And Now the News

by Theodore Sturgeon

  “Just because the Barrier is a sphere,” said the captain, “everyone assumes the control has to be in the center. Well, it isn’t. It’s right here at the edge, and heaven help anything that goes in there in a rush, trying to converge on the center!”

  “Sir …” came the whisper.

  “Now look,” said the captain, winding the zoom handle again. The view backed away from the golden sphere until it was almost lost. Suddenly the screen filled with a flat-topped, streamlined—

  “A pod, a ship’s pod!” said England.

  The captain stepped back a pace and watched the pod with glowing eyes. His hands were pressed tight together and some great suppressed excitement yearned in him to burst free. We looked from him to the peeper.

  Under his breath, the captain said, “Git’m! Go git’m!”

  “Sir …”

  “Shut up, monk.”

  “That pod’s inside the Barrier!” somebody said. Me, I think.

  “Look! Look there!”

  It was like a segment of ivory knitting needle. It was turning slowly end over end. It approached the pod slowly, high, passed close by and drifted out of the picture.

  “A missile, a big one.”

  “My God, what’s happened?” gasped Donato.

  “The Barrier’s down,” said the captain, as if he couldn’t hold the words inside any longer. “It’s down, you see? It’s gone and the missiles are all dead.”

  “Sir, oh, Cap’n … I can’t find Virginia. Where’s Virginia, Cap’n?”

  “You’re looking at her, Blum. You’re looking right at her,” said the captain, his eyes fixed on the screen.

  Something hit us, scattered us. For a moment, the mess hall was a swirl of grunts and outraged yells, and then the utility monkey had tumbled us aside and was standing in front of the peeper, one hand on each side of the frame. He seemed a half head taller, all at once, and his one hairy arm, where it passed close by me, had cords on it I hadn’t known about before; his head was a lion’s head.

  Suddenly he barked, “What’d you do? What’d you do?” He was talking to the captain, who kept looking over Blum’s shoulder at the picture and was laughing softly. Then the monkey whirled from the screen, turning as if to turn was to tear something, and he faced the captain and said again, “What’d you do? What’d you do with Virginia?”

  The captain stopped laughing altogether and was a captain duty-talking to a utility monkey. “I gave her orders and I put her in that pod and sent her on her way. Any objections, mister?”

  Blum’s eyes began to protrude—honestly, you could see them press outward. His mouth opened slowly, slowly, and a dribble suddenly scored the corner of the mouth and down the side of the chin; the hands came up, clawed, half-grasping. The nostrils trembled, trembled … and then he screamed so loud, so close to us, it was a like a big dazzling light flashing to blind us.

  We reared back from that scream, pawing at it.

  Next thing was Blum, crouched over and peering ahead as he ran, trying to go somewhere, not knowing how. He ran crazily to the airlock hatch and hit it with his fists, and turned with his back to it and screamed again. “You send me, you hear? You send me with Virginia, you hear me, Cap’n?”

  Donato strolled over toward him and, smiling, said the stupidest thing I ever heard squirted into a violent silence: “Aw, come on, monkey, let’s all be chums.”

  Blum screamed again and Donato didn’t wait to get turned around. He ran straight backward until he hit me, and I caught him and held him up so he didn’t fall.

  “Captain, sir,” Donato said, squinching his head around as he dangled from my hands, “he won’t mind me at all, Captain.”

  “Get to your quarters, Blum,” said the captain from way back in his throat.

  “You bring her back or you send me out with her,” slavered Blum. “You hear me?”

  “Get—to—your—quarters.”

  Blum put up his claws. He began walking toward the captain, chewing on his own mouthparts, and his eyes were crazy. The captain bent a little low and put his arms out a little from his sides, and moved very slowly toward Blum. We all got back out of the way.

  Blum said, “Now! You hear me?” very softly, and leaped.

  The captain stepped aside and hit him. I thought it was on the head, but England told me later it was on the side of the neck, toward the back. The monkey was in midair when the captain hit him, and he went right down on the deck on his face, and he didn’t put out his hands to stop himself, and he didn’t move.

  We all looked at him and then at each other.

  “Take him to his quarters,” said the captain.

  His voice startled me because it wasn’t where I thought it was, standing by the sprawled-out monkey. He was already across the room staring into the peeper. For him, the thing was finished; probably his heart wasn’t quick any more. He was back with his work, his job. The rest of us had poundings in the sides of our necks and we didn’t know what to do.

  “Go on, go on. Get him out of here. You, Palmer. You’re the biggest.”

  I was going to splutter, but I held on tight to it and didn’t. I said, “See here, I don’t have to—”

  From back in his throat, like before, the captain spoke to me. It was a different thing, being the one he spoke to like that and not watching somebody else get it.

  He said, “You see here—you do have to. Whatever I say, you have to, not only you, Palmer, but all four of you clowns. The party’s over and the work’s done, and from now on out, you mind me and think first of what I want. At all times. Is that clear, mister?”

  I said, loud, “Well, I—” and the skipper ripped his eyes away from the screen, almost like Blum, tearing something, and looked at me. So I picked up the monkey’s shoulders and dragged him back to his cabin.

  It was just like ours, only he didn’t have quite so much stuff lying around, or anyway what there was in square stacks.

  I tumbled him into the bunk and closed the door, because that was the only clear place to lean back against, and I leaned on it and tried to get my breath back.

  The monkey started to make a scratchy sound in the rear of his throat. I looked down at him. His head was twisted to one side. It was jammed against the pillow. His eyes were open.

  “Cut that out, monk.” He went right on doing it. “That noise, cut it out, hear me? I said, you hear me, mister?”

  That “mister” didn’t sound a bit like the skipper’s. I was embarrassed.

  The monkey’s eyes stayed open and I realized he wasn’t blinking them; he wasn’t seeing out of them. I couldn’t stand that breathing noise, so finally I straightened out his head and put the pillow under it. He stopped the noise right away. He closed his eyes.

  I still couldn’t get my breath. He had blood on his face; maybe that was it.

  He didn’t open his eyes, but he began to talk, very fast, very soft. It was like being too far away from someone to understand what was being said, and then it was like coming closer …

  “… all she had to do was let herself and she couldn’t do it, she couldn’t just stop fighting and believe. It was like she’d die if she believed anything. She wanted to. More than anything she wanted to. But it was like someone told her, if you believe in anything, you’ll die.”

  He opened his eyes suddenly and saw me and closed them again.

  “Palmer. You Palmer you, you saw it your own self, the time she cried. All that time, all those weeks, those gray eyes still and hiding whatever it was she had inside her, and me begging her and begging: ‘Virginia, oh, Virginia, I don’t care what you think of me. I wouldn’t want you to love me, Virginia. But only believe me; you can so be loved, you’re worth loving, I love you. I do, Virginia; just you believe that once, because it’s true, and after that you’ll be able to believe other things … little ones at first; I’ll help you with them, and always tell you the truth.’ ”

  “I said, ‘Don’t love me, Virginia, or think about it at all. I wouldn’t
know what to do with it if you gave me anything like that.’ I said, ‘Just trust me is all I want, so you can ask me what’s the truth and I’ll tell you. But believe I love you; I’m not much, Virginia, so I guess that’s not too much to start on. Believe I love you, Virginia, will you just do that?’ And she …”

  He lay with his eyes open for a long time and I thought he was unconscious again, but then he blinked his eyes and went on.

  “… She cried, all at once, all over, and she said, ‘Monkey, monkey, you’re tearing me up, can’t you see? I want to believe you. I want to believe you more than anything in the world. But I can’t, I don’t know how, I’m not supposed to, I’m not allowed.’ That’s what she said. And she cried again and said, ‘But I want to believe you, monkey. You just don’t know how much I want to believe that. Only … nothing is what it looks like, nothing is what it’s supposed to be, no one really wants what they say they want. I can’t believe them and I can’t believe you.’ ”

  “She said, ‘Suppose I believed you and then the day came when things were all straight and true, and they let you see everything; and suppose I found out then that everything you said wasn’t so; found out maybe there was no you at all, monkey … what about that? I couldn’t stand that. I don’t dare believe you, because I want to. If I don’t believe anything about anything or anyone, then if things get all true, I can start there and be all right without losing anything.’ And she cried some more and then, you, Palmer, you came in, and in a second she was back inside her flat gray eyes. So she didn’t believe me and that’s why.”

  I couldn’t get my breath. Blum couldn’t get his breath. I leaned on the door and he lay on the bed and we panted.

  “There was a difference,” he whispered, chasing some thought he was having. “She had a way of making you doubt anything you said. I told her my mother could cook. She said, ‘Your mother could cook’ in that flat way, and you know, I had to think and wonder if my mother really could. That’s what I mean. But I said to her, ‘Virginia, you know, I love you,’ and she said, ‘You love me’ in that same way, like who ever heard of such a thing?”

  “But what I’m trying to say, that didn’t touch me, when she did that when I said I love you. I looked into how I felt and I felt the same no matter what she said. So about that, there was a difference. That’s how it was all right to say, ‘Believe me, believe me about that.’ I knew that things could change. I knew that almost anything I told her could be wrong, some way. But not that. She could trust me with that. And she wanted to. At least I got that.”

  I leaned against the door, feeling embarrassed, and then I could turn it to anger.

  I said, “You’re stupid, monkey, you know? You’re crew, she’s CG. She couldn’t stop you. Why didn’t you just go right ahead? That’s what she’s aboard for.”

  But that didn’t make him angry. He looked up at the ceiling and said quietly, “Yeah, she said that, too. She said, ‘You don’t know what you want, monkey,’ she said. She said, ‘This is what you want. So go ahead, only stop talking about it.’ I said no. I said there could be a time—I hadn’t thought about it yet; I wanted something else first—I wanted her to believe me. She said I was crazy and to keep away from her then, but after, you saw it, Palmer. After, she said she wanted to believe me, more than anything.”

  He was quiet at last, breathing easily, thinking about something to smile at. I spoke to him, but he didn’t answer. He was asleep, I guess. I opened the door quietly and closed it on him and went back to the mess hall.

  They were all there by the peeper, watching.

  I said, “He’s asleep now, but there’s going to be particular hell to pay when he wakes up and really understands she isn’t here.”

  The skipper looked away from the screen at me and then back again. He wouldn’t spit on the mess hall deck, but he might as well, the way his face looked. He couldn’t worry about that monkey.

  I asked Potter, “What goes?”

  Potter said, “Whether to get mad or glad, I don’t know. You specialist, Palmer—you’re a clown. And England. Donato. Me, too. Virginia, she was the specialist all along. She was the one this whole thing is for. How much farther?” he called out.

  “A few meters,” said Donato, absorbed.

  I looked at the peeper. The ship’s pod, that long false underbelly we’d hauled all the way from the Earth Worlds, it was drifting in close to that golden ball. That ball, I could see it now, it was big as a supership if you could roll a supership into a ball. It was big as some moons. There were pale sticks drifting all over, dozens of them.

  “Dead missiles, you see?” said Potter, watching the screen. “All dead. Every single cold-fusion power plant and explosive in a thousand kilometers is dead. Maybe more. Ours, too.”

  “Ours?”

  “That hum, that flicker. We’re not tapping a cold-fusion plant now, Palmer. We’re taking off a steam turbine, water superheated by a parabolic mirror from that sun yonder.”

  “Steam turbine take us home?”

  “Stupid!”

  Donato chimed in. It was weird. Everybody talking whispery, as if loud noises would spoil something in the peeper. Nobody looked at anybody to talk, just kept watching the peeper, some of them moving the mouth all to one side to talk to one, to the other side to talk to someone else.

  Donato said, “Little turbine wouldn’t move this can half a length.”

  “It’s all right,” England said. “What she’s doing, she’s going in there to leech on to that planetoid. First there’s a catalyst that will crumble a pit in the armor, because a bomb’ll hardly scratch it. Them when the skin’s thin enough, she’s got a bomb there. It goes off and no more Barrier.”

  “He said the Barrier’s gone.”

  “Sure. She damped it. She’s holding it dead. If she let go, bango, back comes the Barrier and all those missiles come to life.”

  “What’s this damped, holding it dead, letting go—what is all this?” I was getting impatient.

  The skipper saw fit to say something. “We call it the D-field because—” he was quiet a long time—“because that way it sounds like something we know about, can know about.”

  He flicked a quick glance at all of us, as if somebody was going to laugh. Nobody was going to laugh.

  “What it is,” said the skipper, hating to say it, “it’s doubt. A field of doubt. I mean—well, doubt, that’s all.”

  Nobody said anything. Doubt, all right. But doubt has a way of getting invisible after a captain makes all those loud captain noises like he did.

  I imagine he knew that. None of it was our business, not any more, but he didn’t want to be doubted, not even by us specialists—us clowns.

  He said, “What we did, we found Virginia trying to commit suicide. She had this doubt thing on her back, naturally. She didn’t want to go on, because she had nothing she could believe in. Or just plain believe. Well, we took her and gave her some treatments … I’m a skipper, I don’t know the details … Anyway, she came out of it with what she had when she went in, but more so. Much more. You all felt it—don’t tell me you didn’t. She could make a man doubt his own name.”

  I said, “Yeah …” only realizing when I heard it that I’d said it aloud.

  Captain Steev watched the screen for a while and said under his breath, “That’s right … atta girl …” and then to us, “It was a tricky problem. Given that a concentrated disbelief in things could have an effect like this—just for the sake of argument—if you want someone to stop a big power plant from a great distance with this faculty, how do you transport that someone in a ship powered with the same type of plant?”

  “If it was a machine now,” said England, “I’d say assemble it only when you wanted to use it.”

  “That’s what they did with the first fission bombs,” said Donato knowledgeably. “They didn’t put it together until it was due to blow. They blew it by putting it together. But doing that with a person, now …”

  “You ha
ve the idea. You can’t disbelieve in anything until you know what it is, or at least what people think it is. I can’t believe or disbelieve that pyoop is a word for godmother in High Martian. I just don’t know. Well, Virginia didn’t know one way or another about a cold-fusion plant, though I swear ours gasped a time or two on the way out. She has a large amount of control over it.”

  England said with sudden impatience, “Excuse me, Captain, but the only reason I can stand here talking about this is I see it working.”

  “Let me tell you, then. The cold-fusion plant is a Luanae idea. It’s real simple-minded. Anybody can understand it once it’s explained to them. Everything was set up when we came out here, including you four. The crackpot experts who knew more than people who’ve been in this all their lives. But as far as she was concerned, you were experts right up to the time I set you up and knocked you down—factorial sigma and the square-centimeter magnetic field, hah!

  “She doubted you were experts when she first saw you, just because she doubted everything. When she saw what I did to you, she felt she was right to doubt. She reached a … sort of peak of disbelief. My God, didn’t you feel it?… Look there, she’s leeched down. Now the catalyst will be working on the armor. It won’t be long now.”

  “I still don’t see how just plain disbelief can shut down power plants,” I argued.

  “Not power plants. Just cold-fusion plants. Well, let me tell you and you’ll understand. I put a shot of sleep-gas in your ventilators and got you all out of the way. Then—”

  “Snowdrops,” I said, remembering.

  “Then I put her in the pod and told her to ride it, that’s all. Except I … armed her … like you arm a bomb, you see? I told her what a cold-fusion plant is. She didn’t care one way or the other, mind, but she listened while I explained it to her, all the parts. Then I gave her a paper and told her this is exactly what happens. I told her to read it as soon as the red light on the panel went on, which would be when she was clear of the ship.”

  “Read what?” somebody asked, after it got too quiet.

  It was a long wait, watching that pod leeched to the planetoid and nothing happening but white sticks drifting, rocks, bits of stuff the planetoid had pulled in and hadn’t been able to eat …