For five years the invention had only been used in connection with automobiles. At the end of that time Babson made arrangements to use the mysterious force as an adjunct to airplanes. Poorson was not at all enthusiastic over the project but finally agreed to help with five hundred planes to be used in the government mail service.
There was no doubt that even in these five years a change had taken place in the thinking of the American people. For several decades they had prided themselves on becoming mechanically-minded. They wanted to make things, to use machinery, to drive mobile engines. The housekeepers prided themselves on having a hundred electrical servants in the home. Following the advent of the new model car put out by the U.A.C.C. they had lost part of the zest that they once possessed. Instead of talking of their own ability they now talked of the accomplishments of their cars. Millions of former drivers forgot how to drive. A new technique was being developed. Instead of the books formerly published on how to care for the auto, there were now books out on how to control the auto. Not one in a thousand realized that in his machine was something really alive, but everyone knew that a vital force was there and that this force was absolutely under the control of the owner of the car or the plane.
The leaders of industry were not bothered with finding new uses for this force. What they were worried about was how to make Poorson see the necessity of using this force in other ways and above all, of divulging his secret so that it could be used after his death. But the inventor was stubborn. He already had serious doubts as to whether his invention was adding to the happiness of humanity.
Meantime everything was not entirely peaceful for President Babson and his associates. They controlled fully the manufacturing of automobiles. Practically all other makes had been driven out of competition but there was one business, large in scope, powerful in finance, and absolutely necessary to the transportation business and that was the World Gasoline Company. The W.G.C. was the only great competitor of the U.A.C.C. Without gasoline not a single motor would work, and while other forces had been used to drive the airplane and auto up to this time, none of them had been able to replace gas as a source of motor fuel.
The automobile was dead without gasoline.
And Pierce, President of the W.G.C. knew it.
And Babson, President of the U.A.C.C. knew it.
* * * *
Of course there was another side to the problem. If there were no gasoline engines in automobiles and airplanes, there would be no market for gasoline. The supply and the demand were absolutely dependent on each other for their very existence.
Pierce was constantly demanding new markets for his gasoline. Babson was constantly demanding more and cheaper gasoline. Either one could kill the business of the other but in doing so would himself commit suicide. For some years they felt that joined together in a friendly combination they could rule America.
For the American nation was now sold on the principle of rapid transportation. The idea of sitting still any length of time in one place was not simply intolerable to them, it was practically an unknown idea. A President of the United States could have been elected on a platform of a single plank, cheaper and faster transportation.
The most natural thing Happened. The W.G.C. and the U.A.C.C. combined. At least, they tried to. At the final moment when two signatures would have completed the verbal agreement, Poorson threw a veritable bombshell into the plan by calmly announcing that at the end of the year he would cease vitalizing the chemical in the steel spheres. After that date, no more living automobiles would be made. He said he was through. He also said that he was sorry he had ever begun.
Babson thought he wanted a little more money, but Pierce was sure that Poorson was simply the tool of his rival. There was a scene, nonetheless bitter because of the quiet deliberation which marked the conduct and speech of the multimillionaires. And then the Presidents of the two great firms parted, each determined to do everything in his power to destroy the other.
“So you have seen the light and will make no more of the poor slaves?” asked Tyson that night, as he sat with Poorson in the inventor’s home.
“No more after January first,” was the reply. “My contract ends there. I thought that I was doing the human race a favor by making the automobile foolproof. I was sure that it was a great feat of science to make a perfect machine. But year by year I have had my doubts. Even now I cannot say whether I created life or not but the thing I did create is so nearly life that I have become frightened. So far, there has been no marked deterioration, no pronounced viciousness of conduct in the poor things, but we do not know how long the man and woman were in the Garden before sin came. Think what would be the result if these living automobiles started to do their own thinking and, united, tried to form a ruling race? Of course that sounds impossible. But you have had the same idea. And with an absolutely new force of nature, how can we tell what will happen? We cannot, and so I am going to stop. Babson wants to put my invention into other machines, for example, into the cotton mills of the South and England. That would mean the unemployment of five million men and women and their certain starvation. Of course he says that the labor market will adjust itself to new conditions, that it always has, but how does he know? So I am through!”
“And you are bound to tell no one what you did? How you did it?”
“Absolutely. I am going to die with the secret. Perhaps some other man will rediscover it after I am gone, but that will not be my responsibility.”
“Praise be!” exclaimed Tyson. “I hope that it will be a long time before there is another man as smart as you are.”
Pierce left the conference with hatred in his heart. He determined to in some way absolutely smash Babson and the U.A.C.C. He went to his home that night and started to do a lot of heavy thinking.
He was no fool. There was little in regard to the manufacturing of gasoline and its distribution that he did not know. Three in the morning came, and he was still thinking, and then the idea came to him. Without the loss of a moment, he went to the telephone and summoned a great pharmacologist. He demanded that the man come to his home at once.
“What makes the average criminal ready and willing to commit the average crime, Dr. Clark?” he asked upon the latter’s arrival.
“A desire to become a hero in the eyes of his fellow gangsters,” was the reply.
“But what gives the average coward the necessary courage?”
“Some form of dope, Mr. Pierce. The average cheap killer is very much of a coward, but give him a few sniffs of cocaine, a few drinks of bootleg, and a gun, and for five or ten dollars that coward will do anything.”
“Cocaine, eh?”
“Yes, especially with the half breeds.”
“Would the drug have the same effect on the brain of an animal?”
“I believe so. It would probably turn a trusty dog into a menace to the community.”
“Destroys the moral sense, is that it?”
“Seems to be the best explanation of its action, Mr. Pierce.”
“Thank you, Doctor, and sorry to break your rest. Send your bill to my office and be sure you make it large enough to pay you for your time and trouble—and your brains.”
Once again President Pierce was, alone in his library. He called up his private secretary.
“Johnson? This is Pierce. I want you to start in and buy up every pound of cocaine you can get in the country, no matter what it costs. Yes, I know that its sale is prohibited by law, but you get it. Understand? At once”
The next day Pierce and a few of his best laboratory men went to an isolated estate above Albany. They took with them several of the latest model automobiles put out by the U.A.C.C. Pierce had an idea, and was determined to put it through, no matter what it cost.
* * * *
Two months later every filling station in the United States received the same order. From the first of January on only a certain mixture of gasoline was to be dispensed, and for ten days every automatic c
ar stopping at a station was to have its tank filled whether it had money or not to pay for the gas and whether or not it carried a passenger.
January first was just one more New Years Day singularly devoid of news of national interest. The next day was not much different except that it was a day of return to work after the holiday. But the third of January was different. A nation that for years had been almost free from traffic accidents went to bed that night badly disturbed. Full data was not available, but there had been more automobile accidents that day than on any day for the previous six years. They were peculiar accidents, caused by the refusal of the automatic machines to obey verbal orders. In many incidents, pedestrians had been killed, not while crossing the streets, but while walking on the sidewalks. The cars, for every reason or no reason had, in many instances, left the streets and deliberately run into the people on the sidewalk. Windows of stores had been smashed, traffic on the great avenues of traffic like Fifth Avenue had ended in an uncontrolled jam. Many auto owners, once their cars were safely garaged, vowed never to take them out again.
But even in the garages, private and public, the trouble increased. The cars started to leap upon each other. There seemed to be a personal devil in each of them, directing their actions. The next day it was worse. Cars, without control, coursed the public highways, chasing pedestrians, killing little children, smashing fences. Defense against them was difficult. Fifty million machines were on a wild riot of uncontrolled destruction, and whenever one paused in front of a filling station, its gas tank was filled.
The W.G.C. ran full page advertisements in every paper warning the public against the use of the automobiles sold by the U.A.C.C. They recalled the fact that in the old days, when every man drove his own car, the careful driver was at least safe, and ended by announcing a new line of cars, put out by the W.G.C., guaranteed safe, if the driver knew his business.
And they had a million of the new-old style of car ready to place on the market. But the American public had forgotten how to drive. They would have to learn all over again.
The U.A.C.C. had no defense. Some cars acted normally—some cars did not. Driven on by Babson, their specialists worked day and night to determine the trouble. They announced their own line of old car, and it was a good car at that, but public confidence in the U.A.C.C. was shattered.
Yet fifty million car owners are not going to junk fifty million cars deliberately overnight, so again and again desperate drivers took their cars out of garages, filled the gas tanks, and started to see what would happen. Usually they did not have to wait long. The number of accidents rose. Death on the highway was so common that it was no longer news.
Then the automatic air mail planes changed from peaceful carrier pigeons to predatory hawks. They chased other planes, deliberately colliding with them. They plunged to destruction against mountainsides and skyscrapers.
It went on for a half month.
Traffic was paralyzed. The nation became panic-stricken. Schools were closed. Men kissed their wives goodbye in the morning not knowing when they would be brought home dead or horribly mutilated. Business stopped, and a hundred and fifty million people cursed the U.A.C.C. for introducing such a hellish innovation as an automatic automobile into the traffic life of a nation.
On the fifteenth of January, Poorson, a little drawn, more white hairs than ever, eyes lack-luster from loss of sleep, walked into President Babson’s office. With him went Try Um Tyson.
Babson looked at the inventor and wanted to curse him, kill him, do anything with him. Instead he simply waited for him to speak.
“I think I know what the trouble is, Mr. Babson. Will you listen to me?”
“Certainly.”
“You know there has always been a good deal of dispute about my invention. Some men have guessed one thing and some another. The argument has been over one point. Was the new machine simply a clever robot or was it something that was alive? When I first started to work with my own car, I was not sure. Of course Tyson, here, from the very first, felt that inside those steel spheres was something alive that was very much like a human intelligence. But it was hard to say.
“I thought a lot about it. During the last two years I had a psychologist make monthly tests of my car. That was the oldest car and probably the best cared for in the country. He told me that he considered it was slowly gaining in intelligence. If it is true, then it must be alive in some way, perhaps not like we are, but it was able to remember.
“Now these cars live on gasoline and oil. Without these two fluids, the intelligence in the steel sphere is worthless; the car won’t go. Some of the oil lubricates the controller. A little of the gas goes there—not much, but some. That is what has happened. The intelligence, left alone, went on working, like a faithful dog. But it has been poisoned. Our chemists tell me that a hundred specimens of gas and oil purchased from a hundred filling stations, show definite traces of cocaine. And our good cars, our faithful cars, our foolproof cars have been drugged. That good-natured intelligence has been turned into something criminal, vicious, deadly, and utterly devilish.”
“And the man who did this,” interposed Tyson, “is none other than our friend, President Pierce of the W.G.C.”
Babson clenched his fists till the nails drew blood from his palms.
“The dirty dog,” he hissed. “I could kill him for that. He has killed over a quarter-million people and they are blaming me for it.”
“We won’t kill him,” whispered Poorson, grabbing the tortured man by the shoulders. “We won’t kill him, Mr. Babson, but we will ruin him financially. You send word out to all your agents to take the steel spheres out of every car we ever sold, and wait orders. Say above your signature that not a single owner of a U.A.C.C. car will lose a cent. I have a new power. It is a little electricity, and a little radiant energy, and a little something else I was able to locate. I can put a battery of the stuff in a U.A.C.C. car and it will run ten thousand miles and be recharged for ten dollars. It will furnish the public with what they want, cheap transportation. Of course they will have to drive their own cars, but from the time they make the change, they won’t have to use a drop of gasoline. Do you see what that will do to the W.G.C.? We will have them on their knees begging for mercy within a few months.”
“Can you do it?” asked the millionaire harshly.
“I know I can. Of course, I have to abandon my living machine, but perhaps that was predestined anyway.”
“It must have been,” said Tyson. “It was a dangerous thing to do. A machine is all right and a brain is all right, but God never intended the two to be hitched together.”
THE REVOLT OF THE PEDESTRIANS
CRASH!
“Damn these pedestrians anyway!”
A deathly moan and a determined mutter of, “Your whole race will pay for this!” came in one breath from the automobile, the chauffeur, the murdered mother, and the ghastly lips of the little pedestrian son who was left mercilessly with the lifeless corpse in the slaughter pen of humanity.
A young pedestrian mother was walking slowly down a country road holding her little son by her hand. They were both beautiful examples of pedestrians, though tired and dusty from long days spent on their journey from Ohio to Arkansas, where the pitiful remnant of the doomed species were gathering for the final struggle. For several days these two had walked the roads westward, escaping instant death again and again by repeated miracles. Yet this afternoon, tired, hungry and hypnotized by the setting sun in her face, the woman slept even as she walked and only woke screaming, when she realized that escape was impossible. She succeeded in pushing her son to safety in the gutter, and then died instantly beneath the wheels of a skillfully driven car, going at sixty miles an hour.
The lady in the sedan was annoyed at the jolt and spoke rather sharply to the chauffeur through the speaking tube.
“What was that jar, William?”
“Madam, we have just run over a pedestrian.”
“Oh, is that
all? Well, at least you should be careful.”
“There is only one way to hit a pedestrian safely, Madam, when one is going sixty miles an hour and that is to hit him hard.”
“William is such a careful driver,” said the Lady to her little daughter. “He just ran over a pedestrian and there was only the slightest jar.”
The little girl looked with pride on her new dress. It was her eighth birthday and they were going to her grandmother’s for the day. Her twisted atrophied legs moved in slow rhythmic movements. It was her mother’s pride to say that her little daughter had never tried to walk. She could think, however, and something was evidently worrying her. She looked up.
“Mother!” she asked. “Do pedestrians feel pain the way we do?”
“Why, of course not, Darling,” said the mother. “They are not like us, in fact some say they are not human beings at all.”
“Are they like monkeys?”
“Well, perhaps higher than apes, but much lower than automobilists.”
The machine sped on.
Miles behind a terror-stricken lad lay sobbing on the bleeding body of his mother, which he somehow had found strength to drag to the side of the road. He remained there till another day dawned and then left her and walked slowly up the hills into the forest. He was hungry and tired, sleepy and heartbroken but he paused for a moment on the crest of the hill and shook his fist in inarticulate rage.
That day, a deep hatred was formed in his soul.
The world had gone automobile wild. Traffic cops had no time for snail-like movements of walkers—they were a menace to civilization—a drawback to progress—a defiance to the development of science. Nothing mattered in a man’s body but his brains.
Gradually machinery had replaced muscle as a means of attaining man’s desire on earth. Life consisted only of a series of explosions of gasoline or alcohol—air mixtures or steam expansion in hollow cylinders and turbines, and this caused ingeniously placed pistons to push violently against shafts which caused power to be applied wherever the mind of man dictated. All mankind was accomplishing their desires by mechanical energy made in small amounts for individual purposes, and in large amounts transmitted over wires as electricity for the use of vast centers of population.
The Twelfth Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK™: David H. Keller, M.D. Page 20