The Watch Below

by James White

  "Or maybe I'm thinking too far ahead," he ended awkwardly.

  On the other side of the tank the children were playing a game of their own, quietly and almost surreptitiously for them. Wallis recognized enough of the whispered dialogue to suspect that the adults would shortly be treated to a new full-scale production of Snow White , with Gerry Dickson in the name part, Eileen Wallis as the Wicked Queen, and Dave Wallis and Joe Dickson sharing the other seven parts between them. They seemed to be improvising quite a lot on the original theme.

  To the doctor, the lieutenant commander said, "No, I don't think so. It's a funny thing, but I find myself thinking more and more often that this place is the normal, everyday world and the real world on the surface is something we know by hearsay, like material in a book dug up during the Game -- "

  "Speaking of books and the Game," the doctor put in, "I was wondering if it wouldn't be a good thing to specialize more. Instead of all of us helping to remember a book or a play, have each of us remember something he or she has read, but doing it solo and then talking it out on request. There are a lot of things that we have read or done which are not common to the others. I think we are good enough at remembering now to be able to do that.

  "I myself have read the Hornblower trilogy five times," he went on, "so that I could start with those stories."

  "I read The Happy Return once," Margaret said. "Just once. I didn't understand the technical bits, but I loved Hornblower. He was a nice, understanding, worried sort of hero for a change, with thinning hair and skinny, too. I really felt for that man."

  "Faithless hussy," said Dickson.

  "The Hornblower stories resemble science fiction in many ways," said Wallis. "They show the past rather than the future, of course, but they describe a slightly alien world whose language and technology require a certain amount of effort to understand, and the effort increases the enjoyment.

  "But I'm not an authority on Forester," Wallis added quickly, seeing the doctor's suddenly glum expression. "I've read only A Ship of the Line and that only once, so I'd be glad to hear the first and third books, Doctor, if you can dig them out of your brain. The only story which I have read anything like five times was by a Dr. Smith -- not a real doctor, Doctor, just a Ph.D. -- who, as well as stretching my imagination to its elastic limit, had horrible alien beings who were actually good 'uns instead of being utterly and completely hostile.

  "There have been other stories with the same idea -- better written, perhaps," Wallis continued enthusiastically. "I picked up a few of them during my last stopover in New York. But that particular one was my first experience of science fiction and it has stuck with me -- especially a character in it who was a winged dragon with scales, claws, four extensible eyes, and a lot of other visually horrifying features and who was more human than some of the human characters. There were bad 'uns, too, of course; I can remember a piece of the opening chapter which goes . . ."

  He closed his eyes for a moment, bringing back an image that was partly the sound of words, partly the memory of the printed page, and partly the picture which both of them described; then he recited, "'Among the world-girdling fortifications of a planet distant indeed from star cluster AG-257-4736 there squatted sullenly a fortress quite similar to Helmuth's own. . . . It was cold and dark withal, for its occupants had practically nothing in common with humanity save the possession of high intelligence. . . .' Uh, let's see . . . yes . . . 'It was not exactly like an octopus. Nor, although it was scaly and toothy and wingy, was it, save in the vaguest possible way, similar to a sea serpent, a lizard, or a vulture. . . .'"

  "I don't think many people here could have read that story," said Dickson, when Wallis began to bog down. There was a touch of awe in his tone.

  "Yes indeed," said the doctor, "I'd like to hear more of it."

  "Not until the children have gone to bed," said Margaret firmly. "I don't want them frightened to death!"

  But as time went on the children, who seemed to grow older and more inquisitive with incredible rapidity, were not unduly disturbed by anything they overheard. Wallis had read, and was eventually able to remember, a great many stories other than science fiction, and in addition there was the technical knowledge acquired learning his profession. The same applied to the material, both fact and fiction, recalled by the doctor and Dickson and even the girls. Singing was still a better form of entertainment than listening to stories -- music did not suffer so much with repetition -- although a song or an operetta did not give as much food for discussion afterwards. And the children, listening to descriptions of the stars and navigation and Jenny's Ranch Romances and passages from Gray's Anatomy or Gray Lensman, were excited and curious and just a little bit bored by it all.

  "You have to realize," said the doctor, after they had discussed just this point for several hours and some of them were still feeling worried about it, "that practically everything we tell them is secondhand. Deep down they may doubt that such things as dogs and cities and forests exist. It is very difficult to describe the whole world in words alone, and the models and pictures we've tried to produce are not really adequate.

  "As well," he went on, "at their particular age-group they are physically and mentally restless. They want to do things with the knowledge they have learned, and it is bound to take a while for them to realize, like their parents, that the only long-term activity available to them here is mental activity. . . ."

  But the adjustment of using the mind for the greater part of every day rather than their young and, in the circumstances, surprisingly healthy bodies was not an easy one for adolescents to make. There was trouble -- quarreling and nagging and even an odd fist-fight, in which the fond, irritated or at times downright angry parents could not help but become embroiled -- which lasted for the best part of five years. But the children married young, thus helping to stabilize things considerably. All except Richard Dickson, the third child and second son of that family.

  Margaret and the commander did not produce another daughter, or a son either, for that matter, so it looked as if young Richard was going to be a bachelor. Both professionally and personally the doctor was not in favor of Margaret's having any more children, and they had all absorbed enough of his medical diggings to appreciate the reasons. But he was at great pains to reassure Richard's parents that doing without female company was not a thing to be worried about, that he entirely disagreed with Freud and such people about the effects of sexual frustration, and that he himself was a case in point. Admittedly he was a little grumpy and hard to get on with at times, but this was due to his being a naturally mean and bad-tempered person. Dickson immediately agreed with him.

  But young Richard was mean and bad-tempered all the time.

  On the Unthan flagship the time passed and the popula- tion and their problems increased with great rapidity. One of the chief troubles was among the younger members of the crew, a rebelliousness which came close to open mutiny. To the captain the reason for it was beyond understanding.

  "Three grandchildren for you and four for me does not constitute a population explosion!" Captain Deslann said hotly, the disagreement lines around Hellahar's mouth not helping his anger any. "Even if those numbers were doubled and all restraint removed from subsequent generations -- and neither of those possibilities is likely to occur, first because your training methods come close to hypnoconditioning in their effects and secondly because of the fact that the incidence of male sterility is directly proportional to the degree of inbreeding -- this is still a big ship and we can devote more compartments to food-growing. The problem is not immediate, but I can't make Haynor see that! The trouble with that young fool is that -- "

  "He's young?" said Hellahar quickly. "And we aren't?"

  "I do not believe that my thought processes have atrophied to such an extent that -- "

  "Very often, sir," said Hellahar, "that is one of the symptoms."

  Deslann kept silent for a long time. He was thinking that the healer had turned n
asty in his old age, even though his mind had remained clear and sharp; and Deslann himself was not so old that he would suffer much more of such insubordination without doing something pretty drastic about it. When he went on his voice was quieter, more controlled, and much more angry.

  He said, "Haynor has the highest intelligence and aptitude of anyone in his generation, which is one of the reasons for my anger and disappointment at him and his ridiculous ideas. If it wasn't for them I'd have no hesitation in naming him the next captain. But discounting the fact that he, as your son, will receive the benefit of any of your doubts, is there any sane reason for wasting reaction mass simply to come within visual distance of another ship?"

  "Put like that, no sir," Hellahar replied, answering the question but ignoring the tone. "But this is not a completely sane situation we have here, and boredom is proportional to the level of intelligence and that is the main reason behind the support for Haynor's proposal. This is not my specialty, but if the idea could be modified and perhaps incorporated into the training program . . ."

  It was grossly unnatural, Deslann knew as well as did the healer, for young, healthy, and intelligent people to have as their sole purpose in life the observation of colored lights and similar displays which always gave the same information, and hence required no corrective action, for year after year and sometimes for generation after generation. Despite the great stress placed on the importance and meaning of those lights there was a growing feeling, among some of the second generation trainees especially, that they were in fact only colored lights and to worry about them was silly. The flagship was their world and the things which the elders said were taking place outside it were very hard to believe. If another ship like their own, though, were to become clearly visible in one of the direct vision panels, Deslann told himself, that should take care of the doubts: It would furnish clear proof that each and every light in the winking vastness of the computer room was a ship and should be guided and cherished as such.

  Unless the young fools began to doubt the evidence of their own eyes, or believed that the image in the direct vision panel was simply another display similar to the pictures shown on the educator screens

  Deslann began to feel angry again with Hellahar. The healer had an irritating habit of sending the captain's mind off at a tangent just when Deslann was on the point of figuratively tearing Hellahar's dorsal off and, what was even more irritating, the tangent usually ended in a question which just had to be answered and the process of finding the answer required all Deslann's attention so that the other's insubordination went not only unpunished but very often unremarked.

  Despite the urgency of this problem, Deslann was sure of one thing, he was not going to allow anyone to move the flagship. He had a brief, horrifying mental picture of the fleet arriving in the target system while its center of control was lost somewhere between the stars.

  Yet, if the flagship were to remain in station, it did not necessarily mean that one of the other ships could not be brought to them, one of the nearer expendables in the vanguard, for instance. The disadvantages were that his own trainee engineers would not get the chance to apply thrust to their own ship and the eager young astrogators and computer technicians would have to forego the pleasures of a massive reprograming which a shift in position of the control center would entail; on the other hand, the advantages were many -- especially if Hellahar and himself were able to dramatize things so as to keep everyone interested for a long, long time.

  Watching that single light signaling in the computer room its change of position as it slowly approached them -- and it would be slow, because part of the drill would be on the control and guidance of ships over great distances using only the tiny reserve of reaction mass carried for predestination maneuvering -- could be made something more than an interesting game. And when the expendable arrived -- a brute of a ship a little more than one great Long Sleep tank filled with the largest domestic and food species left on Untha -- the doubters would doubt no more, for the timers on the expendable ships were set to warm their cargo only on landing. If seeing the ship and being able to travel across to it was not enough, then having to chip a way through solid ice in search of more living space or a supply of meat should convince the most fanatical doubter of its reality.

  There would be the more subtle and long-term effects as well. Another ship close by, even though it contained only cooled, nonintelligent domestic animals, would make space a much less lonely and frightening place, and it would be a constant reminder of the many other ships in the fleet and of their purpose. But like most projects of real importance on the ship, this one would take many years to complete.

  Too many years, perhaps, for Deslann to see it through.

  XVI

  With the passing years the doctor's hair had gone white, Dickson's had gone gray, and the lieutenant commander's had gone completely. Both Jenny and Margaret had aged more than any of the men, but nobody mentioned this and there were no mirrors in Gulf Trader to tell them about it. The Game had become so much a part of their lives that it would have been harder to stop playing it than it would have been to stop breathing. With their children they made the great metal tanks echo to the songs of Bing Crosby and the tunes of Gilbert and Sullivan, or acted out famous plays or sometimes quite trivial incidents from their own past lives, or they had deep, philosophical discussions regarding the probable background, motivations, and future fictional actions of some very minor character in a remembered story (the doctor had completed a fourth story in the Hornblower series which, if C. S. Forester ever heard about it, would probably turn the poor man to cowboys and Indians).

  They had a lot of fun when the discussion revolved around a minor character from one of Wallis's stories, a character who was not even human, but oddly enough it often happened that such humorous and ridiculous philosophizings became the most serious of them all. Even so, their lives were not all singing and sparkling conversation and fun. There was disaffection and quarreling and, at the times when Richard was directly involved, behavior which was close to mutiny.

  At seventeen Richard had developed a positive genius for starting fights. One of his little exercises involved asking his seniors -- the original survivors, that is, not his older brother or sister -- for permission to engage in some activity which just might be allowable. He would ask their permission separately on this borderline matter, so that some were sure to give it while some would refuse, after which he would take his course of action much farther than his original request allowed, safe in the knowledge that he could play his seniors off against each other to such an extent that he would escape scot free. Many times Wallis had to stop arguments just short of violence by pulling rank, something he hated to do over such petty incidents. And more and more often he found himself telling Dickson and the doctor what he would like to do with Richard, from tying him neck deep in the bath for a couple of days to hanging him from the projecting outlet pipe in Number Four, which was the nearest thing they had to a yardarm.

  Realizing that the commander was not even half joking when he said some of these things, the doctor took a special interest in Richard. The fact that they were the only bachelors on the ship gave them something in common, Radford said, and then he outlined his plan for giving them something else in common. When Wallis expressed his doubts regarding this proposal, the doctor went on to explain that Richard was at a difficult age and that the drives and pressures of adolescence were being aggravated by what must be admitted was a highly abnormal situation. It would probably help what ailed him if he was made to feel more important, or even superior in some ways to those around him. Most of Radford's specialized knowledge was too repetitious and boring for general distribution during the Game, but if he could interest Richard in becoming his successor . . .

  Wallis still had doubts, but they disappeared five months later when the senior Dicksons and Wallises became grandparents twice over within a matter of minutes. It was a hectic time for everyone, espec
ially for the doctor and Richard, who delivered two mothers of their babies practically simultaneously, but they coped very well with this emergency. When a measure of peace had returned to the tanks, the seniors, who somehow had found themselves pushed out to the fringes of all the activity, did some serious talking about Richard.

  "Your son is going to be a good doctor one of these days," Margaret Wallis told Jenny Dickson as they were winding up the discussion. "You don't have to worry about him from now on. He'll settle down, you'll see."

  "Of course he was simply following my lead," said the doctor smugly. "I admit that the second one arrived five minutes before I even saw it, but the fact still remains that -- "

  ". . . He was following your lead," Dickson finished for him, and then added proudly, "from about twenty yards out in front!"

  "A mere technicality," said the doctor. He looked even prouder of Richard than did his assistant's mother and father.