Alfred Bester - Biped Reegan

by Biped Reegan (lit)

  The destruction of the machine was a crushing blow to the morale of your

  Imperial Maternity's troops. Commander-lambda sent out an inspiring message to all of us that victory would still be ours. He commanded us to realign in our old positions along the crest of the sickle of hills and await the arrival of the red armies from the south.

  Meanwhile Reegan had reached the citadel. We all tuned in on Spy-zeta-prime to see what future developments might impend. The three bipeds rushed up to the council room, where they were met by the biped Otis and others.

  As the biped Dinah removed her metal suit, Otis gasped and stared hard at her.

  "A woman!" he cried.

  Your Imperial Maternity is no doubt familiar with the anatomy of the male and female of the species. The bipeds discerned differences in sex by vision. The biped Reegan, for example, was tall and built in flat planes to the general outline of a wedge.

  The female named Dinah was somewhat shorter and built in curved planes. The shoulders were rounded, the thorax fuller than Reegan's and divided into two upthrust mounds. The waist was extremely narrow but the hips were rounded and almost as wide as the shoulders. Altogether, our research legions believe the species of biped to be the ugliest lifeform our earth has produced.

  SPY-ZETA-PRIME reported tremendous excitement at the appearance of the strange bipeds and especially at the appearance of the female. Then, as they calmed down, Reegan spoke.

  "Otis," be said, "this is Dinah. Dinah Shaw. If I've acted like a fool in the past months, it was because I'd thought she was dead."

  Otis said: "My God, Reegan, but you're lucky,... To find your girl again;..

  . To bring her back from the dead!"

  "Not as incredible as you think," the biped named Doctor Elmer Gropper said.

  Spy-zeta-prime reported that he was extremely faint, and this was immediately corroborated by the chamber troops who had been guarding that ancient biped.

  "Before I tell my story," Doctor Elmer Gropper said, "you'd better tell me yours. We've been pent up in that damned cavern for ten months."

  "It's a wonder you're both so healthy looking," Otis said. "Miss Shaw actually looks beautiful... "

  "You'll understand when I tell you my story," Gropper said. "For that matter, you've probably noticed by now that all of you are much healthier...handsomer and probably more acutely intelligent. Never mind that. Tell."

  "It's not much of a story," Otis said. "Ten months ago, we began a war with the

  Asiaffs. I don't mind saying that things were desperate for America. The Affs on one side and the Asians on the other were pressing us hard. We thought we'd been defeated when overnight every city in the Western Hemisphere was destroyed, down to the foundations. All of them simply dissolved and sank thundering into the earth. Millions were killed...

  "Then, slowly, the news began to filter through that the same thing had happened to Asia, Africa and Europe. Every city throughout the world had been destroyed.

  We began to realize that the same menace was striking at both war parties....

  Then the ants came. By the billions, they came. They swept over us, destroying food, supplies, communications... and lastly us."

  "That's all the story?" Gropper asked.

  "Enough of it. I don't like to think of my wife... of my friends... "Otis shuddered. "It's enough to say that the world banded together against the onslaught of the ants too late. We here are the last survivors of a murdered world..."

  There was a long silence while the bipeds reflected drearily on the swift, sure tactics of your Imperial Maternity's troops that had brought them so low. At last the biped named Doctor Elmer Gropper spoke.

  "And I," he said, "murdered your world. No... don't interrupt. I want to tell you. It won't be long before none of us are alive to care.... Well.... The story starts twenty years ago at the close of the Second World War. It seemed to me that nothing could ever prevent another war except rnan himself, and I thought that man was too underdeveloped to ever do that. I decided to help man develope..."

  "You're crazy!" the red-haired biped, Ivar, said.

  "No," Gropper answered. "In theory I was right. I reasoned that some time in the far future when man had advanced enough intellectually, he would give up killing. My attempt was to speed up this advancement... this artificial evolution of man...

  "Yes, it could be done. The history of the world bore me out. Evolution had not been a slow, steady progress. It had leaped forward in sudden advances...and

  I discovered what had caused those advances."

  The biped Reegan said: "What did?"

  "Gas, strangely enough," Gropper replied. "Radon gas. When it is present in the atmosphere in sufficient quantities, it acts as a catalyst on chromosomatic genes. It induces a chemical reaction in the molecules that are the characteristic carriers and causes those jumps in development that De Vries called mutations and Darwin called the Survival of the Fittest. "

  "Yes," the precise biped, Chung, said. "That is more than possible."

  "It's a reality," the female, Dinah, put in.

  "Altogether too real," Gropper continued. "I built that cavern twenty years ago and constructed my apparatus there. Those hills are rich in pitchblende. Twenty years ago the Radon gas began to pour forth and I was jubilant. I knew that within a decade, perhaps two, evolution would strike at man and advance him far beyond war and the destructive arts. But last year, when I hired Miss Shaw as my assistant and we descended to the cavern to check the equipment that had been operating for two decades, I realized the horrible error I had made."

  Reegan said: "What the hell are you talking about?"

  "Evolution is mysterious," Gropper said. " Some hundred and fifty million years ago the earth and the seas were dominated by the great reptiles. They were the masters of creation. But inhabiting the earth with them lived a small retiring rat-like creature, utterly insignificant in size. Yet in time... in evolution, that rat-like creature took over dominance from the reptiles....

  Became man.... Became us."

  "We all know that," Otis put in.

  "But this you forget," Gropper said. "Man conquered the reptiles because he had a quality they lacked. Intelligence. Intelligence conquered brawn, although brawn was more powerful. But intelligence is not the supreme goal of evolution; it is only one of its phases, and just as brawn gave way to intelligence, so our intelligence is giving way to a quality we don't possess, but which is possessed by the species that will dominate the earth through it!"

  In precise tones Chung said: "Thought transference! "

  "That's it," Gropper cried. "Thought transference! The ants had it. Now, through artificial stimulation, it has been advanced and developed.... Just as your own intelligence has been quickened noticeably. But though you become geniuses, all of you, you will not cope with the ants. That quality of thought-transferance will defeat you, just as our brains defeated the more powerful reptilian brawn.

  How will you fight an army of billions that think as one?"

  The biped with red hair said: "Take it easy. We can. Give intelligence just one more try and it may win out. Chung and I have finished our work. Come and see..."

  FOLLOWED by Spy-zeta-prime, the group of bipeds arose and left the council room.

  As they began to descend the vast ramp to the ground level, Spy-zeta-prime telecast to Spy-zeta to pick them up in the great square courtyard in the middle of the citadel. This was done and we tuned in on Spy-zeta.

  The bipeds were clustering around a structure of high-polished metal which the red-hair and slant-eye were demonstrating. It was of the shape of a short earthworm, very straight and the length of twenty bipeds.

  "Looks like a rocket," Otis said.

  "Exactly what it is. Double-skinned walls so that the blasted lice can't get through. Room inside for two, plus supplies. We can go out in this and swoop over the countryside and blast them to hell with the rocket discharges."

  "What's the fuel?" Gropper asked.


  "Uranium 235. It breaks down under a cyclotron cross-fire. Practically, I think we've got atomic power. All I know is that one gram of fuel burns for one hour, emitting about six billion calories of heat and exerting a constant pressure of twenty six point five tons per square inch. The rear half is filled with fuel.... Enough to blow this baby to Andromeda and back.... Enough to burn every lousy ant twice out of the earth!"

  At this message, Commander-lambda was extremely alarmed, and his unrest immediately permeated the rest of your Imperial Maternity's troops. It would have been sheer folly for us to have waited sapiently for the attack of the bipeds, and consequently the Commander telecast orders for an immediate attack on the citadel. The red armies marching up from the south he ordered to attack as soon as they reached the citadel, without pause for rest.

  It was a glorious hour for your Imperial Maternity. Thirty billions of us marched down the slope toward the citadel of the bipeds. And so great was the interest of the bipeds in the infernal machine that we were not sighted until our first waves reached the water trap that ringed the Citadel.

  Without hesitation, our troops plunged into the deep ditches and swam toward the far side. Quickly, chains of living troops were made, and from these chains, living bridges were built. Across these bridges swarmed your Maternity's loyal legions.

  THE second water trap proved to be a trap indeed. Barely had we reached it when it flamed into the air to prodigious heights... a curtain of thick fire.

  Commander-lambda telecast the battle-word: "Forward" and so our troops moved. By the hundreds of thousands they threw themselves into the pool of flame, glorious sacrifices for your Imperial Maternity. Within a short space the fires were smothered by the countless numbers of blackened, charred bodies. The troops reached the citadel walls.

  They clambered up like a great rising black wave, directly in the face of the thundering torches which the bipeds wielded at the top. And though they fell backwards in a hail of infinite numbers, the commander knew we must break through this time or else fail forever.

  Then, faintly, we received vibrations from the red armies that they had sighted the citadel. Quick to seize on opportunities, Commander-lambda ordered the red armies to advance with all possible speed and show themselves as soon as possible to the bipeds. Our own troops he ordered to concentrate at the south side.

  As Commander-lambda planned, so it took place. Solid waves of our troops pressed at the south wall. The bipeds were forced to flame their torches incessantly without fail. Yet one looked up for an instant and saw the flashing approach of the red armies. He gasped and called to the biped next to him. Together they stared for less than a moment, yet in that time hundreds of our troops had passed the crest of the battlements.

  They died, Imperial Maternity, but in the moment when the bipeds were flaming them down along the wall-top, still other troops poured over the crest, and yet more and more until we had taken foothold at the parapet. We had forced a breach in the wall and from that moment, victory was ours.

  Steadily we forced the bipeds back from the walls, and our billions swarmed through the citadel, routing them out of their corners and chambers. They fought well, but they fell. All of them.

  It was when the bipeds were falling quickly and filling the citadel with their shrieks that Reegan and Dinah rushed to the lower courtyard. Spy-zeta was still there, reporting to us.

  "It's all up, Wes!" Ivar cried. "We're finished. Get into the rocket ship...you and Dinah. Get to hell out of here!"

  "Why us?" Reegan demanded. "Why not you and Chung? It's your ship..."

  "Chung is dead!" Ivar panted. "Otis is up there, screaming on the wall. Do what

  I say, will you? Get in! I've shown you how to operate her. Rocket to Hawaii....

  To Mars.... Anywhere, To Mars.... Anywhere you like, only get only get away,

  Adam and Eve..."

  The red-haired Ivar snatched up a torch, slung it over his shoulder and began flaming us back.

  "For God's sake!" he cried. "Will you go?"

  They leaped into the mechanism and the heavy portal clanged shut. For a time there was silence. Then suddenly the earth and air was filled with flame and roaring, and the very walls of the bipeds' citadel cracked and crushed down over us.

  And when at last the dust and blackness were gone, the citadel was in ruins. The courtyard was merely overturned earth with fragments of broken stone protruding.

  Of the mechanism, of the biped Ivar, or the others there was no sign.

  Intelligence-mu of the Research Legions persists that the mechanism was a machine for piercing the skies to reach to the very light on high, and claims that it carried off the two bipeds and unfortunate Spy-zeta with it; but I cannot help believing that they have destroyed themselves.

  So, if it please your Imperial Maternity, the day is won. On all earth there is no living biped. The earth, the air and the waters... all there is in the world is yours. Everything is yours, Imperial Maternity, as am I also.... Your most humble and very obedient servant....

  The End