The Sheep Look Up

by John Brunner

  “... So, you see,” Peg concluded her explanation to the reluctant Colonel Saddler, who had already mentioned three times how furious he was to be back in the States when he’d been beating the pants off those Tupas in Honduras, “I thought if I could talk to a few of these—uh—workers ...?”

  “Pick any you like,” the colonel grunted, and sneezed, and apologized, and went on. A lot of people were sneezing around here today. Peg hoped she wasn’t due for another bout of sinusitis. “You’ll find them blatant—blatant! Doesn’t matter which you hit on; I’ll guarantee you’ll find he’s a subversive, or a traitor, or pro-Tupa, or a draft-dodger. It is an absolute lie that we’ve arrested innocent civilians. They are people who in time of need have failed to answer their country’s call.”

  Which was how Peg found herself talking to Hugh in relative safety that evening.

  “Sorry,” Hugh said in a low voice. “I nearly gave you away. My head’s kind of funny now and then. I drank some water on the way here and it must have had the stuff in it.” He hesitated. “It is you, isn’t it? I mean, I’m not mixing you up with someone else? It’s so hard to keep track!” Almost in a whine. “You were the friend of that guy—uh—Decimus!”

  Peg nodded. There was a great ache in her heart. When she’d known Hugh before she hadn’t liked him. But he hadn’t been in this pitiable condition, trembling, talking as though to prevent himself from thinking.

  “I know someone else who was a friend of his,” Hugh said. His eyes were glazing. “Carl. You met him. Worked at Bamberley Hydroponics. He knew Decimus. Liked him. Maybe I would have, if I’d met him. Carl gave him a present once, he said. Gave him food. Took some from the plant. He worked at packing it or loading it or something.”

  “Did you say he gave Decimus food from the plant?” Peg said slowly.

  “You’re not listening! I just told you, didn’t I? A Christmas present, he said. You remember Carl, huh? Seen him lately? Wish I knew where he was. I love Carl. I hope he’s okay ...”

  He started drumming on his knee with his fingertips as his voice tailed away.

  “Your friend Carl,” Peg said, her throat as tight as though a noose had been drawn around it, “gave Decimus some of the food from the plant, as a Christmas present?”

  “Christ, if you don’t listen to what I’m saying I might as well shut up,” Hugh said, and walked away.

  “Oh, my God,” Peg whispered. “Oh, my God.”

  NOVEMBER

  WHEREWITHAL SHALL IT BE SALTED?

  A chemist in an old-established corporation

  succeeded after many decades of research

  in isolating the active principle from oceans

  Hopes were high for its immediate appeal

  as a safe additive for preserving food

  and miraculous enhancer of natural flavor

  Regrettably however it was discovered

  that in a solution as weak as three per cent

  it caused dehydration and delirium and death

  —“Our Father Which Art in Washington,” 1978

  ALIAS

  He had used the name for so long he had even come to think of himself as “Ossie,” but he didn’t want the credit for what he was doing now to go to that mother who had tamely let himself be arrested—and worse yet was now meekly going to stand trial!—by the lackeys of the establishment he’d had it in his power to overthrow.

  So he had put in his pocket a piece of paper which said, “I am Bennett Crowther.” With his photo.

  He didn’t expect to last much longer. He’d hoped to go down fighting. Now he could barely walk, barely see, barely breathe. They said it was a new kind of influenza; it was killing people in China and Japan and just getting a foothold here on the West Coast. Still, the news from Honduras was good: the Tupas had taken San Pedro Sula and were spreading north, and their first edict as de facto rulers had been to make all industries generating noxious effluent or fumes subject to immediate nationalization. Take a while for it to be implemented, what with the famine, but ...

  He placed the last of his bombs and coughed and spluttered and wheezed. His temperature was a hundred and three but a revolutionary can’t go to the hospital, a revolutionary is solitary, self-reliant, dies alone if need be like a wounded wolf. His fingers shook so much he had trouble setting the timer. Also he could scarcely read the dial.

  But it would blow some time tomorrow morning and right now that would have to do.

  He left the toilet, left the building, went home and never came out.

  THERE IS HOPE YET

  Armed guards at the courthouse. Some incredibly foolhardy Trainite had waved a skull-and-crossbones flag earlier, had been arrested and dragged away, but the crowd had mostly been quiet. There were two hundred National Guardsmen in the street and fifty armed police in the corridors and the courtroom. The quietness might be illusory. The sabotage wasn’t showing any sign of letting up. Every city in the nation over about two thousand population had had some kind of incident by now, and people were frightened. Hungry, too. The first prosecutions were pending for food-hoarding and evasion of ration laws.

  But the Trainites generally—or people who had thought of themselves as such, which meant most of the more intelligent young people and some of their elders—were puzzled and dismayed and didn’t know what to do. After that incredible gaffe in the president’s state-of-war announcement, they’d expected an instant request for the charges to be dropped, on the grounds that they could now never be tried by an unbiased jury. Like a shout of jubilation another wave of demonstrations and riots had broken out ... and been suppressed. Without a clue from Train himself, all these people who’d imagined they had found a leader began to wonder whether he might indeed have been involved in the Bamberley kidnapping. The most optimistic started to murmur that he must be dead, or being starved and brainwashed into confessing regardless of his guilt. Only the most sophisticated looked at the sky, which was overcast as usual, and watched the rain eat into clothing, brickwork, concrete—and despaired.

  There were TV lights in the courtroom. They would be transmitting the case live, all over the country. The precedent had been set years ago in Denver, but the Watkins case was recorded and edited for broadcasting. This was being covered like the Army-McCarthy hearings, only more so. It was going to have a colossal audience despite its daytime slot. It didn’t seem right for the networks to be putting on old movies and repeats of comedy shows when the nation was on a war footing. (One said carefully: “war footing.” Because there was no enemy yet to throw the big bombs at.)

  Moreover, the networks were glad of the chance to economize. Some of the wealthiest sponsors had had to withdraw support. Who was buying cars at the moment? Who was selling insurance?

  The country, so to speak, was idling. Industries were closed down all over, either through sabotage or because they were intrinsically non-productive, like advertising. Men, if fit, had been drafted. But millions upon millions of women were at home, not out shopping or visiting friends, because of rationing and the economy drive. There was gasoline only on a permit. There was a policeman or National Guardsman on the corner with a gun, ready to check the permit. There was TV, though, and “in the national interest” the major networks were today going to pool their facilities.

  So the number of viewers would be fantastic.

  Great, Roland Bamberley thought as he steered his son in the wake of the armed guards clearing a way through the pressmen before the courthouse. We’ll pillory the bastard the way he deserves. Even the president, we know, will be watching.

  He sneezed and apologized to Hector, hoping his mask had trapped the germs.

  Great, Peg thought, taking her place among the reporters, rubbing her arm where she had received an obligatory injection. Against the new flu, the medic on the door had said, but not to put too much faith in it because it had been rushed into production.

  She’d managed to see Austin. Just for a few minutes. And she wasn’t worried any more
about him being crazy.

  She wasn’t sure even yet what bombshell he had up his sleeve. She was convinced, though, that his purpose in refusing to cooperate, to apply for bail, to engage a lawyer, must be a valid one. He had dropped one clue; when she told him what she’d just learned about Decimus’s fate, he gave a faint smile and commented that at least in jail he wasn’t exposed to that kind of risk. And that was that. But it was enough.

  It hadn’t occurred to her before, but it had now crossed her mind that maybe things were going the way he wanted, the right way. And that being so he was safer in prison than out.

  She’d know soon, anyhow, and so would the world. If only Zena could be here! And Felice! But Felice was too sick and Zena was in jail. Widow of a famous Trainite.

  That would be put right when they tore down the jails.

  The judge took his place, trying not to scowl at the TV lights because he knew he was the star of the show. He looked out over the court: prosecuting attorney (nod), lawyer appointed by the state to defend Train who hated his client anyway and had learned to detest him even more owing to his obstinate non-cooperation, press, TV commentator murmuring into his mike, prospective jurors ...

  “Is everything in order?” he asked the clerk. “Then let the prisoner be brought in.”

  Meekly into the box, amid a rustle and buzz as people half rose to stare at him.

  “Who’s that?” Hector Bamberley asked his father.

  “What do you mean, ‘who’s that?’ ”

  The prosecuting attorney twisted in his seat. “What did Hector say? I didn’t quite catch it.”

  The judge, poised to launch the proceedings, noticed the conversation and frowned his disapproval TV cameras were closing on Hector and his father, while another remained fixed on Austin. The judge coughed to attract attention back to him, which was foolish; it was a good thirty seconds before he was in a state to talk clearly again, and by then Austin had said in a clear voice, well carried by the microphones, “Your honor, if that’s Hector Bamberley over there, perhaps you’d ask if he’s ever seen me before. My name, of course, is Austin Train.”

  Someone booed from the back of the court. Gasping, the judge said, “Be quiet! I must make one thing clear from the very outset—I will not tolerate any disturbances during this trial!”

  “But that’s not Austin Train!” Hector shouted. He looked as though he was about to cry. “I never saw him in my life!”

  There was a moment of astonished silence. Then Peg, deliberately, gave a giggle. A nice loud one. It was echoed.

  “Quiet!” the judge snapped. She received glares from all sides and one of the armed ushers moved menacingly toward her. She subsided.

  “Now, young man,” the judge said in an avuncular tone, “I realize this trial is a great strain for you after all you’ve been through, but I assure you your chance to speak—”

  “I won’t shut up!” Not to the judge; to his father who was trying to keep him in his seat. Forcing himself to his feet, he went on, “Sir, that isn’t in the least like the man who locked me up. That one was fatter, with lots of hair, brown teeth, no glasses, always dirty—”

  “But you said you were kidnapped by Austin Train!” his father roared.

  “That’s not him!” Hector cried.

  It looked as though the judge might be going to faint; a camera zoomed in on him as he briefly shut his eyes. Recovering, to the accompaniment of a hubbub of comment in the court as well as the coughs and snuffles which were so continual now in any public place it would have seemed uncanny for them to stop, he said, “Am I to understand that this boy has never been confronted with the accused?”

  A hasty consultation. Then: “Your honor, a recess please!”

  “Denied!” the judge said without hesitation. “This is the most extraordinary, I may say the most ridiculous case of confusion I have ever encountered in nearly twenty years. I’m waiting for an answer to my question!”

  Everyone looked toward the Bamberleys. Eventually Roland rose, very stiffly, like an old man.

  “Well, your honor, in view of the strain on my son—and he’s barely recovered even now from all the disgusting diseases he was given ...”

  “I see,” the judge said. “I see. Who is responsible for this incredible piece of incompetence?”

  “Well, your honor,” the prosecuting attorney said, looking dazed as though the sky had just fallen on him, “he did positively identify pictures of Train—”

  “I said yes to make you stop badgering me!” Hector flared. “You were worse than the people who kidnapped me, the way you kept on and on!”

  By this time the court was in uproar; the boy’s voice could scarcely be heard. Peg was jigging up and down in her seat with sheer delight. Oh, shame to have suspected Austin of being crazy! They built the pillory and here they’re in it themselves!

  “Order!” the judge shouted, rapping with his gavel, and the noise died away little by little. Obviously everyone present wanted some sort of explanation as much as he did.

  “Now!” he continued when he had the chance. “Am I to understand that you, Hector, identified this man from photographs?”

  “Oh, they kept on showing me photographs all right,” was the sullen answer. “They said he could have been wearing a wig, couldn’t he? They said he worked as a garbage-man—wouldn’t that make him dirty? So in the end I said, yes, yes, yes, just to make them leave me alone!”

  He sat down suddenly and buried his face in his hands. At his side his father stood, frozen and pale as a marble statue.

  “Your honor!” Austin said suddenly. The judge turned as though so bewildered he would accept help from any quarter.

  “What is it?”

  Peg clenched her fists because if she didn’t keep control she feared she might scream like a teenager at a Body English concert. There had been a—a ring to those last two words. Something of the timbre which had been in his voice when he converted Petronella Page. Was he going to get a chance now to speak to all the millions watching?

  “Your honor, I gather you’d welcome an explanation of the way this laughable situation has arisen.”

  “I do indeed want an explanation!” the judge rasped. “And certainly it ought to come from you! You’ve sat in jail with your mouth shut when a single word could have saved us this—this farce!” And he added, “But be brief!”

  “I’ll try, your honor. Briefly, then, it’s because even though my prosecutors knew there are some two hundred people who’ve adopted my name, they were so eager to crucify me they ignored the fact and so stupid they didn’t bother to show me to Hector.”

  “Train!” The judge was on the verge of explosion. “Silence! This is a court of law, not a forum for your treasonable mouthings!”

  “I have kept quiet in face of even a prejudgment by the president!” Austin barked. “I’ll leave it to the American public to decide what justice I’d have received from a judge who accuses me of treason—which I’m not on trial for!”

  “Made it!” Peg whooped, discovering to her surprise that she was out of her seat and waving despite the orders of an armed man to sit down. She obeyed, contentedly enough. Now he was over the watershed; if they cut him off at this point, literally millions and millions of people would be demanding why, and prepared to do something about it.

  And the judge knew it His face had gone paper-white, and his mouth was working as though he was about to throw up. Suddenly, without warning, he left his chair and stormed out of the court. There was commotion in his wake.

  Austin waited, his hands on the bar of the box. At length he murmured to the microphone nearest him, “I think most people would like to hear what I have to say, even if the judge is afraid to.”

  “Oh, I love you! I love you!” Peg whispered. She felt tears coursing down her cheeks. It was the most spectacular theatrical gesture she had ever seen: Petronella Page’s treatment of the studio audience amplified to the tenth power. She tried to shout, “Yes, go on!” But her v
oice was lost somewhere in the depths of her throat.

  It didn’t matter. There were fifty other shouts to compensate.

  “Thank you, my sick friends,” Austin said as the cameras closed on him. “Poisoned, diseased, and now about to be starved as well ... No, I’m not joking; I wish I were. And above all, I wasn’t joking when I spoke of the people who have put me on trial as being stupid.

  “That is the worst thing they have done to you: damaged your intelligence. And it’s small consolation that now they are doing it to themselves.

  “Those charges that the intelligence of people in this country is being undermined by pollution are all true—if they weren’t, do you think I’d be here, the wrong man, the man who didn’t kidnap Hector Bamberley? Who could have been so silly?”

  There was laughter. Nervous, drive-away-the-ghosts laughter.

  “And because of that”—he drew himself up straight—“at all costs, to me, to anyone, at all costs if the human race is to survive, the forcible exportation of the way of life invented by these stupid men must ... be ... stopped.”

  His voice suddenly rose to a roar.

  “The planet Earth can’t afford it!”

  He’s got them, Peg thought. I never believed he’d do it. But he’s got them. Christ, that cameraman: he’s shaking, shaking from head to foot! In a moment he’s going to weep like Petronella did!

  “Our way of life,” Austin said, resuming a conversational tone. “Yes ... You’re aware that we’re under martial law? It’s been claimed that we’re at war, that at Denver we suffered a sneak chemical attack. As a matter of fact, the stuff that caused the Denver Madness is a military psychotomimetic based on the ergot that infects rye, known by the US Army code ‘BW,’ manufactured on an experimental basis at Fort Detrick, Maryland, from 1959 to 1963, stored at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal until the latter year, and then disposed of in steel drums in an abandoned silver mine. Are you interested in hearing what happened to it?”