick nodded slowly.
/>
  “You accept?”

  Dick said, “Let me talk to my father at Buckhill.”

  “And?”

  “If he agrees, I’ll accept.”

  The Old Man nodded. He got up and went to the door, spoke to the Frankies outside. “This will take a little time,” he said. “We have to get through to Buckhill, and then of course we will wawnt to monitor. I’ll have the set brought in when it’s ready.” He went out.

  There was a silence.

  Elaine said, “Dick—when he said I was a dupe: was that true?”

  “It was true. This is 2149. Oliver was the grandson of the man who duped you—Crawford, the first Boss of Eagles.”

  She looked out the window, her face composed, hands together in her lap. “I suppose I knew it,” she said. “But I wouldn’t admit it to myself. I don’t feel like a dupe—it’s strange—”

  “I know,” he said. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Doesn’t it?” She turned to look into his face. Her color was high, her eyes bright. “Not to you?”

  “No,” said Dick, and found that he meant it.

  He moved next to her, took her in his arms. There was a pulse beating at the base of her long, pale throat. Her green eyes looked at him from behind their screens of lashes: strange, beautiful and strange.

  He kissed her. She lay relaxed and warm in his embrace; after a moment she leaned back and said a little breathlessly: “And you want to marry me?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  After all, what was wrong with it?

  He remembered the discussions of just this possibility at the Philosophers’ Club, Melker’s cover group. That seemed a long time ago, and the reality was very different. Still, some of the old arguments had stayed with him. A society that used unjust methods to suppress some of its members (the catch was that you had to call slaves members of the society) was building up forces that would have to burst free sooner or later. Then, too, a society that put more emphasis on birth than ability was likely to breed ability out of its ruling class. It all came to the same thing; it was logical; and in any case, it had happened.

  Run with the pack.

  The corridors of Eagles were full of color and movement again: rustling, quick movement, streams of people going quickly and quietly, talking very little and that mostly in whispers. It gave a curious, tense feeling: you kept listening for the sounds that should be there.

  The debris had all been cleared out of the Grand Promenade, but no repair work was being done. Nobody was riding in chairs, everyone was on foot except a few people, Frankies usually, on motor scooters. Not a uniform was in sight. Everywhere you looked there were servants walking quietly in erywhere you looked there were servants walking quietly in the crowd, heads up, with an expression on their faces that you did not like to meet. Some of them were dressed in freemen’s costumes: you saw the clothing, and then, with a shock, the wrong face. All weapons had supposedly been confiscated; no one was supposed to go armed except the Frankies; but Dick saw more than one ex-servant with a stick or a hand-gun, and the Frankies did not interfere.

  There had been some difficulty in getting a scrambler relay to Buckhill; meanwhile they had been going ahead with talks on a tentative basis. Dick and Elaine had already had a meeting with the prospective members of the Old Man’s governing committee, and now they were on their way to a run-through of the wedding ceremony which was scheduled for day after tomorrow.

  Elaine, walking at his side, was pale and ethereally beautiful in a dress of green silk, duped an hour ago from a prote that had been lying unused for twenty-odd years. Her eyes were bright, and a flush burned on each cheek. He could feel the warmth of her hand, tucked under his arm: she was feverish with excitement. On either side, the armed Frankies went with eyes straight ahead, their gargoyle faces immobile, in a strange new dignity.

  Things were quieting down as fast as you could reasonably expect. There had been a little disturbance earlier, when the body of the Boss had been brought down from his sanctum; some ex-slaves had thrown themselves at the corpse like wild animals, and the Frankies had had to hustle it away out of sight.

  They would learn better. There had to be superiors and inferiors, even in a society without slaves.

  Dick was uncomfortably aware how many slaves—exslaves—there were in the crowd. They seemed to be coming out of their holes, more and more, all silent and burningeyed; the burrows under Eagles must be empty of them: he had never seen so many at once before.

  Up ahead, there was a curious, swirling movement in the crowd. People seemed to be gathering at one spot near the wall, and then almost immediately it was over, and the flow moved on unbroken.

  As they passed the spot, Dick caught a glimpse of a young man standing white-faced and bewildered against the wall. Blood was streaming down his cheek. Dick recognized the face; it was one of Randolph’s bully-boys, a man notorious for his ingenious cruelty with slaves. No one was approaching him or speaking to him; the crowd flowed silently past.

  That was a bad thing, Dick thought, with his heart beating suddenly heavy and thick. There was the only real danger: if that kind of thing got out of hand—

  He had a brief, incongruous flash of memory—two garden slobs standing over a felled tree, cool shadowed in the early morning; and their axes glinted one after another: chunk, pause, chunk.

  “What is it?” asked Elaine anxiously; her fingers tightened on his arm.

  “Nothing. Don’t worry.”

  He was tense, alert, but nothing else happened. The crowd flowed on smoothly. They were passing the entrance of the Little Gold Corridor now, the place where he had had his first fight in Eagles, and he glanced down it curiously, as if expecting to see Keel there. But the corridor was deserted, the stream flowing silently alone.

  Crossing the Four Ways on the old black and white mosaic floor, there was a little confusion as usual; people milling in the center, dodging around each other. Echoes broke hollowly under the many-vaulted ceiling; the crowd was as thick as he had ever seen it. There was a white-hatted Lone Star man, there two Indians in turbans, there a kepi, and slaves, slaves everywhere. Deep in the center, motion slowed almost to a standstill. The sound level had risen; there were voices speaking indistinguishably.

  Dick saw the two Frankies exchange glances. Moving instinctively, he took Elaine’s hand away and put his arm around her waist.

  “Dick, what’s the matter?”

  He did not answer. Off to one side, the crowd was swaying thick. Suddenly the air was full of noise; someone had fired a gun, shockingly loud, the echoes thundering away under the ceiling. Dick saw a whiff of smoke drift up from the middle of the crowd. Then he heard a low grumbling of many voices, and the crowd seemed to contract into itself. Someone was shouting; he could not make out the words. A Frankie, not one of theirs, was trying to force his way toward the disturbance, but the bodies were too closely packed. Others were coming across the floor on the run.

  The two Frankie bodyguards looked at each other wordlessly; one jerked his thumb toward the nearest cross-corridor; the other nodded. Without further discussion, they grasped Dick and Elaine by the arms and moved off rapidly in that direction. Behind them, the uproar was growing.

  Running men clogged the corridor, all hurrying toward the Four Ways; most of them were slaves. Some glanced at Dick’s party; a few even broke their stride. But the movement was too strong, and they passed on. In the distance, a bullhorn broke out into loud, muffled speech. It went on blaring, incomprehensibly.

  They turned at the next crossing, into Jewelers’ Row. They were heading, Dick realized, for the shortest route to the Old Man’s temporary headquarters in the Plaza. If they could get across the Plaza itself, Elaine would be safe.

  The crowd was thinning. The noise from the Ways was almost inaudible behind them. All the little hole-in-the-wall shops looked empty, and they passed one that had had its display window broken recently: crushed bits of glass were all over the pavement.
<
br />   Beside him, Elaine was silent and pale. She understood what was happening now, but she was not panicking. To get her safe, he thought: that was the first thing.

  There was an intermittent rumbling, trundling sound up ahead. A little farther on, they saw what it was: a little fellow in servant’s gray was rolling a heavy drum down the corridor. Where it curved around the Foley Fountain, making a little plaza, the slave stopped and with great effort got his drum upright. He was still some little distance away. They saw him pry up the lid and drop it ringing on the floor. He dipped in one hand and brought it out black.

  They were near enough now to make out his face. It was a seamed, gray face, vaguely familiar, with little eyes of malice. The slave held his black hand at shoulder level, palm up. When a freeman passed in orange silk and lace, the ex-slave reached out and swung his hand. It landed with a splat. The man recoiled, with a dark blob over half his face. It was no one Dick knew—a gray-haired man in his fifties. He stared at the slave in blank incomprehension: the slave grinned back at him, then laughed.

  The man brought his hand away from his cheek and stared at it: the orange-gloved fingers were smeared with black grease. He made a choked sound and reached for the stick that was not at his belt. The slave grinned and waited.

  They were near enough now to see everything: the man’s flush of anger, the slave’s gray cheek wrinkled in a smile. People standing around, nearly all slaves, were looking on in intent silence.

  The man’s hands were opening and closing. At last, pale, he turned away.

  “Yahhh!” said the slave, in a raucous voice. All around him, other slave faces were bright and feverish; there was a murmur and a ripple of embarrassed laughter.

  The Frankies, with grim expressions, were edging them around behind the mob. As they passed, the onlookers were moving in; a babble of voices began. Dick saw an old manservant leap at the drum and plunge his hand in. He brought it up dripping, black to the elbow. Past him, a dignified woman in violet came forward protesting, hustled by the slaves crowding at her back. The old man turned deliberately, and planted his handful of muck squarely in her face.