Kornbluth, Mary (Ed)

by [Anth] Science Fiction Showcase [v1. 0] [epub]

  Those who marched across the park began methodically to burn it to ashes before them with their blasters.

  Calhoun watched. Then he remembered something and was appalled. Among the fugitives in the glade, Kim Walpole had asked hungrily if they whose lives he had saved could not do something to help him. And he’d said that if they saw the smoke of a good-sized fire in the city they might investigate. He’d had no faintest intention of calling on them. But they might see this cloud of smoke and believe he wanted them to come and help!

  “Damn!” he said wryly to Murgatroyd. “After all, there’s a limit to any one series of actions with probably favorable chance consequences. I’d better start a new one. We might have whittled them down and made the unwhittled ones run away, but I had to start using a car! And then they’d try to blame me for everything. So - we start all over with a new policy.”

  He explored the building quickly. He prepared his measures. He went back to the window from which he’d looked. He cracked its window.

  He opened fire with his blaster. The range was long, but with the beam cut down to minimum spread he’d knocked over a satisfying number of the men below before they swarmed toward the building, sending before them a barrage of blaster-fire that shattered the windows and had the stone façade smoking furiously.

  “This,” said Calhoun, “is an occasion where we have to change their advantage in numbers and weapons to an unfavorable circumstance for them. They’ll be brave because they’re many. Let’s go!” •

  He met the two ground-car loads of refugees with his arms in the air. He did not want to be shot down by mistake. He said hurriedly, when Kim and the other lean survivors gathered about him:

  “Everything’s all right. We’ve a pack of prisoners but we won’t bother to feed them intravenously for the moment. How’d you get the ground-cars?”

  “Hunters,” said Kim savagely. “We found them and killed them and took their cars. We found some other refugees, too, and I cured them - at least they will be cured. When we saw the smoke we started for the city. Some of us still have the plague, but we’ve all had our serum shots.” His face worked. “When we started for the city, another car overtook us. Naturally he wasn’t suspicious of a car! We blasted him. Half of us have arms, now.”

  “I don’t think we need them,” said Calhoun. “Our prisoners are quite peacefully sleeping. They stormed a building where I’d fired on them, and I’d dumped some dextrethyl in the air-conditioning system. They keeled over. Later, Murgatroyd and I went in and made their slumber more ... ah ... lasting with polysulfate. The few who weren’t caught were ... ah ... demoralized. I think the city’s clean, now. But we’ve got to get to the landing-grid control room. There are some calls coming in from space. I think the first shipload of colonists is arriving. I didn’t answer, so they went in orbit around the planet. I want you people to talk to them.”

  “We’ll bring their ship down,” said the bearded man hungrily, “and blast them as they come out the exit port!”

  Calhoun shook his head.

  “To the contrary,” he said regretfully. “You’ll put on the clothes of some of our prisoners. You’ll tell the arriving colonists that the plague hit you, too. You’ll pretend to be one of the characters we really have safely sleeping, and you’ll say all the rest have been bowled over by the plague that was sowed here to win the planet for the characters you’re talking to. If they land, they’ll die - or so you’ll tell them. And so they will all go home, very unhappy, and they’ll tell the public about it. And there will be no more shiploads of colonists arriving. We don’t want them. If we can persuade them to go home and not come back, there are fewer chances of unfavorable consequences to us.”

  The bearded man growled. But later he was one of the most convincing of the scarecrow figures whose images appeared in the vision plates of the ship overhead. He was especially pathetic and alarming. When he’d finished, there’d have been a mass mutiny of the passengers had the spaceship skipper tried to land them.

  Later, all the fugitives were very conscientious about bringing the captive invaders out of the lethargy that had been begun their labor, after Calhoun explained.

  “They came in their own ship,” he said mildly, “and it’s still in the landing grid - which they repaired for us, by the way. And I’ve been aboard the ship with Kim, here, and we’ve smashed their drive and communicators, and wrecked their Duhanne circuits. We took out the breech-plugs of their rockets and dumped their rocket fuel. Of course we removed their landing boats. So we’re going to put them in their ship and hoist them up to space with the landing grid, and we’re going to set them in a lovely orbit, to wait until we’ve time to spare for them. Up there they can’t run or land or even signal if another shipload of colonists turns up. They’ll feed themselves and they won’t need guarding, and they’ll be quite safe until we get help from Dettra. And that will come as soon as the Med Service has told Dettra that it wasn’t a plague but an invasion that seemed to take their colony away from them.”

  “But —” That was Kim Walpole, frowning.

  “I’m bringing my ship to the grid,” said Calhoun, “and we’ll recharge my Duhanne cells and replace my vision screens. I can make it here on rocket power, but it’s a long way back to Headquarters. So I’ll report, and a field team will come here from Med Service to get the exact data on the plague, and just how the synergy factor worked, and to make everything safe for the people the city was built for. Incidentally, I’ve a tiny blood-sample from Helen that they can get to work on for the bacteriology.”

  Kim said, frowning:

  “I wish we could do something for you!”

  “Put up a statue,” said Calhoun dryly, “and in twenty years nobody will know what it was for. You and Helen are going to be married, aren’t you?” When Kim nodded, Calhoun said, “In the course of time, if you remember and think it worth while, you may inflict a child with my name. That child will wonder why, and ask, and so my memory will be kept green for a full generation!”

  “Longer than that!” insisted Kim, “You’ll never be forgotten here!”

  Calhoun grinned at him.

  Three days later, which was six days longer than he’d expected to be aground on Maris III, the landing grid heaved the little Med Ship out to space. The beautiful, nearly-empty city dwindled as the grid-field took the tiny spacecraft out to five planetary diameters and there released it. And Calhoun spun the Med Ship about and oriented it carefully for that place in the Cetis cluster where Med Service Headquarters was, and threw the overdrive switch.

  The universe reeled. Calhoun’s stomach seemed to turn over twice, and he had a sickish feeling of spiraling dizzily in what was somehow a cone. He swallowed. Murgatroyd made gulping noises. There was no longer a universe perceptible about the ship. There was dead silence. Then those small random noises began which have to be provided if a man is not to crack up in the dead stillness of a ship traveling at thirty times the speed of light.

  Then there was nothing more to do. In overdrive travel there is never anything to do but pass the time away.

  Murgatroyd took his right-hand whiskers in his right paw and licked them elaborately. He did the same to his left-hand whiskers. He contemplated the cabin, deciding upon a soft place in which to go to sleep.

  “Murgatroyd,” said Calhoun severely, “I have to have an argument with you! You imitate us humans too much! Kim Walpole caught you prowling around with an injector, starting to give our prisoners another shot of polysulfate! It might have killed them! Personally, I think it would have been a good idea, but in a medical man it would have been most unethical. We professional men have to curb our impulses! Understand?”

  “Chee!” said Murgatroyd. He curled up and wrapped his tail meticulously about his nose, preparing to doze.

  Calhoun settled himself comfortably in his bunk. He picked up a book. It was Fitzgerald on “Probability and Human Conduct.”

  He began to read as the ship went on through emptin
ess.

  <>

  * * * *

  expendable

  philip k. dick

  THE man came out on the front porch and examined the day. Bright and cold -- with dew on the lawns. He buttoned his coat and put his hands in his pockets.

  As the man started down the steps the two caterpillars waiting by the mailbox twitched with interest.

  “There he goes,” the first one said. “Send in your report.”

  As the other began to rotate his vanes the man stopped, turning quickly.

  “I heard that,” he said. He brought his foot down against the wall, scraping the caterpillars off, onto the concrete. He crushed them.

  Then he hurried down the path to the sidewalk. As he walked he looked around him. In the cherry tree a bird was hopping, pecking bright-eyed at the cherries. The man studied him. All right? Or-- The bird flew off. Birds all right. No harm from them.

  He went on. At the corner he brushed against a spider web, crossed from the bushes to the telephone pole. His heart pounded. He tore away, batting the air. As he went on he glanced over his shoulder. The spider was coming slowly down the bush, feeling out the damage to his web.

  Hard to tell about spiders. Difficult to figure out. More facts needed -- No contact, yet.

  He waited at the bus stop, stomping his feet to keep them warm.

  The bus came and he boarded it, feeling a sudden pleasure as he took his seat with all the warm, silent people, staring indifferently ahead. A vague flow of security poured through him.

  He grinned, and relaxed, the first time in days.

  The bus went down the street.

  Tirmus waved his antennae excitedly.

  “Vote, then, if you want.” He hurried past them, up onto the mound. “But let me say what I said yesterday, before you start.”

  “We already know it all,” Lala said impatiently. “Let’s get moving. We have the plans worked out. What’s holding us up?”

  “More reason for me to speak.” Tirmus gazed around at the assembled gods. “The entire Hill is ready to march against the giant in question. Why? We know he can’t communicate to his fellows -- It’s out of the question. The type of vibration, the language they use, makes it impossible to convey such ideas as he holds about us, about our --”

  “Nonsense.” Lala stepped up. “Giants communicate well enough.”

  “There is no record of a giant having made known information about us!”

  The army moved restlessly.

  “Go ahead,” Tirmus said. “But it’s a waste of effort. He’s harmless -- cut off. Why take all the time and --”

  “Harmless?” Lala stared at him. “Don’t you understand? He knows!”

  Tirmus walked away from the mound. “I’m against unnecessary violence. We should save our strength. Someday we’ll need it.”

  The vote was taken. As expected, the army was in favor of moving against the giant. Tirmus sighed and began stroking out the plans on the ground.

  “This is the location that he takes. He can be expected to appear there at period-end. Now, as I see the situation --”

  He went on, laying out the plans in the soft soil.

  One of the gods leaned toward another, antennae touching. “This giant. He doesn’t stand a chance. In a way, I feel sorry for him. How’d he happen to butt in?”

  “Accident.” The other grinned. “You know, the way they do, barging around.”

  “It’s too bad for him, though.”

  It was nightfall. The street was dark and deserted. Along the sidewalk the man came, newspaper under his arm. He walked quickly, glancing around him. He skirted around the big tree growing by the curb and leaped agilely into the street. He crossed the street and gained the opposite side. As he turned the corner he entered the web, sewn from bush to telephone pole. Automatically he fought it, brushing it off him. As the strands broke a thin humming came to him, metallic and wiry.

  “. . .wait!”

  He paused.

  “. . .careful. . . inside. . . wait. . .”

  His jaw set. The last strands broke in his hands and he walked on. Behind him the spider moved in the fragment of his web, watching. The man looked back.

  “Nuts to you,” he said. “I’m not taking any chances, standing there all tied up.”

  He went on, along the sidewalk, to his path. He skipped up the path, avoiding the darkening bushes. On the porch he found his key, fitting it into the lock.

  He paused. Inside? Better than outside, especially at night. Night a bad time. Too much movement under the bushes. Not good. He opened the door and stepped inside. The rug lay ahead of him, a pool of blackness. Across on the other side he made out the form of the lamp.

  Four steps to the lamp. His foot came up. He stopped.

  What did the spider say? Wait? He waited, listening. Silence.

  He took his cigarette lighter and flicked it on.

  The carpet of ants swelled toward him, rising up in a flood. He leaped aside, out onto the porch. The ants came rushing, hurrying, scratching across the floor in the half light.

  The man jumped down to the ground and around the side of the house. When the first ants came flowing over the porch he was already spinning the faucet handle rapidly, gathering up the hose.

  The burst of water lifted the ants up and scattered them, flinging them away. The man adjusted the nozzle, squinting through the mist. He advanced, turning the hard stream from side to side.

  “God damn you,” he said, his teeth locked. “Waiting inside --”

  He was frightened. Inside -- never before! In the night cold sweat came out on his face. Inside. They had never got inside before. Maybe a moth or two, and flies, of course. But they were harmless, fluttery, noisy --

  A carpet of ants!

  Savagely, he sprayed them until they broke rank and fled into the lawn, into the bushes, under the house.

  He sat down on the walk, holding the hose, trembling from head to foot.

  They really meant it. Not an anger raid, annoyed, spasmodic; but planned, an attack, worked out. They had waited for him. One more step.

  Thank God for the spider.

  Presently he shut the hose off and stood up. No sound; silence everywhere. The bushes rustled suddenly. Beetle? Something black scurried -- he put his foot on it. A messenger, probably. Fast runner. He went gingerly inside the dark house, feeling his way by the cigarette lighter.

  Later, he sat at his desk, the spray gun beside him, heavy-duty steel and copper. He touched its damp surface with his fingers.

  Seven o’clock. Behind him the radio played softly. He reached over and moved the desk lamp so that it shone on the floor beside the desk.

  He lit a cigarette and took some writing paper and his fountain pen. He paused, thinking.

  So they really wanted him, badly enough to plan it out. Bleak despair descended over him like a torrent. What could he do? Whom could he go to? Or tell. He clenched his fists, sitting bolt upright in the chair.

  The spider slid down beside him onto the desk top. “Sorry. Hope you aren’t frightened, as in the poem.”

  The man stared. “Are you the same one? The one at the corner? The one who warned me?”

  “No. That’s somebody else. A Spinner. I’m strictly a Cruncher. Look at my jaws.” He opened and shut his mouth. “I bite them up.”

  The man smiled. “Good for you.”

  “Sure. Do you know how many there are of us in -- say -- an acre of land. Guess.”

  “A thousand.”

  “No. Two and a half million: Of all kinds. Crunchers, like me, or Spinners, or Stingers.”

  “Stingers?”

  “The best. Let’s see.” The spider thought. “For instance, the black widow, as you call her. Very valuable.” He paused. “Just one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “We have our problems. The gods --”

  “Gods!”

  “Ants, as you call them. The leaders. They’re beyond us. Very unfortunate
. They have an awful taste -- makes one sick. We have to leave them for the birds.”

  The man stood up. “Birds? Are they --”

  “Well, we have an arrangement. This has been going on for ages. I’ll give you the story. We have some time left.”

  The man’s heart contracted. “Time left? What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. A little trouble later on, I understand. Let me give you the background. I don’t think you know it.”

  “Go ahead. I’m listening.” He stood up and began to walk back and forth.