The Reefs of Space

by Frederik Pohl

  Oporto seconded: "Tough. Well, what are you going to do? We're only Risks. We can't buck Gottling and all those." He sneezed, and complained: "See, Steve, you're gedding me all upset. I bet I'm catching a code."

  Ryeland looked at him blankly; he had not heard what Oporto had said, and hardly knew the other two were in the room with him. What could he do? Cut off from the Planner or his daughter, he had no chance to keep Gottling from murdering the spaceling. That was the end of the project. If what the Planner had told him was true, it actually endangered the Plan itself; for the jetless drive, the spaceling's queer method of propulsion, was important to the safety of all the Plan. Yet the Planning Machine would not allow him to—

  He blinked and the room came into focus. "The Planning Machine!" he said aloud.

  "What? Steve," moaned Oporto, "now what are you going to do?" But Ryeland didn't answer. He sat at the keyboard of the machine and with a steady hand tapped out an account of what had happened. Colonel Gottling had deliberately controverted the orders of Donna Creery and the Machine itself. The spaceling was in danger. The Plan itself was threatened. He finished, and waited.

  And waited.

  And waited for long minutes, while Oporto and the girl whispered behind him. It was incredible that the Machine should take so long to answer! Ryeland asked himself feverishly: Was it turned on, was the wire cut, could it be possible that the Machine's circuits were so overloaded that the message was not received? He was actually bending over, hardly aware of what he was doing, to be sure that the machine was properly plugged in when abruptly it whirred and rattled.

  Ryeland was up like a shot.

  But the message was unbelievably short. It said only:

  R.

  "Received and understood," Oporto said sympathetically from behind him. "Gee, Steve. That's all? Well, that's the Machine for you. It isn't up to us to question—Steve. Hey. Steve! Where are you going?" But Ryeland was already gone.

  Ryeland hurried down the corridors to General Fleemer's quarters. He had wasted time and it was now late; he would be waking the general up, but he didn't care about that, not now. He tapped on the door and then, without pausing, banged hard.

  "A minute, a minute," mumbled a grumpy voice. A wait. Then the door was flung open.

  General Fleemer was in lounging pajamas, bright purple tunic, striped purple and scarlet pants. The collar and cuffs were picked out in silver braid, and the room behind him was silver. Silver walls, silver-mounted furniture on a silvery rug. It was a startling effect. Fleemer growled irritably: "Ryeland? What the devil do you want?"

  "I have to talk to you, General." He didn't wait for an invitation, but slipped past him into the room. Then something stopped him and he paused, stared, distracted even from the important mission he was on.

  There was a statue by the fireplace, a bright silver statue of a girl. But it moved! It opened silver eyelids and looked at him. With pink-tinged lips, like metallic copper in a silver face, it said: "Who is this one?"

  "Go in the other room!" the general barked. The silver statue shrugged and stood up. It was no statue but a girl; the motion revealed it as she stared at Ryeland and left.

  Ryeland blinked. Dusted with silver to look like living metal, even her hair silver—the general had a remarkable private life. But it was no business of Ryeland's at this moment. He said briskly: "Sir, Colonel Gottling is about to destroy the spaceling. I'm afraid he is deliberately trying to sabotage the project."

  Suddenly the general was no longer a cross, sleepy little fuss-budget. His cat's eyes slitted down, his face abruptly became stone. "Go on," he said after a second.

  "Why—that's all there is, sir. Isn't it enough? If Colonel Gottling goes ahead with vivisection it will kill the creature. I'm certain. Miss Creery left specific orders—"

  "Wait," said the general, but did not invite him to sit down. He turned his back to Ryeland and strode over to his desk. He pressed a button on his desk phone and leaned over to yell into it. "Gottling? Get down to my quarters. Ryeland's here."

  Mumble-mumble from the desk phone. It was directional; Ryeland couldn't understand the words and wasn't meant to. "On the double!" the general barked, cutting off discussion, and broke the connection. Without looking at Ryeland he slumped in a chair, shading his eyes with his hands, and remained there until there was a crisp knock at the door.

  Colonel Gottling walked in. He did not seem disturbed, not in the least. And he was not alone. Machine Major Chatterji came smiling and bowing behind him. "What a lovely room, General! Oh, really lovely. It takes exquisite taste to transform our dreary barracks into—"

  "Shut up." General Fleemer stood. Ryeland waited, poised for whatever excuse Gottling might offer, ready to confront him with the facts as soon as the general began his accusation.

  But the general did not begin. The general did not speak to Gottling at all. He said: "All right, Chatterji, have you got the orders?"

  "Yes, General. Certainly! Here you are. I knew you'd be wanting them, so—" The general moved slightly and Chatterji was still. Fleemer took a sheet of teletype communication paper from the major's hand and passed it to

  Ryeland without comment. Ryeland glanced puzzledly at it

  Then he felt a sudden quick burning sensation, as though a knife had reached him unsuspected. The message said:

  Information. Ryeland, Steven, Risk, change of status approved. Action. Subject will therefore be transported to stockpile HJK without delay.

  "Stockpile HJK?" Ryeland repeated aloud. He shook his head, dazed. "But—there's got to be some mistake here, because, look, stockpile HJK is Heaven. I mean—"

  "You mean the Body Bank, as it is otherwise known." General Fleemer nodded wisely. "That's correct, and that is where you're going. You were perfectly right about Gottling sabotaging the Project, you see. Your only mistake was in thinking that he was alone."

  Chapter 9

  Heaven was on the island of Cuba.

  The subtrain took nearly an hour to get there. Ryeland hardly noticed. They rode in a gray steel ball, far less luxurious than the Planner's private car. When they stopped, Ryeland, still dazed, still shocked, got out and blinked at a massive concrete archway over a steel gate.

  The letter in the concrete read:

  Resurrection under the Plan

  The station was gray concrete. Air ducts blew a clammy breath at them. A guard in white, a red heart stitched on the breast of his tunic, came forward to take charge.

  The major who had convoyed Ryeland's detail, twenty-two new cadavers for the Body Bank, turned them over gratefully and went back into the subtrain without a look. He didn't like this escort detail. No one did. It was a reminder of mortality; even a machine major could be made to realize that one bad blunder, or one bad break, could put him in Heaven too. "Come on!" bawled the guard, and apathetically the twenty-two walking collections of spare parts followed him through the gate.

  A narrow corridor. A long rectangular room, with wooden benches. Ryeland sat and waited and, one by one, they were admitted to a smaller room. When it was his turn Ryeland walked through the door and a girl grasped his arm, thrusting it under the black-light. Her hair was red, the same bright red as the heart that was stitched on her uniform. Under the light his tattoo glowed faintly. She read off his name and number in a rapid drone. "Steven Ryeland," she said in the same continuous drone, "when you entered this gate you leave life behind as an individual you have failed to justify your place in the Plan the tissues of—"

  She yawned sharply. She shook her head and grinned. "Excuse me. Where was I? The tissues of your body however may still serve the Plan before you enter have you anything to say?"

  Ryeland thought. What was there to say? He shook his head.

  "Go ahead, then. Through that door," said the girl.

  Behind Ryeland the door clanged with a steel finality..

  First there were tests.

  Ryeland was stripped, scrubbed, weighed, measured, X-rayed, blood-teste
d, tissue-tested, ascaulted, palped and all but sniffed and tasted. A bit of his flesh was snipped and whisked to a complex bench where a team of girls put it through a process of staining and microscopy. From their studies a genetic map was made of his chromosomes, every allele and allomorph in place, and coded into binary symbols which were stamped on his collar.

  It was interesting. Transplants of body organs did not survive, not even with suppressants, if the donor and subject were too different in their genetic makeup. Antibodies formed. The new tissue was attacked by the environment it found itself in. It died. So, usually, did the patient. The more delicate the tissue involved, the closer the genetic resemblance had to be. It was an old story. Any cornea can be imbedded in any other eye; the tissues are crude and simple, mostly water. Millions of -humans can transfer blood from one to another—blood is a tissue little more complex than the cornea.

  But more highly specialized members are transferable, without suppressants, only between identical twins.

  Suppressants—something like the allergy-controlling pharmaceuticals which once helped hold down hay fever—can make the range of tolerance broader; but, even so, genetic patterns must be matched as closely as possible. It was good that it was interesting. Ryeland was able to keep his mind on it. He did not find himself dwelling on the fact that he was now in the position of the spaceling under Gottling. He did not have to contemplate the prospect of what was essentially (however gentle, however carefully anesthetized for him) the Death of a Thousand Cuts.

  And then they turned him loose, without warning.

  He had expected a cell. He was given a millionaire's playground. He tripped over a tuft of grass and, blinking in warm Caribbean afternoon sun, found himself in a broad park, with trees and comfortable-looking cabins. He Started forward, then happened to think of something and returned to the guard. "What do I do now? Who do I report to?"

  "Nobody," said the guard, gently closing the door. Nobody at all, any more."

  Ryeland walked down a broad green lane toward the glint of water, it was as good a direction to go as any. He had never in all his life before had the experience of being without orders. It was almost more disturbing than the sure prospect of dismemberment that lay before him. He was so absorbed in the feeling that he hardly heard someone calling to him until the man raised his voice. "You! Hey, you new fellow! Come back here!"

  Ryeland turned.

  The man who was calling him was about fifty years old —the prime of life. He should have been a husky, bronzed creature with all his hair. Statistically he should hardly have needed even glasses. Forty good years should still be ahead of him at least.

  But the man who limp-stumped up to Ryeland had none of these things. He was totally bald. (In a moment, as the sunlight caught it, Ryeland saw that what had .seemed to be the man's scalp was a plastic covering.) He walked with a shoulder-cane—almost a crutch. And what he walked on were not flesh-and-blood feet but prosthetic appliances. One eye was only a patch; the other was drawn into a squint by another area of pink plastic that covered the place where once he had had an ear.

  "You! Did you just come in?" he cried. His voice was I deep and vibrant; that, at least, he had kept.

  Ryeland said, keeping his expression polite with some difficulty, "Yes, that's right. My name is Steve Ryeland."

  "Never mind that. Do you play bridge?"

  The difficult expression collapsed for a second, but Ryeland got it back. "I'm afraid not."

  "Damn." When the man scowled it pointed up another peculiarity of his face. He had no eyebrows. "How about chess?"

  "Yes, a little."

  "Speak up!" the man barked, turning his good ear irritably to Ryeland.

  "I said yes!"

  "Well, that's .worth something," the man said, grudging the words. "Urn. Maybe you could learn bridge, hey? We're a good house. No rough stuff, no stealing. And no basket cases." He said proudly: "I'm the senior inmate in the house. Take a look at me. See? I've got plenty left."

  Ryeland said slowly, "You mean I can pick out the house I live in? I don't know the rules here yet."

  "There aren't any rules. Oh," the man shrugged, "no fights resulting in bodily injury, no hazardous sports— they salvage you total for that sort of thing. You know. What you've, got, it doesn't belong to you anymore. It's the Plan's and you're supposed to take care of it." He hitched himself forward on his shoulder-cane. "Well, what about it? You look all right to me. Take my advice and come in with us. Never mind what the other houses say —those Jupiters will be talking about their pingpong table, and what good is that when tomorrow morning you maybe won't have what to play pingpong with!" He grinned confidentially, revealing a set of casually placed artificial teeth.

  Ryeland went with the one-eyed man, whose name turned out to be Whitehurst. The man was a good salesman, but he had not exaggerated the value of choosing the right hut. Ryeland could see that for himself; some cottages had a rundown, disreputable air, the inmates lounging around, surly and bored. Whitehurst's house was busy if nothing else.

  It was amazing, but Ryeland found Heaven rather pleasant. There was food—good food. Whitehurst told him proudly, no synthetics or retreads! (The tissues had to be kept up.) There was plenty of leisure. (The patient had to be always in shape for major surgery.) There was ... well ... freedom, said Whitehurst, almost embarrassed as he said it and unwilling to explain. But Ryeland found out that it was so. If Heaven was a jail, at least the walls were out of sight. There was no fear of making a mistake and falling to ruin; there was no farther to fall.

  The physical plant was ideal. Small cottages dotted a green landscape. Palms stood on green hills. There was a grove of oaks and cedars by a lake, and the lake contained actual fish. The tropic sky was a permanent milky blue, with high-piled cumulus to give it life.

  Whitehurst’s cottage called themselves the Dixie Presidents. No one remembered what doomed antiquarian, generations before, had selected the name, but it was the custom to name each house and successive inmates kept the names; it was a tradition. The Dixie Presidents were an all-male cottage, by choice. It was up to the inmates. Not all the houses were so monastic. There were as many women as men in Heaven, and the co-ed cottages were given to wild sounds late at night. But that was up to the inmates too.

  Listening to the evening conversation of his fellow inmates, Ryeland found a few things which struck him as odd. The cottage across the way was occupied by a family group. Strange! Their name was Minton—Mr. Minton, Mrs. Minton and their five grown children. What mass crime had the Minton family committed to be scrapped en masse? It was queer.

  The principle that lay behind the Body Bank he knew well. It had been explained to him in detail on his travel orders, even if he had been the one man alive under the Plan who didn't know all about it from infancy. Each human under the Plan of Man was required to make a contribution toward the good of all. If inefficiency, malevolence or carelessness kept him from doing what he was asked, he would then be permitted to contribute in another way. He would be scrapped. His limbs and organs would be put to the use of more valuable citizens, replacing parts damaged through accident or disease.

  It was a project more attractive to the recipient than to the donor, of course. Yet it did have a sort of rough justice, and Ryeland thought he could bring himself to tolerate whatever might happen—the world's good was more important than his own!

  And yet...

  One thing did bother him. In his life he had known or heard of a fair number of persons who had been scrapped for the salvage of their parts in the Body Bank.

  And yet he could not remember ever, not even once, having encountered a man who had benefited from these organs...

  Now at last, when it was too late to matter, Ryeland had time to return to the riddle of his three missing days. He was tormented with the possibility that he had once known a precious secret which could somehow transform the Plan of Man—if he could just recall it.

  That night after he had w
atched the bridge game for a few minutes he lay trying to remember. Had there been a knocking twice on his door, on Friday and again on Monday? If Horrock had really come to him, what message could he have brought? Even if a jetless drive could be invented, how could it threaten the Plan? Who besides Donderevo was free from the Machine?

  He found no answers. The fog was thicker in his memory. Even the fat, apologetic face of Dr. Thrale was growing dim. He no longer flinched when he remembered the cold electrodes clamped on his body. He fell asleep and dreamed that he had discovered a jetless drive.

  It was a broomstick. He rode it through a jungle of five-pointed tinsel stars, with General Fleemer astride a spaceling close behind him. Fleemer was goading and spurring the spaceling, and it was screaming horribly.

  "Reveille! Reveille! Everybody up!"

  Ryeland woke up with a start; he had been dreaming that he was in the Body Bank, in an unusually soft bed, and woke to find it true. He sat blinking at the bunk across from him. It looked more like a surgical supply house than a human being's bed. The cords of a bone conduction hearing aid dangled from the stainless-steel shafts of a prosthetic arm. A self-powered wheelchair bore ten pounds of assorted steel, copper, rubber and plastic. As in the ancient joke about the wedding night, there was more of Ryeland's roommate on the bureau than in the bed.

  The roommate was a plump man of rosy complexion, what there was left of it, and ill temper. His name was Alden. "Come on, Ryeland," he screeched faintly in the high-pitched whisper of the newly deaf. "You know the rules of the house. Give me a hand."

  "All right." There was plenty of time before morning shape-up and breakfast, so Ryeland had been told; there had to be, for the senior members of the community needed plenty of time to get their miscellaneous artificial parts in place. As a newcomer, still complete in his organs, Rye-land had obligations. The juniors took care of the seniors. Seniority ruled—not age, but length of time in Heaven. It was a fair system, it was explained to Ryeland, and it was enlightened self-interest besides. "You'll find out," Whitehurst had said grimly. "Wait till you're missing a few little chunks."