The Second Science Fiction Megapack

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Dalgetty swore at himself. She was too damn quick, that was all. And her intelligence might be enough for her to learn.…

  Will I have to kill her?

  He drove the thought from him. He could overcome his own conditioning about anything, including murder, if he wanted to, but he’d never want to. No, that was out. “How did you get here?” he asked. “How much does the FBI know?”

  “Why should I tell you?”

  “Well, it’d be nice to know if we can expect reinforcements.”

  “We can’t.” Her voice was bleak. “I might as well let you know. The Institute could find out anyway through its government connections—the damned octopus!” he looked into the sky. Dalgetty’s gaze followed the curve of her high cheekbones. Unusual face—you didn’t often see such an oddly pleasing arrangement. The slight departure from symmetry.…

  “We’ve wondered about Bertrand Meade for some time, as every thinking person has,” she began tonelessly. “It’s too bad there are so few thinking people in the country.”

  “Something the Institute is trying to correct,” Dalgetty put in.

  Elena ignored him. “It was finally decided to work agents into his various organizations. I’ve been with Thomas Bancroft for about two years now. My background was carefully faked and I’m a useful assistant. But even so it was only a short while back that I got sufficiently into his confidence to be given some inkling of what’s going on. As far as I know no other FBI operative has learned as much.”

  “And what have you found out?”

  “Essentially the same things you were describing in the cell, plus more details on the actual work they’re doing. Apparently the Institute was onto Meade’s plans long before we were. It doesn’t speak well for your purposes, whatever they are, that you haven’t asked us for help before this.

  “The decision to kidnap Dr. Tighe was taken only a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t had a chance to communicate with my associates in the force. There’s always someone around, watching. The set-up’s well arranged, so that even those not under suspicion don’t have much chance to work unobserved, once they’ve gotten high enough to know anything important. Everybody spies on everybody else and submits periodic reports.”

  She gave him a harsh look. “So here I am. No official person knows my whereabouts and if I should disappear it would be called a deplorable accident. Nothing could be proved and I doubt if the FBI would ever get another chance to do any effective spying.”

  “But you have proof enough for a raid,” he ventured.

  “No, we haven’t. Up till the time I was told Dr. Tighe was going to be snatched I didn’t know for certain that anything illegal was going on. There’s nothing in the law against like-minded people knowing each other and having a sort of club. Even if they hire tough characters and arm them the law can’t protest. The Act of Nineteen Ninety-nine effectively forbids private armies but it would be hard to prove Meade has one.”

  “He doesn’t really,” said Dalgetty. “Those goons aren’t much more than what they claim to be—bodyguards. This whole fight is primarily on a—a mental level.”

  “So I gather. And can a free country forbid debate or propaganda? Not to mention that Meade’s people include some powerful men in the government itself. If I could get away from here alive we’d be able to hang a kidnapping charge on Thomas Bancroft, with assorted charges of threat, mayhem and conspiracy, but it wouldn’t touch the main group.” Her fists clenched. “It’s like fighting shadows.”

  * * * *

  “You war against the sunset-glow. The judgment follows fast my lord!” quoted Dalgetty. Heriots’ Ford was one of the few poems he liked. “Getting Bancroft out of the way would be something,” he added. “The way to fight Meade is not to attack him physically but to change the conditions under which he must work.”

  “Change them to what?” Her eyes challenged his. He noticed that there were small gold flecks in the gray. “What does the Institute want?”

  “A sane world,” he replied.

  “I’ve wondered,” she said. “Maybe Bancroft is more nearly right than you. Maybe I should be on his side after all.”

  “I take it you favor libertarian government,” he said. “In the past it’s always broken down sooner or later and the main reason has been that there aren’t enough people with the intelligence, alertness and toughness to resist the inevitable encroachments of power on liberty.

  “The Institute is trying to do two things—create such a citizenry and simultaneously to build up a society which itself produces men of that kind and reinforces those traits in them. It can be done, given time. Under ideal conditions we estimate it would take about three hundred years for the whole world. Actually it’ll take longer.”

  “But just what kind of person is needed?” Elena asked coldly. “Who decides it? You do. You’re just the same as all other reformers, including Meade—hell bent to change the whole human race over to your particular ideal, whether they like it or not.”

  “Oh, they’ll like it,” he smiled. “That’s part of the process.”

  “It’s a worse tyranny than whips and barbed wire,” she snapped.

  “You’ve never experienced those then.”

  “You have got that knowledge,” she accused. “You have the data and the equations to be—sociological engineers.”

  “In theory,” he said. “In practice it isn’t that easy. The social forces are so great that—well, we could be overwhelmed before accomplishing anything. And there are plenty of things we still don’t know. It will take decades, perhaps centuries, to work out a complete dynamics of man. We’re one step beyond the politician’s rule of thumb but not up to the point where we can use slide rules. We have to feel our way.”

  “Nevertheless,” she said, “you’ve got the beginnings of a knowledge which reveals the true structure of society and the processes that make it. Given that knowledge man could in time build his own world-order the way he desired it, a stable culture that wouldn’t know the horrors of oppression or collapse. But you’ve hidden away the very fact that such information exists. You’re using it in secret.”

  “Because we have to,” Dalgetty said. “If it were generally known that we’re putting pressure on here and there and giving advice slanted just the way we desire, the whole thing would blow up in our faces. People don’t like being shoved around.”

  “And still you’re doing it!” One hand dropped to her gun. “You, a clique of maybe a hundred men.…”

  “More than that. You’d be surprised how many are with us.”

  “You’ve decided you are the almighty arbiters. Your superior wisdom is going to lead poor blind mankind up the road to heaven. I say it’s down the road to hell! The last century saw the dictatorship of the elite and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This one seems to be birthing the dictatorship of the intellectuals. I don’t like any of them!”

  “Look, Elena.” Dalgetty leaned on one elbow and faced her. “It isn’t that simple. All right, we’ve got some special knowledge. When we first realized we were getting somewhere in our research we had to decide whether to make our results public or merely give out selected less important findings. Don’t you see, no matter what we did it would have been us, the few men, who decided? Even destroying all our information would have been a decision.”

  His voice grew more urgent. “So we made what I think was the right choice. History shows as conclusively as our own equations that freedom is not a ‘natural’ condition of man. It’s a metastable state at best, all too likely to collapse into tyranny. The tyranny can be imposed from outside by the better-organized armies of a conqueror, or it can come from within—through the will of the people themselves, surrendering their rights to the father-image, the almighty leader, the absolute state.

  “What use does Bertrand Meade want to make of our findings if he can get them? To bring about the end of freedom by working on the people till they themselves desire it. And the damnable part of it is
that Meade’s goal is much more easily attained than ours.

  “So suppose we made our knowledge public. Suppose we educated anyone who desired it in our techniques. Can’t you see what would happen? Can’t you see the struggle that would be waged for control of the human mind? It could start as innocuously as a businessman planning a more effective advertising campaign. It would end in a welter of propaganda, counter-propaganda, social and economic manipulations, corruption, competition for the key offices—and so, ultimately, there would be violence.

  “All the psychodynamic tensors ever written down won’t stop a machine-gun. Violence riding over a society thrown into chaos, enforced peace—and the peace-makers, perhaps with the best will in the world, using the Institute techniques to restore order. Then one step leads to another, power gets more and more centralized and it isn’t long before you have the total state back again. Only this total state could never be overthrown!”

  Elena Casimir bit her lip. A stray breeze slid down the rock wall and rumpled her bright hair. After a long while she said, “Maybe you’re right. But America today has, on the whole, a good government. You could let them know.”

  “Too risky. Sooner or later someone, probably with very idealistic motives, would force the whole thing into the open. So we’re keeping hidden the very fact that our most important equations exist—which is why we didn’t ask for help when Meade’s detectives finally learned that they know.”

  “How do you know your precious Institute won’t become just such an oligarchy as you describe?”

  “I don’t,” Simon said, “but it’s improbable. You see, the recruits who are eventually taught everything we know are pretty thoroughly indoctrinated with our own present-day beliefs. And we’ve learned enough individual psych to do some real indoctrinating! They’ll pass it on to the next generation and so on.

  “Meanwhile we hope the social structure and the mental climate is being modified in such a way that eventually it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to impose absolute control by any means. For as I said before, even an ultimately developed psychodynamics can’t do everything. Ordinary propaganda, for instance, is quite ineffective on people trained in critical thinking.

  “When enough people the world over are sane we can make the knowledge general. Meanwhile we’ve got to keep it under wraps and quietly prevent anyone else from learning the same things independently. Most such prevention, by the way, consists merely of recruiting promising researchers into our own ranks.”

  “The world’s too big,” she said very softly. “You can’t foresee all that’ll happen. Too many things could go wrong.”

  “Maybe. It’s a chance we’ve got to take.” His own gaze was somber.

  They sat for awhile in stillness. Then she said, “It all sounds very pretty. But—what are you, Dalgetty?”

  “Simon,” he corrected.

  “What are you?” she repeated. “You’ve done things I wouldn’t have believed were possible. Are you human?”

  “I’m told so.” He smiled.

  “Yes? I wonder! How is it possible that you—”

  He wagged a finger. “Ah-ah! Right of privacy.” And with swift seriousness, “You know too much already. I have to assume you can keep it secret all your life.”

  “That remains to be seen,” Elena said, not looking at him.

  CHAPTER VII

  Sundown burned across the waters and the island rose like a mountain of night against the darkening sky. Dalgetty stretched cramped muscles and peered over the bay.

  In the hours of waiting there had not been much said between him and the woman. He had dropped a few questions, with the careful casualness of the skilled analyst, and gotten the expected reactions. He knew a little more about her—a child of the strangling dying cities and shadowy family life of the 1980’s, forced to armor herself in harshness, finding in the long training for her work and now in the job itself an ideal to substitute for the tenderness she had never known.

  He felt pity for her but there was little he could do to help just now. To her own queries he gave guarded replies. It occurred to him briefly that he was, in his way, as lonesome as she. But of course I don’t mind—or do I?

  Mostly they tried to plan their next move. For the time, at least, they were of one purpose. She described the layout of house and grounds and indicated the cell where Michael Tighe was ordinarily kept. But there was not much they could do to think out tactics. “If Bancroft gets alarmed enough,” she said, “he’ll have Dr. Tighe flown elsewhere.”

  He agreed. “That’s why we’d better hit tonight, before he can get that worried.” The thought was pain within him. Dad, what are they doing to you now?

  “There’s also the matter of food and drink.” Her voice was husky with thirst and dull with the discouragement of hunger. “We can’t stay out here like this much longer.” She gave him a strange glance. “Don’t you feel weak?”

  “Not now,” he said. He had blocked off the sensations.

  “They—Simon!” She grabbed his arm. “A boat—hear?”

  The murmur of jets drifted to him through the beating waves. “Yeah. Quick—underneath!”

  They scrambled over the hogback and slid down its farther side. The sea clawed at Dalgetty’s feet and foam exploded over his head. He hunched low, throwing one arm about her as she slipped. The airboat murmured overhead, hot gold in the sunset light. Dalgetty crouched, letting the breakers run coldly around him. The ledge where they clung was worn smooth, offered little to hold onto.

  The boat circled, its jets thunderous at low speed. They’re worried about her now. They must be sure I’m still alive.

  White water roared above his head. He breathed a hasty gasp of air before the next comber hit him. Their bodies were wholly submerged, their faces shouldn’t show in that haze of foam—but the jet was soaring down and there would be machine-guns on it.

  Dalgetty’s belly muscles stiffened, waiting for the tracers to burn through him.

  Elena’s body slipped from his grasp and went under. He hung there, not daring to follow. A stolen glance upward—yes, the jet was out of sight again, moving back toward the field. He dove off the ledge and struck into the waves. The girl’s head rose over them as he neared. She twisted from him and made her own way back to the rock. But when they were in the hollow again her teeth rattled with chill and she pressed against him for warmth.

  “Okay,” he said shakily. “Okay, we’re all right now. You are hereby entitled to join our Pacific wet-erans’ club.”

  Her laugh was small under the boom of breakers and hiss of scud. “You’re trying hard, aren’t you?”

  “I—oh, oh! Get down!”

  Peering over the edge Dalgetty saw the men descending the path. There were half a dozen, armed and wary. One had a WT radio unit on his back. In the shadow of the cliff they were almost invisible as they began prowling the beach.

  “Still hunting us!” Her voice was a groan.

  “You didn’t expect otherwise, did you? I’m just hoping they don’t come out here. Does anybody else know of this spot?” He held his lips close to her ear.

  “No, I don’t believe so,” she breathed. “I was the only one who cared to go swimming at this end of the island. But.…”

  Dalgetty waited, grimly. The sun was down at last, the twilight thickening. A few stars twinkled to life in the east. The goons finished their search and settled in a line along the beach.

  “Oh-oh,” muttered Dalgetty. “I get the idea. Bancroft’s had the land beaten for me so thoroughly he’s sure I must be somewhere out to sea. If I were he I’d guess I’d swum far out to be picked up by a waterboat. So—he’s guarding every possible approach against a landing party.”

  “What can we do?” whispered Elena. “Even if we can swim around their radius of sight we can’t land just anywhere. Most of the island is vertical cliff. Or can you…?”

  “No,” he said. “Regardless of what you may think I don’t have vacuum cups
on my feet. But how far does that gun of yours carry?”

  She stole a glance over the edge. Night was sweeping in. The island was a wall of blackness and the men at its foot were hidden. “You can’t see!” she protested.

  He squeezed her shoulder. “Oh yes I can, honey. But whether I’m a good enough shot to.… We’ll have to try it, that’s all.”

  Her face was a white blur and fear of the unknown put metal in her voice. “Part seal, part cat, part deer, part what else? I don’t think you’re human, Simon Dalgetty.”

  He didn’t answer. The abnormal voluntary dilation of pupils hurt his eyes.

  “What else has Dr. Tighe done?” Her tone was chill in the dark. “You can’t study the human mind without studying the body too. What’s he done? Are you the mutant they’re always speculating about? Did Dr. Tighe create or find homo superior?”

  “If I don’t plug that radio com-set before they can use it,” he said, “I’ll be homo-genized.”

  “You can’t laugh it off,” she said through taut lips. “If you aren’t of our species I have to assume you’re our enemy—till you prove otherwise!” Her fingers closed hard on his arm. “Is that what your little gang at the Institute is doing? Have they decided that mere humanity isn’t good enough to be civilized? Are they preparing the way for your kind to take over?”

  “Listen,” he said wearily. “Right now we’re two people, very mortal indeed, being hunted. So shut up!”

  He took the pistol from her holster and slipped a full clip into its magazine. His vision was at high sensitivity now, her face showed white against the wet rock with gray highlights along its strong cheekbones beneath the wide frightened eyes. Beyond the reefs the sea was gunmetal under the stars, streaked with foam and shadow.

  Ahead of him, as he rose to his feet, the line of guards stood out as paler darknesses against the vertiginous island face. They had mounted a heavy machine-gun to point seaward and a self-powered spotlight, not turned on, rested nearby. Those two things could be dangerous but first he had to find the radio set that could call the whole garrison down on them.