Thunder and Roses

by Theodore Sturgeon

  Belter turned furiously to him, but the old man shook his head and, astonishingly, smiled. His hand went to his belt. He threw his transmitter switch and said in his deep, quiet voice:

  “Drop that blaster, son.”

  The effect on the Martian was absolutely devastating. He went rod stiff, dropping his weapon so quickly that he all but threw it. Then he staggered backward, and they could hear his frightened gasping as he tried to regain his breath.

  Belter strode out into the room and backed to the left bulkhead, stopping where he could cover both the Martian and the Jovian. Hereford shuffled over and picked up the blaster.

  “P-peace Amalgamated!” puffed the Martian. “What in time are you doing here?”

  Belter answered. “Keeping you from using your muscles instead of your brains. What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Recon,” said the Martian sullenly.

  “For who?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re doing it for Mars,” said Belter bluntly. “It would be just dandy if Mars had the Death defense now, wouldn’t it? You guys have been chafing at the bit for a long time.”

  “We’re not crazy,” flashed the Martian. “We never did make peace with Jupiter, remember? We knew better. And now look.” He gestured at the Jovian. “What a pretty way to knock slices out of all the Solarian defenses. Just play Invader for a few years and scare the bedizens out of humanity. Wipe out what looks tough, and take advantage of the panic. Heh! Treaties with Jupiter! Why in blazes didn’t you exterminate them when you had the chance? Now, if Mars gets the Defense, we’ll handle the thing right. And maybe when the smoke clears away we’ll be magnanimous enough to let Earth and the Colonies work for us.”

  “All blast and brawn,” marveled Belter. “The famous Martian mouth.”

  “Don’t you brag about brains. I know for a fact that our councilman tipped off that camouflage boats were being made in secret. If you didn’t act on it, it’s your hard luck.”

  “In a way he did,” said Belter. “Enough, I imagine, to keep his little conscience clear. I’m here, for all that.”

  “Not for long,” snapped the Martian, making a long sliding step.

  “Look out, Hereford!”

  Belter snapped a fine-focus shot at the Martian but he was late. The Martian was behind Hereford, grappling for the blaster which the Peace delegate still held in his hand. Hereford tried to spin away but was unsure of his footing in the gravitic shoes and succeeded only in floundering. The Martian suddenly shifted his attack to the blaster at Belter’s hip. He got it and danced clear. “I know the pantywaist won’t shoot,” he said, and laughed. “So it’s you first, Belter, and then old ‘Peace-in-our-Time.’ Then I’ll get the Death defense with or without the aid of the spider yonder.”

  He swung the weapon on Belter, and the chairman knew that this was it. He closed his eyes. The blaster-flash beat on the lids. He felt nothing. He tried to open his eyes again and was astounded to discover that he could. He stood there staring at Hereford, who had just shot the Martian through the head. The man’s magna-grips held him upright as the air in his suit whiffed out, to hang in a mist like a frozen soul over his tattered head.

  “I killed him, didn’t I?” asked Hereford plaintively.

  “To keep the peace,” said Belter in a shaking voice. He skated over to the old man and took the blaster, which was still held stiffly out toward the dead man. “Killing’s a comparative crime, Hereford. You’ve saved lives.”

  He went to the control table and put his hands on it, steadying himself against the broken sounds Hereford was making. He stared across the table at the great jelly-and-bone mass that was a Jovian. He would have given a lot for a translator, but such a machine had never yet been made portable.

  “You. Jovian. Will you communicate? Spread that membrane for ‘yes.’ Contract it for ‘no.’ ”

  Yes. The creature was perfectly telepathic, but with humans it had to be one way. A translator could convert its emanations into minute electronic impulses and arrange them into idea-patterns for which words were selected.

  “Is there anything on this ship which can resist The Death?”

  Yes.

  “You understand it?”

  Yes.

  “Will you share your knowledge with the Council?”

  Yes.

  “Can you deactivate all automatics on this ship?”

  In answer the Jovian extended one of its four pseudoclaws, and placed it next to a control on the table. It was a small square housing, set so as to repeat the diamond motif. An orange pilot light glowed in its center, and next to it was a toggle. On the forward side of the toggle was an extremely simple symbol—two dots connected by two lines, each two-thirds of the distance between the dots, so that for the middle third they lay parallel, contiguous. On the after side of the toggle, the symbol differed. The dots were the same, but the lines were separated. It was obviously an indication of “open” and “closed” positions. The toggle slanted forward. Belter put his hand on it, looked at the Jovian.

  The membrane spread affirmatively. Jovians did not lie. He pulled the toggle back and the pilot went out.

  “This General Assembly has been called,” Belter said quietly into the mike, “to clear up, once and for all, the matter of the Invader and the contingent wild and conflicting rumors about a defense against The Death, about interstellar drives, about potential war between members of the Solar Federation, and a number of other fantasies.” He spoke carefully, conscious of the transmission of his voice and image to government gatherings on all the worlds, in all the domes, and on ships.

  “You know the story of my arrival, with Hereford, aboard the Invader, and the later arrival of the Martian, and his”—Belter cleared his throat—“his accidental death. Let me make it clear right now that there is no evidence that this man was representing the Martian General Government or any part of it. We have concluded that he was acting as an individual, probably because of what might be termed an excess of patriotism.

  “Now, as to the presence of the Jovian on the ship—that is a perfectly understandable episode. Jupiter is a defeated nation. I venture to say that any group of us in the same situation would commit acts similar to that of this Jovian. I can say here, too, that there is no evidence of its representing any part of the Jovian Government. What it might have done with, say, a Death defense had it found one aboard is conjecture, and need not enter into this discussion.

  “I have before me a transcript of this Jovian’s statement. You may rest assured that all facts have been checked; that fatigue and crystalline tests and examinations have been made of metallic samples taken from the vessel; that the half-lives of radioactive byproducts in certain fission and disruption machinery have been checked and substantiate this statement. This is the transcript:

  “ ‘For reasons consistent with Jovian philosophy, I took a Jovian-built camouflaged boat and departed with it before the improved drive had been submitted to the Joint Solar Military Council. I approached the Invader cautiously and found the camouflage successful. I boarded him. I put my boat in the Invader’s bomb rack, where it was well hidden in plain sight, being the same size and general shape as the Invader’s bombs. I went inboard, expecting a great deal of trouble. There was none. Every port and hatch was open to space except the warhead storage, which was naturally no hiding place due to radioactivity. I proceeded to the control chamber. I found the master control to all the ship’s armament.

  “ ‘But my most important discovery was a thought record. The Invaders were, like Jovians, of an arthropodal type, and their image patterns were quite understandable after a little concentration. I shall quote from that record:

  “ ‘We are of Sygon, greater of the two planets of Sykor, a star in Symak. The smaller planet, known to us as Gith, is peopled by a mad race, a mistake of nature—a race which fights and kills itself and wars on its neighbors; a race which aspires to conquer purely for the sake of con
quest, which hunts for hunting’s sake and kills for pleasure. While it progresses, while it cooperates, it bites itself and fights itself and is never done with its viciousness.

  “ ‘Its planet was large enough to support it, but it was not satisfied. Sygon was no place for these vicious animals, for they had to bring their atmosphere in bubbles for breathing, and Sygon’s mass crushed them and made them sicken. Not needing Sygon still they were willing to fight us for it.

  “ ‘We killed them by the hundreds of thousands, and still they kept coming. They devised incredible weapons to use against us, and we improved on them and hurled them back. They improved on these, completely ignoring the inevitability of their end.

  “ ‘The ultimate weapon was theirs—a terrible thing which emulsified the very cells of our bodies, and there was no defense against it. The first time it was used it killed off most of our race. The rest of us threw all our resources into this, the Eternal Vengeance—this ship. It is designed to attack anything which radiates, as long as the radiations exhibit the characteristics of those produced by intelligent life. It will stay in Sykor’s system, and it will attack anything which might be Gith or of Gith. Gith will strike back with its terrible weapon, and all of us on the ship will die. But the ship will go on. Gith will loose its horror and agony on Sygon, and our race will be dead. But the ship will go on. It will attack and attack, and ultimately will destroy Gith.

  “ ‘And if Gith should die and be born again and evolve a new race, and if that race shall reach a stage of culture approaching that of its cursed forebears, the ship will attack again until it has destroyed them. It will attack all the more powerfully for having rested, for between attacks it will circle Sykor, drinking and storing its energy.

  “ ‘Perhaps there will come a time when Sykor will cool, or flare up and explode, or become subject to the influence of a wandering star. Perhaps then the ship will cease to be, but it is possible that it will go wandering off into the dark, never to be active again. But if it should wander into a similar system to that which bore it, then it will bring death and horror to that system’s inhabitants. If this should be, it will be unjust; but it will be only an extension of the illimitable evil of Gith.’ ”

  Belter raised his head. “That is what we were up against. What passed in that Jovian’s mind when we burst in on it, with our quarreling and our blasters and our death-dealing, I can only imagine. It made no move to harm us, though it was armed. I think that it may have been leaving us to the same inevitable end which overcame Gith. Apparently a Jovian is capable of thinking beyond immediate advantage.

  “I have one more thing to tell you. According to star photographs found in a huge file on the Invader, and the tests and examinations I mentioned, the Invader is slightly over fourteen million years old.

  “There is a defense against The Death. You can’t kill a dead man. Now, in more ways than one, I give you over to Hereford.”

  The Professor’s Teddy Bear

  “SLEEP,” SAID THE monster. It spoke with its ear, with little lips writhing deep within the folds of flesh, because its mouth was full of blood.

  “I don’t want to sleep now. I’m having a dream,” said Jeremy. “When I sleep, all my dreams go away. Or they’re just pretend dreams. I’m having a real dream now.”

  “What are you dreaming now?” asked the monster.

  “I am dreaming that I’m grown up—”

  “Seven feet tall and very fat,” said the monster.

  “You’re silly,” said Jeremy. “I will be five feet, six and three eighth inches tall. I will be bald on top and will wear eyeglasses like little thick ashtrays. I will give lectures to young things about human destiny and the metempsychosis of Plato.”

  “What’s a metempsychosis?” asked the monster hungrily.

  Jeremy was four and could afford to be patient. “A metempsychosis is a thing that happens when a person moves from one house to another.”

  “Like when your daddy moved here from Monroe Street?”

  “Sort of. But not that kind of a house, with shingles and sewers and things. This kind of a house,” he said, and smote his little chest.

  “Oh,” said the monster. It moved up and crouched on Jeremy’s throat, looking more like a teddy bear than ever. “Now?” it begged. It was not very heavy.

  “Not now,” said Jeremy petulantly. “It’ll make me sleep. I want to watch my dream some more. There’s a girl who’s not listening to my lecture. She’s thinking about her hair.”

  “What about her hair?” asked the monster.

  “It’s brown,” said Jeremy. “It’s shiny, too. She wishes it were golden.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody named Bert likes golden hair.”

  “Go ahead and make it golden then.”

  “I can’t! What would the other young ones say?”

  “Does that matter?”

  “Maybe not. Could I make her hair golden?”

  “Who is she?” countered the monster.

  “She is a girl who will be born here in about twenty years,” said Jeremy.

  The monster snuggled closer to his neck.

  “If she is to be born here, then of course you can change her hair. Hurry and do it and go to sleep.”

  Jeremy laughed delightedly.

  “What happened?” asked the monster.

  “I changed it,” said Jeremy. “The girl behind her squeaked like the mouse with its leg caught. Then she jumped up. It’s a big lecture-room, you know, built up and away from the speaker-place. It has steep aisles. Her foot slipped on the hard step.”

  He burst into joyous laughter.

  “Now what?”

  “She broke her neck. She’s dead.”

  The monster sniggered. “That’s a very funny dream. Now change the other girl’s hair back again. Nobody else saw it, except you?”

  “Nobody else saw,” said Jeremy. “There! It’s changed back again. She never even knew she had golden hair for a little while.”

  “That’s fine. Does that end the dream?”

  “I s’pose it does,” said Jeremy regretfully. “It ends the lecture, anyhow. The young people are all crowding around the girl with the broken neck. The young men all have sweat under their noses. The girls are all trying to put their fists into their mouths. You can go ahead.”

  The monster made a happy sound and pressed its mouth hard against Jeremy’s neck. Jeremy closed his eyes.

  The door opened. “Jeremy, darling,” said Mummy. She had a tired, soft face and smiling eyes. “I heard you laugh.”

  Jeremy opened his eyes slowly. His lashes were so long that when they swung up, there seemed to be a tiny wind, as if they were dark weather fans. He smiled, and three of his teeth peeped out and smiled too. “I told Fuzzy a story, Mummy,” he said sleepily, “and he liked it.”

  “You darling,” she murmured. She came to him and tucked the covers around his chin. He put up his hand and kept the monster tight against his neck.

  “Is Fuzzy sleeping?” asked Mummy, her voice crooning with whimsy.

  “No,” said Jeremy. “He’s hungering himself.”

  “How does he do that?”

  “When I eat, the—the hungry goes away. Fuzzy’s different.”

  She looked at him, loving him so much that she did not—could not think. “You’re a strange child,” she whispered, “and you have the pinkest cheeks in the whole wide world.”

  “Sure I have,” he said.

  “What a funny little laugh!” she said, paling.

  “That wasn’t me. That was Fuzzy. He thinks you’re funny.”

  Mummy stood over the crib, looking down at him. It seemed to be the frown that looked at him, while the eyes looked past. Finally she wet her lips and patted his head. “Good night, baby.”

  “Good night, Mummy.” He closed his eyes. Mummy tiptoed out. The monster kept right on doing it.

  It was nap-time the next day, and for the hundredth time Mummy had kissed him and said, “Yo
u’re so good about your nap, Jeremy!” Well, he was. He always went straight up to bed at nap-time, as he did at bedtime. Mummy didn’t know why, of course. Perhaps Jeremy did not know. Fuzzy knew.

  Jeremy opened the toy-chest and took Fuzzy out. “You’re hungry, I bet,” he said.

  “Yes. Let’s hurry.”

  Jeremy climbed into the crib and hugged the teddy bear close. “I keep thinking about that girl,” he said.

  “What girl?”

  “The one whose hair I changed.”

  “Maybe because it’s the first time you’ve changed a person.”

  “It is not! What about the man who fell into the subway hole?”

  “You moved the hat. The one that blew off. You moved it under his feet so that he stepped on the brim with one foot and caught his toe in the crown, and tumbled in.”

  “Well, what about the little girl I threw in front of the truck?”

  “You didn’t touch her,” said the monster equably. “She was on roller skates. You broke something in one wheel so it couldn’t turn. So she fell right in front of the truck.”

  Jeremy thought carefully. “Why didn’t I ever touch a person before?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fuzzy. “It has something to do with being born in this house, I think.”

  “I guess maybe,” said Jeremy doubtfully.

  “I’m hungry,” said the monster, settling itself on Jeremy’s stomach as he turned on his back.

  “Oh, all right,” Jeremy said. “The next lecture?”

  “Yes,” said Fuzzy eagerly. “Dream bright, now. The big things that you say, lecturing. Those are what I want. Never mind the people there. Never mind you, lecturing. The things you say.”

  The strange blood flowed as Jeremy relaxed. He looked up to the ceiling, found the hairline crack that he always stared at while he dreamed real, and began to talk.

  “There I am. There’s the—the room, yes, and the—yes, it’s all there, again. There’s the girl. The one who has the brown, shiny hair. The seat behind her is empty. This must be after that other girl broke her neck.”