There was a long period of silence after that, during which his muscles throbbed with cramp and stiffness, and gradually became numb. He must have dozed; he awoke with a violent start, feeling her fingers on his face. She was propped up on one elbow. She said clearly, “I just wanted to tell you, darling. Let me go first, and get everything ready for you. It’s going to be wonderful. I’ll fix you a special tossed salad. I’ll make you a steamed chocolate pudding and keep it hot for you.”
Too muddled to understand what she was saying, he smiled and pressed her back on the settee. She took his hands again.
The next time he awoke it was broad daylight, and she was dead.
Sonny Weisefreund was sitting on his cot when he got back to the barracks. He handed over the recording he had picked up from the parade ground on the way back. “Dew on it. Dry it off. Good boy,” he croaked, and fell face downward on the cot Bonze had used.
Sonny stared at him. “Pete! Where’ve you been? What happened? Are you all right?”
Pete shifted a little and grunted. Sonny shrugged and took the audiovid disk out of its wet envelope. Moisture would not harm it particularly, though it could not be played while wet. It was made of a fine spiral of plastic, insulated between laminations. Electrostatic pickups above and below the turntable would fluctuate with changes in the dielectric constant which had been impressed by the recording, and these changes were amplified for the video. The audio was a conventional hill-and-dale needle. Sonny began to wipe it down carefully.
Pete fought upward out of a vast, green-lit place full of flickering cold fires. Starr was calling him. Something was punching him, too. He fought it weakly, trying to hear what she was saying. But someone else was jabbering too loud for him to hear.
He opened his eyes. Sonny was shaking him, his round face pink with excitement. The audiovid was running. Starr was talking. Sonny got up impatiently and turned down the audio gain. “Pete! Pete! Wake up, will you? I got to tell you something. Listen to me! Wake up, will yuh?”
“Huh?”
“That’s better. Now listen. I’ve just been listening to Starr Anthim—”
“She’s dead,” said Pete. Sonny didn’t hear. He went on explosively, “I’ve figured it out. Starr was sent out here, and all over, to beg someone not to fire any more atom bombs. If the government was sure they wouldn’t strike back, they wouldn’t have taken the trouble. Somewhere, Pete, there’s some way to launch bombs at those murdering cowards—and I’ve got a pretty shrewd idea of how to do it.”
Pete strained groggily toward the faint sound of Starr’s voice. Sonny talked on. “Now, s’posing there was a master radio key, an automatic code device something like the alarm signal they have on ships, that rings a bell on any ship within radio range when the operator sends four long dashes. Suppose there’s an automatic code machine to launch bombs, with repeaters, maybe, buried all over the country. What would it be? Just a little lever to pull; thass all. How would the thing be hidden? In the middle of a lot of other equipment, that’s where; in some place where you’d expect to find crazy-looking secret stuff. Like an experiment station. Like right here. You beginning to get the idea?”
“Shut up. I can’t hear her.”
“The hell with her! You can hear her some other time. You didn’t hear a thing I said!”
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah. Well, I figure I’ll pull that handle. What can I lose? It’ll give those murderin’ … what?”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead? Starr Anthim?” His young face twisted, Sonny sank down to the cot. “You’re half asleep. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“She’s dead,” Pete said hoarsely. “She got burned by one of the first bombs. I was with her when she … she—Shut up, now, and get out of here and let me listen!” he bellowed hoarsely.
Sonny stood up slowly. “They killed her, too. They killed her. That does it. That just fixes it up.” His face was white. He went out.
Pete got up. His legs weren’t working right. He almost fell. He brought up against the console with a crash, his outflung arm sending the pickup skittering across the record. He put it on again and turned up the gain, then lay down to listen.
His head was all mixed up. Sonny talked too much. Bomb launchers, automatic code machines—
“You gave me your heart,” sang Starr. “You gave me your heart. You gave me your heart. You—”
Pete heaved himself up again and moved the pickup arm. Anger, not at himself, but at Sonny for causing him to cut the disk that way, welled up.
Starr was talking, stupidly, her face going through the same expression over and over again. “Struck from the east and from the Struck from the east and from the—”
He got up again wearily and moved the pickup.
“You gave me your heart. You gave me—”
Pete made an agonized sound that was not a word at all, bent, lifted, and sent the console crashing over. In the bludgeoning silence he said, “I did, too.”
Then, “Sonny.” He waited.
“Sonny!”
His eyes went wide then, and he cursed and bolted for the corridor.
The panel was closed when he reached it. He kicked at it. It flew open, discovering darkness.
“Hey!” bellowed Sonny. “Shut it! You turned off the lights!”
Pete shut it behind him. The lights blazed.
“Pete! What’s the matter?”
“Nothing’s the matter, Son’,” croaked Pete.
“What are you looking at?” said Sonny uneasily.
“I’m sorry,” said Pete as gently as he could. “I just wanted to find something out, is all. Did you tell anyone else about this?” He pointed to the lever.
“Why, no. I only just figured it out while you were sleeping, just now.”
Pete looked around carefully while Sonny shifted his weight. Pete moved toward a tool rack. “Something you haven’t noticed yet, Sonny,” he said softly, and pointed. “Up there, on the wall behind you. High up. See?”
Sonny turned. In one fluid movement Pete plucked off a fourteen-inch box wrench and hit Sonny with it as hard as he could.
Afterward he went to work systematically on the power supplies. He pulled the plugs on the gas engines and cracked their cylinders with a maul. He knocked off the tubing of the Diesel starters—the tanks let go explosively—and he cut all the cables with bolt cutters. Then he broke up the relay rack and its lever. When he was quite finished, he put away his tools and bent and stroked Sonny’s tousled hair.
He went out and closed the partition carefully. It certainly was a wonderful piece of camouflage. He sat down heavily on a workbench nearby.
“You’ll have your chance,” he said into the far future. “And by heaven, you’d better make good.”
After that he just waited.
WHY I SELECTED THE ULTIMATE CATALYST
The Editors have asked me for a short statement saying why The Ultimate Catalyst is my favorite s-f story. It is quite simple. Suppose you had only one child. Would not that child be your favorite? So here; this is the only short story I have ever written. All my other s-f works have been full book-length novels. But in addition to this irrefutable logic, I like the story because its weird pure s-f chemistry shocked my friends among the professional chemists to the soles of their boots. Being an academic man myself, nothing gives me greater pleasure than to take some of the excelsior out of overstuffed shirts. I did this chemical story deliberately with malice aforethought.
It worked.
JOHN TAINE
The Ultimate Catalyst - John Taine
Kadir Rules Amazonia-—But the Animal and Plant Kingdoms Are Beyond His Sway!
The Dictator shoved his plate aside with a petulant gesture. The plate, like the rest of the official banquet service, was solid gold with the Dictator’s monogram, K.I.—Kadir Imperator, or Emperor Kadir—embossed in a design of machine guns round the edge. And, like every other plate on the long banquet table, Kadi
r’s was piled high with a colorful assortment of raw fruits.
This was the dessert. The guests had just finished the main course, a huge plateful apiece of steamed vegetables. For an appetizer they had tried to enjoy an iced tumblerful of mixed fruit juices.
There had been nothing else at the feast but fruit juice, steamed vegetables, and raw fruit. Such a meal might have sustained a scholarly vegetarian, but for soldiers of a domineering race it was about as satisfying as a bucketful of cold water.
“Vegetables and fruit,” Kadir complained. “Always vegetables and fruit. Why can’t we get some red beef with blood in it for a change? I’m sick of vegetables. And I hate fruit. Blood and iron—that’s what we need.”
The guests stopped eating and eyed the Dictator apprehensively. They recognized the first symptoms of an imperial rage. Always when Kadir was about to explode and lose control of his evil temper, he had a preliminary attack of the blues, usually over some trifle.
They sat silently waiting for the storm to break, not daring to eat while their Leader abstained.
Presently a middle-aged man, halfway down the table on Kadir s right, calmly selected a banana, skinned it, and took a bite. Kadir watched the daring man in amazed silence. The last of the banana was about to disappear when the Dictator found his voice.
“Americano!” he bellowed like an outraged bull. “Mister Beetle!”
“Doctor Beetle, if you don’t mind, Senhor Kadir,” the offender corrected. “So long as every other white man in Amazonia insists on being addressed by his title, I insist on being addressed by mine. It’s genuine, too. Don’t forget that.”
“Beetle!” The Dictator began roaring again.
But Beetle quietly cut him short. “ ‘Doctor’ Beetle, please. I insist.”
Purple in the face, Kadir subsided. He had forgotten what he intended to say. Beetle chose a juicy papaya for himself and a huge, greenish plum for his daughter, who sat on his left. Ignoring Kadir’s impotent rage, Beetle addressed him as if there had been no unpleasantness. Of all the company, Beetle was the one man with nerve enough to face the Dictator as an equal.
“You say we need blood and iron,” he began. “Do you mean that literally?” the scientist said slowly.
“How else should I mean it?” Kadir blustered, glowering at Beetle. “I always say what I mean. I am no theorist. I am a man of action, not words!”
“All right, all right,” Beetle soothed him. “But I thought perhaps your ‘blood and iron’ was like old Bismarck’s—blood and sabres. Since you mean just ordinary blood, like the blood in a raw beefsteak, and iron not hammered into sabres, I think Amazonia can supply all we need or want.”
“But beef, red beef—” Kadir expostulated.
“I’m coming to that in a moment.” Beetle turned to his daughter. “Consuelo, how did you like that greenbeefo?”
“That what?” Consuelo asked in genuine astonishment.
Although as her father’s laboratory assistant she had learned to expect only the unexpected from him, each new creation of his filled her with childlike wonderment and joy. Every new biological creation her father made demanded a new scientific name. But, instead of manufacturing new scientific names out of Latin and Greek, as many reputable biologists do, Beetle used English, with an occasional lapse into Portuguese, the commonest language of Amazonia. He had even tried to have his daughter baptized Buglette, as the correct technical term for the immature female offspring of a Beetle. But his wife, a Portuguese lady of irreproachable family, had objected, and the infant was named Consuelo.
“I asked how you like the greenbeefo,” Beetle repeated. “That seedless green plum you just ate.”
“Oh, so that’s what you call it.” Consuelo considered carefully, like a good scientist, before passing judgment on the delicacy. “Frankly, I didn’t like it a little bit. It smelt like underdone pork. There was a distinct flavor of raw blood. And it all had a rather slithery wet taste, if you get what I mean.”
“I get you exactly,” Beetle exclaimed. “An excellent description.” He turned to Kadir. “There! You see we’ve already done it.”
“Done what?” Kadir asked suspiciously.
“Try a greenbeefo and see.”
Somewhat doubtfully, Kadir selected one of the huge greenish plums from the golden platter beside him, and slowly ate it. Etiquette demanded that the guests follow their Leader’s example.
While they were eating the greenbeefos, Beetle watched their faces. The women of the party seemed to find the juicy flesh of the plums unpalatable. Yet they kept on eating and several, after finishing one, reached for another.
The men ate greedily. Kadir himself disposed of the four greenbeefos on his platter and hungrily looked about for more. His neighbors on either side, after a grudging look at their own diminishing supplies, offered him two of theirs. Without a word of thanks, Kadir devoured the offerings.
As Beetle sat calmly watching their greed, he had difficulty in keeping his face impassive and not betraying his disgust. Yet these people were starving for flesh. Possibly they were to be pardoned for looking more like hungry animals than representatives of the conquering race at their first taste in two years of something that smelt like flesh and blood.
All their lives, until the disaster which had quarantined them in Amazonia, these people had been voracious eaters of flesh in all its forms from poultry to pork. Now they could get nothing of the sort.
The dense forests and jungles of Amazonia harbored only a multitude of insects, poisonous reptiles, gaudy birds, spotted cats, and occasional colonies of small monkeys. The cats and the monkeys eluded capture on a large scale, and after a few half-hearted attempts at trapping, Kadir’s hardy followers had abandoned the forests to the snakes and the stinging insects.
The chocolate-colored waters of the great river skirting Amazonia on the north swarmed with fish, but they were inedible. Even the natives could not stomach the pulpy flesh of these bloated mud-suckers. It tasted like the water of the river, a foul soup of decomposed vegetation and rotting wood. Nothing remained for Kadir and his heroic followers to eat but the tropical fruits and vegetables.
Luckily for the invaders, the original white settlers from the United States had cleared enough of the jungle and forest to make intensive agriculture possible. When Kadir arrived, all of these settlers, with the exception of Beetle and his daughter, had fled. Beetle remained, partly on his own initiative, partly because Kadir insisted that he stay and “carry on” against the snakes. The others traded Kadir their gold mines in exchange for their lives.
The luscious greenbeefos had disappeared. Beetle suppressed a smile as he noted the flushed and happy faces of the guests. He remembered the parting words of the last of the mining engineers.
“So long, Beetle. You’re a brave man and may be able to handle Kadir. If you do, we’ll be back. Use your head, and make a monkey of this dictating brute. Remember, we’re counting on you.”
Beetle had promised to keep his friends in mind. “Give me three years. If you don’t see me again by then, shed a tear and forget me.”
“Senhorina Beetle!” It was Kadir roaring again. The surfeit of greenbeefos restored his old bluster.
“Yes?” Consuelo replied politely.
“I know now why your cheeks are always so red,” Kadir shouted.
For a moment neither Consuelo nor her father got the drift of Kadir’s accusation. They understood just as Kadir started to enlighten them.
“You and your traitorous father are eating while we starve.”
Beetle kept his head. His conscience was clear, so far as the greenbeefos were concerned, and he could say truthfully that they were not the secret of Consuelo’s rosy cheeks and his own robust health. He quickly forestalled his daughter’s reply.
“The meat-fruit, as you call it, is not responsible for Consuelo’s complexion. Hard work as my assistant keeps her fit. As for the greenbeefos, this is the first time anyone but myself has tasted one. You saw how
my daughter reacted. Only a great actress could have feigned such inexperienced distaste. My daughter is a biological chemist, not an actress.”
Kadir was still suspicious. “Then why did you not share these meat-fruits with us before?”
“For a very simple reason. I created them by hybridization only a year ago, and the first crop of my fifty experimental plants ripened this week. As I picked the ripe fruit, I put it aside for this banquet. I thought it would be a welcome treat after two years of vegetables and fruit. And,” Beetle continued, warming to his invention, “I imagined a taste of beef—even if it is only green beef, ‘greenbeefo’— would be a very suitable way of celebrating the second anniversary of the New Freedom in Amazonia.”
The scientist’s sarcasm anent the ‘new freedom’ was lost upon Kadir, nor did Kadir remark the secret bitterness in Beetle’s eyes. What an inferior human being a dictator was, the scientist thought! What stupidity, what brutality! So long as a single one remained—and Kadir was the last—the Earth could not be clean.
“Have you any more?” Kadir demanded.
“Sorry. That’s all for the present. But I’ll have tons in a month or less. You see,” he explained, “I’m using hydroponics to increase production and hasten ripening.”
Kadir looked puzzled but interested. Confessing that he was merely a simple soldier, ignorant of science, he deigned to ask for particulars. Beetle was only too glad to oblige.
“It all began a year ago. You remember asking me when you took over the country to stay and go on with my work at the antivenin laboratory? Well, I did. But what was I to do with all the snake venom we collected? There was no way of getting it out of the country now that the rest of the continent has quarantined us. We can’t send anything down the river, our only way out to civilization—”
“Yes, yes,” Kadir interrupted impatiently. “You need not remind anyone here that the mountains and the jungles are the strongest allies of our enemies. What has all this to do with the meat-fruit?”
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