The Old Man of the Stars

by John Burke

  Even as I opened the door of the President’s ante-room, I heard the muffled thunder of the explosion outside. The sound was further away than I had expected it to be—to seal the doors, the explosion ought to have been closer and more jarring; but my men knew what they were doing.

  An elderly man by the door on the far side of the ante-room turned.

  “What are you doing in here? You .know the President has requested privacy. Everyone knows—”

  “This is urgent,” I said. “I’ve escaped from Radio House.”

  I hoped that the others were close behind me. I hoped that they were assembling by the doors of the conference hall, ready to swoop.

  The man said; “He’s coming off the platform now. We’ve heard rumours—he made an announcement....”

  Julian Larsen appeared in the doorway. He was an inch shorter than I was, and I thought how insignificant and unworthy he was.

  “What is it?” he asked, glancing at me.

  And then his face set. Awareness blazed in his eyes.

  I jumped, took him off balance, and stabbed him. Once...twice.... His head fell loosely back, and the gash across his throat began rhythmically to pour blood.

  The man by the door squealed, and made a vague movement of his arm. I caught him, pulled him close, and smashed my fist into his face. He went down.

  Then the door to the corridor was flung open. I swung exultantly round to greet my followers.

  The faces were the faces of strangers.

  Four of them were forcing me back against the wall, while another bent over the President. When he got to his feet there was a disturbing sadness in his face. No hatred, no vengeful fury; merely sadness.

  He was a man in his early twenties. He came and stood before me. I thought he would strike me, but he simply shook his head.

  “You have murdered a fine man,” he said gently.

  “That’s only the beginning,” I said.

  “You want to spread bloodshed?”

  “We want to restore the old order,” I said. “I advise you to release me at once. My men will be here any moment. We have seized power stations and radio stations. The Federation Hall, with delegates, of all nations of the world, is surrounded—”

  “It is not,” he said in the same gentle, weary voice.

  I snapped: “My men—”

  “Your men,” he said, “were rounded up before they got here. Your truck of explosives was blown up at the corner of the approach.”

  A chill, like the first cold breeze off a freshening sea, struck me. I was alone. The men of the Communities would have to fight their way through to reach me. It might take time. They might be too late.

  I thrust my face aggressively forward. “But we’ve got Radio House, and its subsidiaries through the country,” I said. “We’ve destroyed power stations. You can’t stop us.”

  “We can. We are doing so already. We are reoccupying Radio House—”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  He nodded to one of the men holding my right arm. The grip was relaxed; but still there was one man on that side with fingers of iron.

  The one who had walked away thumbed a wall control, and a small telescreen blinked into life.

  I looked into the face of a boy announcer—cool, reassuring, precise...and not one of my men.

  Pictures began to flicker on the screen—pictures of a brief bout of fighting in the streets of Manchester; of robot labourers already dragging shattered generators away from their mountings and setting to work on the splintered flooring.

  “It was a futile attempt,” said the smooth-faced, sad-voiced man. “Why did you make it? Have you lost touch so completely with the Newmen that you don’t understand what progress we have made?”

  He was about to say something else, when suddenly he seemed to concentrate on me. I saw in his eyes the same look I had seen in those of the President

  He said: “How can it be...how can you be one of us and yet not aware?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said sullenly.

  Again he shook his head. “I see. So that is what it is? A rogue—a stray—a lost one. And you did not know that our latest two generations have developed their telepathic faculties?”

  “Telepathy...!”

  Of course it was to have been expected. At that level of mental development, telepathy was the next inevitable stage. And that was how Julian Larsen had received advance warning of our successful invasions of the radio stations.

  “A few more generations,” the unctuous voice purred on, “and we shall have no need of telescreens—or radio equipment of any kind. For the time being it is necessary for recent generations, for older people who have not been capable of developing the faculty. But soon the cumbersome equipment will be a thing of the past.”

  I saw the wonderful vista that could open up. It was magnificent...but not for me.

  “You did not stand a chance, did you?”

  “At any rate,” I triumphed, “I killed your President. That will take some explaining away.”

  “Your men from the Communities succeeded in the first attack because of the surprise element. Once that was over, you could not sustain your position. You yourself got in here because to older people you were clearly one of the Newmen. Again the surprise element—which could not last. Once Julian Larsen had seen you, the game was up. He sent out an instinctive warning. But we had already had a vague warning from you already—without fully realizing it, you were sending out discordant mental pulses. Many of us picked them up. We knew something must be wrong—which is why we picked up your load of explosives, and why we got to you so quickly. You yourself were the main cause of the failure of the revolt.”

  “You mean...I’m telepathic. I could be—”

  “You could have been one of us. If you had lived with us, accepting our disciplines and our regime, you could have developed the faculty in an elementary form at any rate. But it is too late.”

  I drew myself up. “I did what I believed to be right,” I said loudly. “And people who still believe in our cause will be heartened by the knowledge that I reached the President—that it was possible to get this close, and remove him from the face of the earth.”

  “The general public will never know that.”

  I gestured towards the crumpled body. “But—”

  The door opened again. A boy came in. I looked once more into the features of Julian Larsen.

  “You did not think, did you,” went on that remorseless voice beside me, “that we would take chances with the President of the World Federation? He had to be the ultimate in human development—we had to elect a member of the Newmen free from errors, ideal for the post, and yet replaceable.”

  “It’s impossible,” I shouted. “There couldn’t be more than one. You couldn’t have an exact, identical substitute....”

  None of them answered. They merely nodded towards the duplicate Larsen.

  “Two of them,” I said weakly.

  The voice beside me said: “Identical twins. An obvious precaution, I think you will agree!”

  * * * *

  They have given me a room with blank walls, and an unlimited supply of writing materials and a recorder, I have told them that I will dictate my memoirs, and they have agreed.

  “The spirit of resistance is not dead,” I have warned them. “It will never die.”

  They merely smile sadly, with their endless, infuriating tolerance.

  “I shall dictate,” I have told them, “a record of what has happened; and one day the record will be discovered, and the spark will burn again. People of the future will look back to me as the first to strike a blow against the Newmen tyranny. I shall let them see what happened. It will be an example for them.”

  “Yes,” they gravely agree, “let them see. It will, as you say, be an example for them.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  English writer John Burke was born in Rye, Sussex, but soon moved to Liverpool, where his father was a Chi
ef Inspector of Police.

  Burke became a prominent science fiction fan in the late 1930s, and with David McIlwain he jointly edited one of the earliest British fanzines, The Satellite, to which another close friend, Sam Youd, was a leading contributor. All three men would become well-known SF novelists after the war, writing as Jonathan Burke, Charles Eric Maine, and John Christopher, respectively.

  Burke’s first novel, Swift Summer (1949), won an Atlantic Award in Literature from the Rockefeller Foundation, and although he went on to become a popular SF and crime novelist, all his work was of a high literary standard.

  During the early 1950s he wrote numerous science fiction novels that were published in hardcover as well as paperback, and his short stories appeared regularly in all of the leading SF magazines, most notably in New Worlds and Authentic Science Fiction.

  In the mid-1950s he worked in publishing, first as Production Manager for the prominent UK publisher, Museum Press, and then in an editorial capacity for the Books for Pleasure Group. In 1959 he was employed as a Public Relations Executive for Shell International Petroleum, before being appointed as European Story Editor for 20th Century-Fox Productions in 1963.

  His cinematic expertise led to his being commissioned to pen dozens of bestselling novelizations of popular film and TV titles, ranging from such movies as A Hard Day’s Night, Privilege, numerous Hammer Horror films, and The Bill. He also did adaptations of Gerry Anderson’s UFO TV series (under his pseudonym, Robert Miall). A member of the Crime Writers’ Association, he published many crime and detective novels on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1960s. He also edited the highly successsful anthology series, Tales of Unease.

  To date he’s written more than 150 books in all genres, including work in collaboration with his wife, Jean; and has also published nonfiction works on an astonishing variety of subjects, most notably music.

  Now living in Scotland, Burke continues to write well into his eighth decade; in recent years many of his supernatural and macabre stories have been collected and antholologized. His latest collection, Murder, Mystery, and Magic, is a Borgo Press original—and Borgo will be publishing some of his classic SF and crime novels and stories in the near future.

  BORGO PRESS BOOKS BY JOHN BURKE

  The Golden Horns: A Mystery Novel

  Murder, Mystery, and Magic: Macabre Stories

  The Old Man of the Stars: Two Classic Science Fiction Tales