And Now the News

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “There is nothing in my world or in my experience you can’t tell me about. You know I’ll understand,” Tanyne pleaded. He came closer. “Are you ill? I have all the skills of the surgeons who have lived since the Three. Let me in.”

  “No!” It was hardly a word; it was an explosion.

  Tanyne fell back a step. “I beg your pardon, Bril. I won’t ask again. But—tell me. Please tell me. I must be able to help you!”

  All right, thought Bril, half hysterically, I’ll tell you and you can laugh your fool red head off. It won’t matter once we seed your planet with Big Plague. “I can’t come out. I’ve ruined my clothes.”

  “Bril! What can that matter? Here, throw them out; we can fix them, no matter what it is.”

  “No!” He could just see what would happen with these universal talents getting hold of the most compact and deadly armory this side of the Sumner System.

  “Then wear mine.” Tan put his hands to the belt of black stones.

  “I wouldn’t be seen dead in a flimsy thing like that. Do you think I’m an exhibitionist?”

  With more heat (it wasn’t much) than Bril had ever seen in him, Tanyne said, “You’ve been a lot more conspicuous in those winding sheets you’ve been wearing than you ever would in this.”

  Bril had never thought of that. He looked longingly at the bright nothing which flowed up and down from the belt, and then at his own black harness, humped up against the wall under its hook. He hadn’t been able to bear the thought of putting them back on since the accident happened, and he had not been this long without clothes since he’d been too young to walk.

  “What happened to your clothes, anyway?” Tan asked sympathetically.

  Laugh, thought Bril, and I’ll kill you right now and you’ll never have a chance to see your race die. “I sat down on the—I’ve been using it as a chair; there’s only room for one seat in here. I must have kicked the switch. I didn’t even feel it until I got up. The whole back of my—” Angrily he blurted, “Why doesn’t that ever happen to you people?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Tan said, passing the news item by as if it meant nothing. Well, to him it probably was nothing. “The unit only accepts non-living matter.”

  “Leave that thing you call clothes in front of the door,” Bril grunted after a strained silence. “Perhaps I’ll try it.”

  Tanyne tossed the belt up against the door and strode away, singing softly. His voice was so big that even his soft singing seemed to go on forever.

  But eventually Bril had the field to himself, the birdsong and the wind. He went to the door and away, lifted his seatless breeches sadly and folded them out of sight under the other things on the hook. He looked at the door again and actually whimpered once, very quietly. At last he put the gauntlet against the doorplate, and the door, never designed to open a little way, obediently slid wide. He squeaked, reached out, caught up the belt, scampered back and slapped at the plate.

  “No one saw,” he told himself urgently.

  He pulled the belt around him. The buckle parts knew each other like a pair of hands.

  The first thing he was aware of was the warmth. Nothing but the belt touched him anywhere and yet there was a warmth on him, soft, safe, like a bird’s breast on eggs. A split second later, he gasped.

  How could a mind fill so and not feel pressure? How could so much understanding flood into a brain and not break it?

  He understood about the roller which treated the hardboard; it was a certain way and no other, and he could feel the rightness of that sole conjecture.

  He understood the ions of the mold-press that made the belts, and the life-analog he wore as a garment. He understood how his finger might write on a screen, and the vacuum of demand he might send out to have this house built so, and so, and exactly so; and how the natives would hurry to fill it.

  He remembered without effort Tanyne’s description of the feel of playing an instrument, making, building, molding, holding, sharing, and how it must be to play in a milling crowd beside a task, moving randomly and only for pleasure, yet taking someone’s place at vat or bench, furrow or fishnet, the very second another laid down a tool.

  He stood in his own quiet flame, in his little coffin-cubicle, looking at his hands and knowing without question that they would build him a model of a city on Kit Carson if he liked, or a statue of the soul of the Sole Authority.

  He knew without question that he had the skills of this people, and that he could call on any of those skills just by concentrating on a task until it came to him how the right way (for him) would feel. He knew without surprise that these resources transcended even death; for a man could have a skill and then it was everyman’s, and if the man should die, his skill still lived in everyman.

  Just by concentrating—that was the key, the keyway, the keystone to the nature of this device. A device, that was all—no mutations, nothing ‘extra-sensory’ (whatever that meant); only a machine like other machines. You have a skill, and a feeling about it; I have a task. Concentration on my task sets up a demand for your skill; through the living flame you wear, you transmit; through mine, I receive. Then I perform; and what bias I put upon that performance depends on my capabilities. Should I add something to that skill,then mine is the higher, the more complete; the feeling of it is better, and it is I who will transmit next time there is a demand.

  And he understood the authority that lay in this new aura, and it came to him then how this home planet could be welded into a unit such as the Universe had never seen. Xanadu had not done it, because Xanadu had grown randomly with its gift, without the preliminary pounding and shaping and milling of authority and discipline.

  But Kit Carson! Carson with all skills and all talents shared among all its people, and overall and commanding, creating that vacuum of need and instant fulfillment, the Sole Authority and the State. It must be so (even though, far down, something in him wondered why the State kept so much understanding away from its people), for with this new depth came a solemn new dedication to his home and all it stood for.

  Trembling, he unbuckled the belt and turned back its left buckle. Yes, there it was, the formula for the precipitate. And now he understood the pressing processes and he had the flame to strike into new belts and make them live—by the millions, Tanyne had said, the billions.

  Tanyne had said … why had he never said that the garments of Xanadu were the source of all their wonders and perplexities?

  But had Bril ever asked?

  Hadn’t Tanyne begged him to take a garment so he could be one with Xanadu? The poor earnest idiot, to think he could be swayed away from Carson this way! Well, then, Tanyne and his people would have an offer, too, and it would all be even; soon they could, if they would, join the shining armies of a new Kit Carson.

  From his hanging black suit, a chime sounded. Bril laughed and gathered up his old harness and all the fire and shock and paralysis asleep in its mighty, compact weapons. He slapped open the door and sprang to the bubble which waited outside, and flung his old uniform in to lie crumpled on the floor, a broken chrysalis. Shining and exultant, he leaped in after it and the bubble sprang away skyward.

  Within a week after Bril’s return to Kit Carson in the Sumner System, the garment had been duplicated, and duplicated again, and tested.

  Within a month, nearly two hundred thousand had been distributed, and eighty factories were producing round the clock.

  Within a year, the whole planet, all the millions, were shining and unified as never before, moving together under their Leader’s will like the cells of a hand.

  And then, in shocking unison, they all flickered and dimmed, every one, so it was time for the lactic acid dip which Bril had learned of. It was done in panic, without test or hesitation; a small taste of this luminous subjection had created a mighty appetite. All was well for a week—

  And then, as the designers in Xanadu had planned, all the other segments of the black belts joined the first meager two in full op
eration.

  A billion and a half human souls, who had been given the techniques of music and the graphic arts, and the theory of technology, now had the others: philosophy and logic and love; sympathy, empathy, forbearance, unity in the idea of their species rather than in their obedience; membership in harmony with all life everywhere.

  A people with such feelings and their derived skills cannot be slaves. As the light burst upon them, there was only one concentration possible to each of them—to be free, and the accomplished feeling of being free. As each found it, he was an expert in freedom, and expert succeeded expert, transcended expert, until (in a moment) a billion and a half human souls had no greater skill than the talent of freedom.

  So Kit Carson, as a culture, ceased to exist, and something new started there and spread through the stars nearby.

  And because Bril knew what a Senator was and wanted to be one, he became one.

  In each other’s arms, Tanyne and Nina were singing softly, when the goblet in the mossy niche chimed.

  “Here comes another one,” said Wonyne, crouched at their feet. “I wonder what will make him beg, borrow, or steal a belt.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Tanyne, stretching luxuriously, “as long as he gets it. Which one is he, Wo—that noisy mechanism on the other side of the small moon?”

  “No,” said Wonyne. “That one’s still sitting there squalling and thinking we don’t know it’s there. No, this is the force-field that’s been hovering over Fleetwing District for the last two years.”

  Tanyne laughed. “That’ll make conquest number eighteen for us.”

  “Nineteen,” corrected Nina dreamily. “I remember because eighteen was the one that just left and seventeen was that funny little Bril from the Sumner System. Tan, for a time that little man loved me.” But that was a small thing and did not matter.

  The Claustrophile

  “PASS MR. MAGRUDER the hominy, Chris!” His mother’s mild, tired voice at last penetrated. “For pity’s sakes, son, how many times—”

  But Tess Milburn came to his rescue, reaching a thin arm, a sallow hand, to the dish of grits and passing it down to the boarder. Mr. Magruder didn’t say anything. He never said anything. He never ate hominy grits, either, but that wasn’t the point. When Miz Binns set out the dinner, everything had to be passed to everybody, no matter what.

  Chris sighed and mumbled he was sorry. He let his mind drift back to the three-body problem. He knew he couldn’t solve the three-body problem, but he couldn’t be satisfied that it was impossible. Chris Binns was a computer mechanic, a good one, and what he was really pursuing was (a) the right question to ask the (b) right kind of machine.

  He frowned at the problem as if he could squeeze an answer out of his brow, and almost had what he wanted when he became aware that he had impaled Tess Milburn with his unseeing gaze and was scowling fiercely at her. She smiled, that brief, weak showing of teeth that she did instead of blushing. It was Chris who blushed, a very little, but already he was sliding back into his thoughts, away from embarrassment, apology, even from the dinner table.

  The solution, he thought, lies here: that it’s fair to consider all three orbits as ellipses and the final solution as a predictable relationship between the lengths of one focal axis of each. He saw, clearly, a circular cam riding a parabolic track, and the linkage between three such tracks and their cams trembled in the wings of his intellect, ready for the spotlight, the entrance—

  Wham!

  The screen door slammed back against the verandah wall and a heavy suitcase simultaneously struck the floor by the table.

  “Hit the blockhouse!” roared a heavy baritone. “ ’Ware my tail-jets! I’m a-comin’ in!”

  “Billy! Oh, Billy!” cried Miz Binns.

  She was on her feet with her arms out, but couldn’t use them before she was caught up and swung around by the laughing giant who had hit the floor right by the suitcase.

  Tess Milburn sat astonished, stopped, like some many-functioned machine when its master switch is thrown; chewing, breathing, blinking, probably heartbeat, certainly cerebration, all ceasing at once in the face of something she had no reflexes for.

  Mr. Magruder made a sound that would have been a grunt if it had been vocalized, and bent to pick up the fork he had dropped. With no change of expression, he scrubbed it with his napkin and then went on eating.

  Chris Binns sat with his eyes closed, to all appearances as frozen as the girl, but inwardly in an agony of activity as he pursued his vanished thoughts, humbly asking only for their shape and texture, not their whole substance, something he could find again and rebuild on. But it was not possible; the lights were out inside, the doors closed. He blew gently through his nostrils, making up his mind to try again some time, and opened his eyes. “Hi, Bill.”

  The cadet put his mother down. “Contact, shipmate!” he said thunderously. His hair was crisp, sun-colored; his shoulders bulged under the short, full cape of the space-blue topcoat. Its four buttons, gold, white, green, red for the inner planets, glittered in their midnight background as he flung himself on his brother. Chris, flailing away the accurate and painful pounding of the cadet’s greeting, suddenly giggled foolishly, slid his chair back, bent sideways.

  “Hi. Hi.”

  “And if it isn’t little old Tessie Heartburn,” Billy roared, bestowing an explosive kiss on Tess Milburn’s cheek. “And Old Faithful himself, star boarder extraordinary, conversationalist par ex—” His heavy hand was stopped abruptly in its descent to the old man’s shoulder apparently by nothing more than Mr. Magruder’s quick glance upward.

  The hand raised again, to be a facetious, almost insulting salute. “Mr. Magruder.”

  Mr. Magruder nodded once, curtly, and went about the business of eating.

  Miz Binns fluttered and clucked and cried. “Billyboy, oh, it’s so good to, why didn’t you tell us you were, have you had your, now, Tess, if you’ll just move a little this way and, Chris, just, and I’ll set you another—”

  “You wired you’d be here in the morning,” said Chris.

  “Sun always comes up when little Billee walks in,” grinned the cadet. “But ack-shull, shipmate, I got a ride in a supply truck, begged off final inspection, and jatoed out.” He looked swiftly around the table. “Where’s Horrible Horrocks?”

  “Billy!” squeaked his mother.

  “Miss Horrocks got transferred to another school,” said Chris. “Thought we wrote you about it.”

  “Oh, yes. Forgot. Read through the home gossip real fast,” said Billy carelessly.

  Miz Binns said, “Mr. Magruder found us a new boarder for her room. A Miss Gerda Stein. We thought she’d be settled in by the time you arrived. But you didn’t arrive tomorrow, did you?”

  Billy laughed and kissed her. “I sure didn’t arrive tomorrow. I’m going to arrive ten minutes ago.”

  “Oh-h, you know what I … silly-Billy. Chris, come help me.”

  Chris looked at her numbly for a moment, then got to his feet, jostling the table. Billy laughed and said, “I know you, Mom. You don’t need help. You’ve got secrets.” He turned grinning to Tess Milburn. “They’re prolly going to talk about you.”

  “Oh, Billy, you’re awful, just awful,” his mother said pinkly. Mr. Magruder only steadied his water glass as Chris bumped the table, and then began to butter a roll. Tess Milburn gave her embarrassed lip-flicker, and Miz Binns said, “Don’t you listen to that wicked boy, Tess,” and shook a fond finger at Billy. She made an abrupt beckoning motion and disappeared into the kitchen.

  Chris followed her out. She stood by the door, and when he was in the room, she reached out a practiced hand and stopped the door from swinging. With the ignorance and acoustics apparently possible only to mothers, she began speaking intensely in a whisper which was totally inaudible to him, pointing and flapping toward the dining room, moving her lips too much and her jaw not at all.

  “What?” he asked, not too softly. He was mildly irritated.r />
  She cast her eyes up to heaven and shushed him violently. She took his arm and backed across the kitchen, looking past his shoulder all the while as if she expected everyone in the dining room to be pressing ears to the door. “I said what did you have to go and have her for dinner tonight of all nights, Billy home and all?”

  “We had a date. Besides, I didn’t know Billy was—”

  “It’s very inconsiderate,” she complained.

  “Well, what do you want me to do?”

  “It ought to be sort of a family thing, your brother home from school.”

  The irritation rose to as high as it ever got with Chris—not very high. “Then let’s get rid of Mr. Magruder, too.”

  “That’s different and you know it.”

  He did know it. Mr. Magruder had his own bubble of a life within the lives they all led and he stayed unbreakably within it. He communed with himself, his newspaper and his habits, which were so regular that, once established, they required no imagination or conjecture from anyone else in the place. He could talk: but he needn’t. They hardly saw him, which led them all to believe that he didn’t see them much either.

  “Well, all right,” said Chris. “I’ll just explain it to her and take her home and come right back.”

  “You can’t, you can’t,” she fretted. It was what she wanted him to do, but that disqualified it; she wouldn’t have that on her conscience.

  He shrugged and said, “Then what did you call me out here for?” The question was not rude, but a genuine request for information.

  “It’s a shame, that’s all,” she answered. She squeezed her hands together and looked at them unhappily. There seemed to be nothing else for him to say and certainly nothing he could do. He turned to go back to the dining room, but she said, “Why is she here so much, Chris?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. She—” He made a vague gesture. He really didn’t know. Tess dropped around occasionally—hadn’t it been to visit Miz Binns, anyway at first? And since she was around so much, he talked to her.