The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One 1929-1964--The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of All Time Chosen by the Members of the Science Fiction Writers of America

by Robert Silverberg

  Fara and Creel looked at each other. “Eh,” said Fara finally, “money call for us.”

  He could see from the gray look in Creel’s face the thought that was in her mind. He said under his breath: “Damn that boy!”

  But he felt relieved. Amazingly, relieved! Cayle was beginning to appreciate the value of parents and—

  He switched on the viewer. “Come and collect,” he said.

  The face that came on the screen was heavy-jowled, beetle-browed—and strange. The man said:

  “This is Clerk Pearton of the Fifth Bank of Ferd. We have received a sight draft on you for ten thousand credits. With carrying charges and government tax, the sum required will be twelve thousand one hundred credits. Will you pay it now or will you come in this afternoon and pay it?”

  “B-but … b-but—” said Fara. “W-who—”

  He stopped, conscious of the stupidity of the question, dimly conscious of the heavy-faced man saying something about the money having been paid out to one Cayle Clark, that morning, in Imperial City. At last, Fara found his voice:

  “But the bank had no right,” he expostulated, “to pay out the money without my authority. I—”

  The voice cut him off coldly: “Are we then to inform our central that the money was obtained under false pretenses? Naturally, an order will be issued immediately for the arrest of your son.”

  “Wait … wait—” Fara spoke blindly. He was aware of Creel beside him, shaking her head at him. She was as white as a sheet, and her voice was a sick, stricken thing, as she said:

  “Fara, let him go. He’s through with us. We must be as hard—let him go.”

  The words rang senselessly in Fara’s ears. They didn’t fit into any normal pattern. He was saying:

  “I … I haven’t got—How about my paying … installments? I—”

  “If you wish a loan,” said Clerk Pearton, “naturally we will be happy to go into the matter. I might say that when the draft arrived, we checked up on your status, and we are prepared to loan you eleven thousand credits on indefinite call with your shop as security. I have the form here, and if you are agreeable, we will switch this call through the registered circuit, and you can sign at once.”

  “Fara, no.”

  The clerk went on: “The other eleven hundred credits will have to be paid in cash. Is that agreeable?”

  “Yes, yes, of course, I’ve got twenty-five hund—” He stopped his chattering tongue with a gulp; then: “Yes, that’s satisfactory.”

  The deal completed, Fara whirled on his wife. Out of the depths of his hurt and bewilderment, he raged:

  “What do you mean, standing there and talking about not paying it? You said several times that I was responsible for his being what he is. Besides, we don’t know why he needed the money. He—”

  Creel said in a low, dead tone: “In one hour, he’s stripped us of our life work. He did it deliberately, thinking of us as two old fools, who wouldn’t know any better than to pay it.”

  Before he could speak, she went on: “Oh, I know I blamed you, but in the final issue, I knew it was he. He was always cold and calculating, but I was weak, and I was sure that if you handled him in a different … and besides I didn’t want to see his faults for a long time. He—”

  “All I see,” Fara interrupted doggedly, “is that I have saved our name from disgrace.”

  His high sense of duty rightly done lasted until midafternoon, when the bailiff from Ferd came to take over the shop.

  “But what—” Fara began.

  The bailiff said: “The Automatic Atomic Repair Shops, Limited, took over your loan from the bank, and are foreclosing. Have you anything to say?”

  “It’s unfair,” said Fara. “I’ll take it to court. I’ll—”

  He was thinking dazedly: “If the empress ever learned of this, she’d … she’d—”

  The courthouse was a big, gray building; and Fara felt emptier and colder every second, as he walked along the gray corridors. In Glay, his decision not to give himself into the hands of a bloodsucker of a lawyer had seemed a wise act. Here, in these enormous halls and palatial rooms, it seemed the sheerest folly.

  He managed, nevertheless, to give an articulate account of the criminal act of the bank in first giving Cayle the money, then turning over the note to his chief competitor, apparently within minutes of his signing it. He finished with:

  “I’m sure, sir, the empress would not approve of such goings-on against honest citizens. I—”

  “How dare you,” said the cold-voiced creature on the bench, “use the name of her holy majesty in support of your own gross self-interest?”

  Fara shivered. The sense of being intimately a member of the empress’ great human family yielded to a sudden chill and a vast mind-picture of the ten million icy courts like this, and the myriad malevolent and heartless men—like this—who stood between the empress and her loyal subject, Fara.

  He thought passionately: If the empress knew what was happening here, how unjustly he was being treated, she would—

  Or would she?

  He pushed the crowding, terrible doubt out of his mind—came out of his hard reverie with a start, to hear the Cadi saying:

  “Plaintiff’s appeal dismissed, with costs assessed at seven hundred credits, to be divided between the court and the defense solicitor in the ratio of five to two. See to it that the appellant does not leave till the costs are paid. Next case—”

  Fara went alone the next day to see Creel’s mother. He called first at “Farmer’s Restaurant” at the outskirts of the village. The place was, he noted with satisfaction in the thought of the steady stream of money flowing in, half full, though it was only midmorning. But madame wasn’t there. Try the feed store.

  He found her in the back of the feed store, overseeing the weighing out of grain into cloth measures. The hard-faced old woman heard his story without a word. She said finally, curtly:

  “Nothing doing, Fara. I’m one who has to make loans often from the bank to swing deals. If I tried to set you up in business, I’d find the Automatic Atomic Repair people getting after me. Besides, I’d be a fool to turn money over to a man who lets a bad son squeeze a fortune out of him. Such a man has no sense about worldly things.

  “And I won’t give you a job because I don’t hire relatives in my business.” She finished: “Tell Creel to come and live at my house. I won’t support a man, though. That’s all.”

  He watched her disconsolately for a while, as she went on calmly superintending the clerks who were manipulating the old, no longer accurate measuring machines. Twice her voice echoed through the dust-filled interior, each time with a sharp: “That’s overweight, a gram at least. Watch your machine.”

  Though her back was turned, Fara knew by her posture that she was still aware of his presence. She turned at last with an abrupt movement, and said:

  “Why don’t you go to the weapon shop? You haven’t anything to lose, and you can’t go on like this.”

  Fara went out, then, a little blindly. At first the suggestion that he buy a gun and commit suicide had no real personal application. But he felt immeasurably hurt that his mother-in-law should have made it.

  Kill himself? Why, it was ridiculous. He was still only a young man, going on fifty. Given the proper chance, with his skilled hands, he could wrest a good living even in a world where automatic machines were encroaching everywhere. There was always room for a man who did a good job. His whole life had been based on that credo.

  Kill himself—

  He went home to find Creel packing. “It’s the common sense thing to do,” she said. “We’ll rent the house and move into rooms.”

  He told her about her mother’s offer to take her in, watching her face as he spoke. Creel shrugged.

  “I told her ‘No’ yesterday,” she said thoughtfully. “I wonder why she mentioned it to you.”

  Fara walked swiftly over to the great front window overlooking the garden, with its flowers, its pool, i
ts rockery. He tried to think of Creel away from this garden of hers, this home of two thirds a life-time, Creel living in rooms—and knew what her mother had meant. There was one more hope—

  He waited till Creel went upstairs, then called Mel Dale on the telestat. The mayor’s plump face took on an uneasy expression as he saw who it was.

  But he listened pontifically, said finally: “Sorry, the council does not loan money; and I might as well tell you, Fara—I have nothing to do with this, mind you—but you can’t get a license for a shop any more.”

  “W-what?”

  “I’m sorry!” The mayor lowered his voice. “Listen, Fara, take my advice and go to the weapon shop. These places have their uses.”

  There was a click, and Fara sat staring at the blank face of the viewing screen.

  So it was to be—death!

  He waited until the street was empty of human beings, then slipped across the boulevard, past a design of flower gardens, and so to the door of the shop. The brief fear came that the door wouldn’t open, but it did, effortlessly.

  As he emerged from the dimness of the alcove into the shop proper, he saw the silver-haired old man sitting in a corner chair, reading under a softly bright light. The old man looked up, put aside his book, then rose to his feet.

  “It’s Mr. Clark,” he said quietly. “What can we do for you?”

  A faint flush crept into Fara’s cheeks. In a dim fashion, he had hoped that he would not suffer the humiliation of being recognized; but now that his fear was realized, he stood his ground stubbornly. The important thing about killing himself was that there be no body for Creel to bury at great expense. Neither knife nor poison would satisfy that basic requirement.

  “I want a gun,” said Fara, “that can be adjusted to disintegrate a body six feet in diameter in a single shot. Have you that kind?”

  Without a word, the old man turned to a showcase, and brought forth a sturdy gem of a revolver that glinted with all the soft colors of the inimitable Ordine plastic. The man said in a precise voice:

  “Notice the flanges on this barrel are little more than bulges. This makes the model ideal for carrying in a shoulder holster under the coat; it can be drawn very swiftly because, when properly attuned, it will leap toward the reaching hand of its owner. At the moment it is attuned to me. Watch while I replace it in its holster and—”

  The speed of the draw was absolutely amazing. The old man’s fingers moved; and the gun, four feet away, was in them. There was no blur of movement. It was like the door the night that it had slipped from Fara’s grasp, and slammed noiselessly in Constable Jor’s face. Instantaneous!

  Fara, who had parted his lips as the old man was explaining, to protest the utter needlessness of illustrating any quality of the weapon except what he had asked for, closed them again. He stared in a brief, dazed fascination; and something of the wonder that was here held his mind and his body.

  He had seen and handled the guns of soldiers, and they were simply ordinary metal or plastic things that one used clumsily like any other material substance, not like this at all, not possessed of a dazzling life of their own, leaping with an intimate eagerness to assist with all their superb power the will of their master. They—

  With a start, Fara remembered his purpose. He smiled wryly, and said:

  “All this is very interesting. But what about the beam that can fan out?”

  The old man said calmly: “At pencil thickness, this beam will pierce any body except certain alloys of lead up to four hundred yards. With proper adjustment of the firing nozzle, you can disintegrate a six-foot object at fifty yards or less. This screw is the adjustor.”

  He indicated a tiny device in the muzzle itself. “Turn it to the left to spread the beam, to the right to close it.”

  Fara said: “I’ll take the gun. How much is it?”

  He saw that the old man was looking at him thoughtfully; the oldster said finally, slowly: “I have previously explained our regulations to you, Mr. Clark. You recall them, of course?”

  “Eh!” said Fara, and stopped, wide-eyed. It wasn’t that he didn’t remember them. It was simply—

  “You mean,” he gasped, “those things actually apply. They’re not—”

  With a terrible effort, he caught his spinning brain and blurring voice. Tense and cold, he said:

  “All I want is a gun that will shoot in self-defense, but which I can turn on myself if I have to or—want to.”

  “Oh, suicide!” said the old man. He looked as if a great understanding had suddenly dawned on him. “My dear sir, we have no objection to your killing yourself at any time. That is your personal privilege in a world where privileges grow scanter every year. As for the price of this revolver, it’s four credits.”

  “Four ere … only four credits!” said Fara.

  He stood, absolutely astounded, his whole mind snatched from its dark purpose. Why, the plastic alone was—and the whole gun with its fine, intricate workmanship—twenty-five credits would have been dirt cheap.

  He felt a brief thrill of utter interest; the mystery of the weapon shops suddenly loomed as vast and important as his own black destiny. But the old man was speaking again:

  “And now, if you will remove your coat, we can put on the holster—”

  Quite automatically, Fara complied. It was vaguely startling to realize that, in a few seconds, he would be walking out of here, equipped for self-murder, and that there was now not a single obstacle to his death.

  Curiously, he was disappointed. He couldn’t explain it, but somehow there had been in the back of his mind a hope that these shops might, just might—what?

  What indeed? Fara sighed wearily—and grew aware again of the old man’s voice, saying:

  “Perhaps you would prefer to step out of our side door. It is less conspicuous than the front.”

  There was no resistance in Fara. He was dimly conscious of the man’s fingers on his arm, half guiding him; and then the old man pressed one of several buttons on the wall—so that’s how it was done—and there was the door.

  He could see flowers beyond the opening; without a word he walked toward them. He was outside almost before he realized it.

  Fara stood for a moment in the neat little pathway, striving to grasp the finality of his situation. But nothing would come except a curious awareness of many men around him; for a long second, his brain was like a log drifting along a stream at night.

  Through that darkness grew a consciousness of something wrong; the wrongness was there in the back of his mind, as he turned leftward to go to the front of the weapon store.

  Vagueness transformed to a shocked, startled sound. For—he was not in Glay, and the weapon shop wasn’t where it had been. In its place—

  A dozen men brushed past Fara to join a long line of men farther along. But Fara was immune to their presence, their strangeness. His whole mind, his whole vision, his very being was concentrating on the section of machine that stood where the weapon shop had been.

  A machine, oh, a machine—

  His brain lifted up, 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 va
st area.

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

  WHITE — BIRTH

  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 a curious jumble about 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.