The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF

by Martin Greenberg

  A machine, oh, a machine—

  His brain lifted up in his effort to grasp the tremendousness of the dull-metaled immensity of what was spread here under a summer sun beneath a sky as blue as a remote southern sea.

  The machine towered into the heavens, five great tiers of metal, each a hundred feet high; and the superbly streamlined five hundred feet ended in a peak of light, a gorgeous spire that tilted straight up a sheer two hundred feet farther, and matched the very sun for brightness.

  And it was a machine, not a building, because the whole lower tier was alive with shimmering lights, mostly green, but sprinkled colorfully with red and occasionally a blue and yellow. Twice, as Fara watched, green lights directly in front of him flashed unscintillatingly into red.

  The second tier was alive with white and red lights, although there were only a fraction as many lights as on the lowest tier. The third section had on its dull-metal surface only blue and yellow lights; they twinkled softly here and there over the vast area.

  The fourth tier was a series of signs that brought the beginning of comprehension. The whole sign was:

  WHITE

  –

  BIRTHS

  RED

  –

  DEATHS

  GREEN

  –

  LIVING

  BLUE

  –

  IMMIGRATION TO EARTH

  YELLOW

  –

  EMIGRATION

  The fifth tier was also all sign, finally explaining:

  POPULATIONS

  SOLAR SYSTEM

  19,174,463,747

  EARTH

  11,193,247,361

  MARS

  1,097,298,604

  VENUS

  5,141,053,811

  MOONS

  1,742,863,971

  The numbers changed, even as he looked at them, leaping up and down, shifting below and above what they had first been. People were dying, being born, moving to Mars, to Venus, to the moons of Jupiter, to Earth’s moon, and others coming back again, landing minute by minute in the thousands of spaceports. Life went on in its gigantic fashion – and here was the stupendous record. Here was—

  “Better get in line,” said a friendly voice beside Fara. “It takes quite a while to put through an individual case, I understand.”

  Fara stared at the man. He had the distinct impression of having had senseless words flung at him. “In line?” he started – and stopped himself with a jerk that hurt his throat.

  He was moving forward, blindly, ahead of the younger man, thinking in a curious jumble that this must have been how Constable Jor was transported to Mars – when another of the man’s words penetrated.

  “Case?” said Fara violently. “Individual case!”

  The man, a heavy-faced, blue-eyed young chap of around thirty-five, looked at him curiously: “You must know why you’re here,” he said. “Surely, you wouldn’t have been sent through here unless you had a problem of some kind that the weapons shop courts will solve for you; there’s no other reason for coming to Information Center.”

  Fara walked on because he was in the line now, a fast-moving line that curved him inexorably around the machine; and seemed to be heading him toward a door that led into the interior of the great metal structure.

  So it was a building as well as a machine.

  A problem, he was thinking, why, of course, he had a problem, a hopeless, insoluble, completely tangled problem so deeply rooted in the basic structure of Imperial civilization that the whole world would have to be overturned to make it right.

  With a start, he saw that he was at the entrance. And the awed thought came: In seconds he would be committed irrevocably to – what?

  Inside was a long, shining corridor, with scores of completely transparent hallways leading off the main corridor. Behind Fara, the young man’s voice said, “There’s one, practically empty. Let’s go.”

  Fara walked ahead; and suddenly he was trembling. He had already noticed that at the end of each side hallway were a dozen young women sitting at desks, interviewing men and . . . and, good heavens, was it possible that all this meant—

  He grew aware that he had stopped in front of one of the girls.

  She was older than she had looked from a distance, over thirty, but good-looking, alert. She smiled pleasantly, but impersonally, and said, “Your name, please?”

  He gave it before he thought and added a mumble about being from the village of Glay. The woman said, “Thank you. It will take a few minutes to get your file. Won’t you sit down?”

  He hadn’t noticed the chair. He sank into it; his heart beating so wildly that he felt chocked. The strange thing was that there was scarcely a thought in his head, nor a real hope; only an intense, almost mind-wrecking excitement.

  With a jerk, he realized that the girl was speaking again, but only snatches of her voice came through that screen of tension in his mind:

  “—Information Center is . . .in effect . . .a bureau of statistics. Every person born . . . registered here . . . their education, change of address . . .occupation . . . and the highlights of their life. The whole is maintained by . . . combination of . . . unauthorized and unsuspected liaison with Imperial Chamber of Statistics and . . . through medium of agents . . . in every community—”

  It seemed to Fara that he was missing vital information, and that if he could only force his attention and hear more—He strained, but it was no use; his nerves were jumping madly and—

  Before he could speak, there was a click, and a thin, dark plate slid onto the woman’s desk. She took it up and examined it. After a moment, she said something into a mouthpiece, and in a short time two more plates precipitated out of the empty air onto her desk. She studied them passively, looked up finally.

  “You will be interested to know,” she said, “that your son, Cayle, bribed himself into a commission in the Imperial army with five thousand credits.”

  “Eh?” said Fara. He half rose from his chair, but before he could say anything, the young woman was speaking again, firmly, “I must inform you that the weapon shops take no action against individuals. Your son can have his job, the money he stole; we are not concerned with moral correction. That must come naturally from the individual, and from the people as a whole – and now if you will give me a brief account of your problem for the record and the court.”

  Sweating, Fara sank back into his seat; his mind was heaving; most desperately, he wanted more information about Cayle. He began: “But . . . but what . . . how—” He caught himself; and in a low voice described what had happened. When he finished, the girl said, “You will proceed now to the Name Room; watch for your name, and when it appears go straight to Room 474. Remember, 474 – and now, the line is waiting, if you please—”

  She smiled politely, and Fara was moving off almost before he realized it. He half turned to ask another question, but an old man was sinking into his chair. Fara hurried on, along a great corridor, conscious of curious blasts of sound coming from ahead.

  Eagerly, he opened the door; and the sound crashed at him with all the impact of a sledgehammer blow.

  It was such a colossal, incredible sound that he stopped short, just inside the door, shrinking back. He stood then trying to blink sense into a visual confusion that rivaled in magnitude that incredible tornado of noise.

  Men, men, men everywhere; men by the thousands in a long, broad auditorium, packed into rows of seats, pacing with an abandon of restlessness up and down aisles, and all of them staring with a frantic interest at a long board marked off into squares, each square lettered from the alphabet, from A, B, C, and so on to Z. The tremendous board with its lists of names ran the full length of the immense room.

  The Name Room, Fara was thinking shakily, as he sank into a seat – and his name would come up in the C’s, and then—

  It was like sitting in at a no-limit poker game, watching the jewel-precious cards turn up. It was like playing the exchange with
all the world at stake during a stock crash. It was nerve-racking, dazzling, exhausting, fascinating, terrible, mind-destroying, stupendous. It was—

  It was like nothing else on the face of the earth.

  New names kept flashing on to the twenty-six squares; and men would shout like insane beings and some fainted, and the uproar was absolutely shattering; the pandemonium raged on, one continuous, unbelievable sound.

  And every few minutes a great sign would flash along the board, telling everyone:

  “WATCH YOUR OWN INITIALS.”

  Fara watched, trembling in every limb. Each second it seemed to him that he couldn’t stand it an instant longer. He wanted to scream at the room to be silent; he wanted to jump up to pace the floor, but others who did that were yelled at hysterically, threatened wildly, hated with a mad, murderous ferocity.

  Abruptly, the blind savagery of it scared Fara. He thought unsteadily: “I’m not going to make a fool of myself. I—”

  “Clark, Fara—” winked the board. “Clark, Fara—”

  With a shout that nearly tore off the top of his head, Fara leaped to his feet. “That’s me!” he shrieked. “Me!”

  No one turned; no one paid the slightest attention. Shamed, he slunk across the room where an endless line of men kept crowding into a corridor beyond.

  The silence in the long corridor was almost as shattering as the mind-destroying noise it replaced. It was hard to concentrate on the idea of a number – 474.

  It was completely impossible to imagine what could lie beyond – 474.

  The room was small. It was furnished with a small, business-type table and two chairs. On the table were seven neat piles of folders, each file a different color. The piles were arranged in a row in front of a large, milky-white globe, that began to glow with a soft light. Out of its depths, a man’s baritone voice said, “Fara Clark?”

  “Yes,” said Fara.

  “Before the verdict is rendered in your case,” the voice went on quietly, “I want you to take a folder from the blue pile. The list will show the Fifth Interplanetary Bank in its proper relation to yourself and the world, and it will be explained to you in due course.”

  The list, Fara saw, was simply that, a list of names of companies. The names ran from A to Z, and there were about five hundred of them. The folder carried no explanation; and Fara slipped it automatically into his side pocket, as the voice came again from the shining globe: “It has been established,” the words came precisely, “that the Fifth Interplanetary Bank perpetrated upon you a gross swindle, and that it is further guilty of practicing scavengery, deception, blackmail and was accessory in a criminal conspiracy.

  “The bank made contact with your son, Cayle, through what is quite properly known as a scavenger, that is, an employee who exists by finding young men and women who are normally capable of drawing drafts on their parents or other victims. The scavenger obtains for this service a commission of eight percent, which is always paid by the person making the loan, in this case your son.

  “The bank practiced deception in that its authorized agents deceived you in the most culpable fashion by pretending that it had already paid out the ten thousand credits to your son, whereas the money was not paid until your signature had been obtained.

  “The blackmail guilt arises out of a threat to have your son arrested for falsely obtaining a loan, a threat made at a time when no money had exchanged hands. The conspiracy consists of the action whereby your note was promptly turned over to your competitor.

  “The bank is accordingly triple-fined, thirty-six thousand three hundred credits. It is not in our interest, Fara Clark, for you to know how this money is obtained. Suffice to know that the bank pays it, and that of the fine the weapon shops allocate to their own treasury a total of one half. The other half—”

  There was a plop; a neatly packaged pile of bills fell onto the table. “For you,” said the voice; and Fara, with trembling fingers, slipped the package into his coat pocket. It required the purest mental and physical effort for him to concentrate on the next words that came:

  “You must not assume that your troubles are over. The reestablishment of your motor repair shop in Glay will require force and courage. Be discreet, brave and determined, and you cannot fail. Do not hesitate to use the gun you have purchased in defense of your rights. The plan will be explained to you. And now, proceed through the door facing you—”

  Fara braced himself with an effort, opened the door and walked through.

  It was a dim, familiar room that he stepped into, and there was a silver-haired, fine-faced man who rose from a reading chair, and came forward in the dimness, smiling gravely.

  The stupendous, fantastic, exhilarating adventure was over; and he was back in the weapon shop of Glay.

  He couldn’t get over the wonder of it – this great and fascinating organization established here in the very heart of a ruthless civilization, a civilization that had in a few brief weeks stripped him of everything he possessed.

  With a deliberate will, he stopped that glowing flow of thought. A dark frown wrinkled his solidly built face; he said, “The . . . judge—” Fara hesitated over the name, frowned again, annoyed at himself, then went on: “The judge said that, to reestablish myself I would have to—”

  “Before we go into that,” said the old man quietly, “I want you to examine the blue folder you brought with you.”

  “Folder?” Fara echoed blankly. It took a long moment to remember that he had picked up a folder from the table in Room 474.

  He studied the list of company names with a gathering puzzlement, noting that the name of Automatic Atomic Motor Repair Shops was well down among the A’s, and the fifth Interplanetary Bank only one of several great banks included. Fara looked up finally:

  “I don’t understand,” he said: “are these the companies you have had to act against?”

  The silver-haired man smiled grimly, shook his head. “That is not what I meant. These firms constitute only a fraction of the eight hundred thousand companies that are constantly in our books.”

  He smiled again, humorlessly: “These companies all know that, because of us, their profits on paper bear no relation to their assets. What they don’t know is how great the difference really is; and, as we want a general improvement in business morals, not merely more skillful scheming to outwit us, we prefer them to remain in ignorance.”

  He paused, and this time he gave Fara a searching glance, said at last: “The unique feature of the companies on this particular list is that they are every one wholly owned by Empress Isher.”

  He finished swiftly: “In view of your past opinions on that subject, I do not expect you to believe me.”

  Fara stood as still as death, for – he did believe with unquestioning conviction, completely, finally. The amazing, the unforgivable thing was that all his life he had watched the march of ruined men into the oblivion of poverty and disgrace – and blamed them.

  Fara groaned. “I’ve been like a madman,” he said. “Everything the empress and her officials did was right. No friendship, no personal relationship could survive with me that did not include belief in things as they were. I suppose if I started to talk against the empress I would receive equally short shrift.”

  “Under no circumstances,” said the old man grimly, “must you say anything against her majesty. The weapons shops will not countenance any such words, and will give no further aid to anyone who is so indiscreet. The reason is that, for the moment, we have reached an uneasy state of peace with the Imperial government. We wish to keep it that way; beyond that I will not enlarge on our policy.

  “I am permitted to say that the last great attempt to destroy the weapon shops was made seven years ago, when the glorious Innelda Isher was twenty-five years old. That was a secret attempt, based on a new invention; and failed by purest accident because of our sacrifice of a man from seven thousand years in the past. That may sound mysterious to you, but I will not explain.

  “
The worst period was reached some forty years ago when every person who was discovered receiving aid from us was murdered in some fashion. You may be surprised to know that your father-in-law was among those assassinated at that time.”

  “Creel’s father!” Fara gasped. “But—”

  He stopped. His brain was reeling; there was such a rush of blood to his head that for an instant he could hardly see.

  “But,” he managed at last, “it was reported that he ran away with another woman.”

  “They always spread a vicious story of some kind,” the old man said; and Fara was silent, stunned.

  The other went on: “We finally put a stop to their murders by killing the three men from the top down, excluding the royal family, who gave the order for the particular execution involved. But we do not again want that kind of bloody murder.

  “Nor are we interested in any criticism of our toleration of so much that is evil. It is important to understand that we do not interfere in the main stream of human existence. We right wrongs; we act as a barrier between the people and their more ruthless exploiters. Generally speaking, we help only honest men; that is not to say that we do not give assistance to the less scrupulous, but only to the extent of selling them guns – which is a very great aid indeed, and which is one of the reasons why the government is relying almost exclusively for its power on an economic chicanery.

  “In the four thousand years since the brilliant genius Walter S. DeLany invented the vibration process that made the weapon shops possible, and laid down the first principles of weapons shop political philosophy, we have watched the tide of government swing backward and forward between democracy under a limited monarchy to complete tyranny. And we have discovered one thing: