The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 7 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “Not a chance. We’ve already said too much to the press. It’s known all over the world that the medical award is going to the discoverer of the basic cause of cancer, to the founder of modern neoplastic therapy.” Christianson grimaced. “If we changed our decision now, there’d be all sorts of embarrassing questions from the press.”

  “I can see it now,” Carlstrom said, “the banquet, the table, the flowers, and Professor Doctor Nels Christianson in formal dress with the Order of St. Olaf gleaming across his white shirtfront, standing before that distinguished audience and announcing: The Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology is awarded to—’ and then that deadly hush when the audience sees the winner.”

  “You needn’t rub it in,” Christianson said unhappily. “I can see it, too.”

  ‘These Americans!” Eklund said bitterly. He wiped his damp forehead. The picture Carlstrom had drawn was accurate but hardly appealing. “One simply can’t trust them. Publishing a report as important as that as a laboratory release. They should have given proper credit.”

  “They did,” Carlstrom said. “They did—precisely. But the world, including us, was too stupid to see it. We have only ourselves to blame.”

  “If it weren’t for the fact that the work was inspired and effective,” Christianson muttered, “we might have a chance of salvaging this situation. But through its application ninety-five per cent of cancers are now curable. It is obviously the outstanding contribution to medicine in the past five decades.”

  “But we must consider the source,” Eklund protested. ‘This award will make the prize for medicine a laughingstock. No doctor will ever accept another. If we go through with this, we might as well forget about the medical award from now on. This will be its swan song. It hits too close to home. Too many people have been saying similar things about our profession and its trend toward specialization. And to have the Nobel Prize confirm them would alienate every doctor in the world. We simply can’t do it.”

  “Yet who else has made a comparable discovery? Or one that is even half as important?” Christianson asked.

  “That’s a good question,” Carlstrom said, “and a good answer to it isn’t going to be easy to find. For my part, I can only wish that Alphax Laboratories had displayed an interest in literature rather than medicine. Then our colleagues at the Academy could have had the painful decision.”

  “Their task would be easier than ours,” Christianson said wearily. “After all, the criteria of art are more flexible. Medicine, unfortunately, is based upon facts.”

  “That’s the hell of it,” Carlstrom said.

  “There must be some way to solve this problem,” Eklund said. “After all it was a perfectly natural mistake. We never suspected that Alphax was a physical rather than a biological sciences laboratory. Perhaps that might offer grounds—”

  “I don’t think so,” Carlstrom interrupted. “The means in this case aren’t as important as the results, and we can’t deny that the cancer problem is virtually solved.”

  “Even though men have been saying for the past two generations that the answer was probably in the literature and all that was needed was someone with the intelligence and the time to put the facts together, the fact remains that it was C. Edie who did the job. And it required quite a bit more than merely collecting facts. Intelligence and original thinking of a high order was involved.” Christianson sighed.

  “Someone,” Eklund said bitterly. “Some thing you mean. C. Edie—C.E.D.—Computer, Extrapolating, Discriminatory. Manufactured by Alphax Laboratories, Trenton, New Jersey, U.S.A. C. Edie! Americans!!—always naming things. A machine wins the Nobel Prize. It’s fantastic!”

  Christianson shook his head. “It’s not fantastic, unfortunately. And I see no way out. We can’t even award the prize to the team of engineers who designed and built Edie. Dr. Hanson is right when he says the discovery was Edie’s and not the engineers’. It would be like giving the prize to Albert Einstein’s parents because they created him.”

  “Is there any way we can keep the presentation secret?” Eklund asked.

  “I’m afraid not. The presentations are public. We’ve done too good a job publicizing the Nobel Prize. As a telecast item, it’s almost the equal of the motion picture Academy Award.”

  “I can imagine the reaction when our candidate is revealed. in all her metallic glory. A two-meter cube of steel filled with microminiaturized circuits, complete with flashing lights and cogwheels,” Carlstrom chuckled. “And where are you going to hang the medal?”

  Christianson shivered. “I wish you wouldn’t give that metal nightmare a personality,” he said. “It unnerves me. Personally, I wish that Dr. Hanson, Alphax Laboratories, and Edie were all at the bottom of the ocean—in some nice deep spot like the Mariannas Trench.” He shrugged. “Of course, we won’t have that sort of luck, so we’ll have to make the best of it.”

  “It just goes to show that you can’t trust Americans,” Eklund said. “I’ve always thought we should keep our awards on this side of the Atlantic where people are sane and civilized. Making a personality out of a computer—ugh! I suppose it’s their idea of a joke.”

  “I doubt it,” Christianson said. “They just like to name things—preferably with female names. It’s a form of insecurity, the mother fixation. But that’s not important. I’m afraid, gentlemen, that we shall have to make the award as we have planned. I can see no way out. After all, there’s no reason why the machine cannot receive the prize. The conditions merely state that it is to be presented to the one, regardless of nationality, who makes the greatest contribution to medicine or physiology.”

  “I wonder how His Majesty will take it,” Carlstrom said.

  “The king! I’d forgotten that!” Eklund gasped.

  “I expect he’ll have to take it,” Christianson said. “He might even appreciate the humor in the situation.”

  “Gustaf Adolf is a good king, but there are limits,” Eklund observed.

  “There are other considerations,” Christianson replied. “After all, Edie is the reason the Crown Prince is still alive, and Gustaf is fond of his son.”

  “After all these years?”

  Christianson smiled. Swedish royalty was long-lived. It was something of a standing joke that King Gustaf would probably outlast the pyramids, providing the pyramids lived in Sweden. “I’m sure His Majesty will co-operate. He has a strong sense of duty and since the real problem is his, not ours, I doubt if he will shirk it.”

  “How do you figure that?” Eklund asked.

  “We merely select the candidates according to the rules, and according to the nature of their contribution. Edie is obviously the outstanding candidate in medicine for this year. It deserves the prize. We would be compromising with principle if we did not award it fairly.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Eklund said gloomily. “I can’t think of any reasonable excuse to deny the award.”

  “Nor I,” Carlstrom said. “But what did you mean by that remark about this being the king’s problem?”

  “You forget,” Christianson said mildly. “Of all of us, the king has the most difficult part. As you know, the Nobel Prize is formally presented at a State banquet.”

  “Well?”

  “His Majesty is the host,” Christianson said. “And just how does one eat dinner with an electronic computer?”

  <>

  * * * *

  FREEDOM

  by Mack Reynolds

  Last year, I got a pin-up postcard from Mack Reynolds, who has been touring Europe as Travel Editor for Rogue magazine. The handsome astronaut on the back of the card was, said Reynolds, a national hero; his picture hung in every bar and waiting room. Some months later, John Glenn had his historic ticker tape parade, achieving the same status in this country. The man on my card was named Titov; the card was mailed from a small Eastern European country.

  * * * *

  Colonel Ilya Simonov tooled his Zil aircushion convertible along the edge
of Red Square, turned right immediately beyond St. Basil’s Cathedral, crossed the Moscow River by the Moskvoretski Bridge and debouched into the heavy, largely automated traffic of Pyatnikskaya. At Dobryninskaya Square he turned west to Gorki Park which he paralleled on Kaluga until he reached the old baroque palace which housed the Ministry.

  There were no flags, no signs, nothing to indicate the present nature of the aged Czarist building.

  He left the car at the curb, slamming its door behind him and walking briskly to the entrance. Hard, handsome in the Slavic tradition, dedicated, Ilya Simonov was young for his rank. A plainclothesman, idling a hundred feet down the street, eyed him briefly then turned his attention elsewhere. The two guards at the gate snapped to attention, their eyes straight ahead. Colonel Simonov was in mufti and didn’t answer the salute.

  The inside of the old building was well known to him. He went along marble halls which contained antique statuary and other relics of the past which, for unknown reason, no one had ever bothered to remove. At the heavy door which entered upon the office of his destination he came to a halt and spoke briefly to the lieutenant at the desk there.

  “The Minister is expecting me,” Simonov clipped.

  The lieutenant did the things receptionists do everywhere and looked up in a moment to say, “Go right in, Colonel Simonov.”

  Minister Kliment Blagonravov looked up from his desk at Simonov’s entrance. He was a heavy-set man, heavy of face and he still affected the shaven head, now rapidly disappearing among upper echelons of the Party. His jacket had been thrown over the back of a chair and his collar loosened; even so there was a sheen of sweat on his face.

  He looked up at his most trusted field man, said in the way of greeting, “Ilya,” and twisted in his swivel chair to a portable bar. He swung open the door of the small refrigerator and emerged with a bottle of Stolitschnaja vodka. He plucked two three-ounce glasses from a shelf and pulled the bottle’s cork with his teeth. “Sit down, sit down, Ilya,” he grunted as he filled the glasses. “How was Magnitogorsk?”

  Ilya Simonov secured his glass before seating himself in one of the room’s heavy leathern chairs. He sighed, relaxed, and said, ‘Terrible. I loathed those ultra-industralized cities. I wonder if the Americans do any better with Pittsburgh or the British with Birmingham.”

  “I know what you mean,” the security head rumbled. “How did you make out with your assignment, Ilya?”

  Colonel Simonov frowned down into the colorlessness of the vodka before dashing it back over his palate. “It’s all in my report, Kliment.” He was the only man in the organization who called Blagonravov by his first name.

  His chief grunted again and reached forward to refill the glass. “I’m sure it is. Do you know how many reports go across this desk daily? And did you know that Ilya Simonov is the most long-winded, as the Americans say, of my some two hundred first-line operatives?”

  The colonel shifted in his chair. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  His chief rumbled his sour version of a chuckle. “Nothing, nothing, Ilya. I was jesting. However, give me a brief of your mission.”

  Ilya Simonov frowned again at his refilled vodka glass but didn’t take it up for a moment. “A routine matter,” he said. “A dozen or so engineers and technicians, two or three fairly high-ranking scientists, and three or four of the local intelligentsia had formed some sort of informal club. They were discussing national and international affairs.”

  Kliment Blagonravov’s thin eyebrows went up but he waited for the other to go on.

  Ilya said impatiently, “It was the ordinary. They featured complete freedom of opinion and expression in their weekly get-togethers. They began by criticizing without extremism, local affairs, matters concerned with their duties, that sort of thing. In the beginning, they even sent a few letters of protest to the local press, signing the name of the club. After their ideas went further out, they didn’t dare do that, of course.”

  He took up his second drink and belted it back, not wanting to give it time to lose its chill.

  His chief filled in. “And they delved further and further into matters that should be discussed only within the party —if even there—until they arrived at what point?”

  Colonel Simonov shrugged. “Until they finally got to the point of discussing how best to overthrow the Soviet State and what socio-economic system should follow it. The usual thing. I’ve run into possibly two dozen such outfits in the past five years.”

  His chief grunted and tossed back his own drink. “My dear Ilya,” he rumbled sourly, “I’ve run into, as you say, more than two hundred.”

  Simonov was taken back by the figure but he only looked at the other.

  Blagonravov said, “What did you do about it?”

  “Several of them were popular locally. In view of Comrade Zverev’s recent pronouncements of increased freedom of press and speech, I thought it best not to make a public display. Instead, I took measures to charge individual members with inefficiency in their work, with corruption or graft, or with other crimes having nothing to do with the reality of the situation. Six or seven in all were imprisoned, others, demoted. Ten or twelve I had switched to other cities, principally into more backward areas in the virgin lands.”

  “And the ringleaders?” the security head asked.

  “There were two of them, one a research chemist of some prominence, the other a steel plant manager. They were both, ah, unfortunately killed in an automobile accident while under the influence of drink.”

  “I see,” Blagonravov nodded. “So actually the whole rat’s nest was stamped out without attention being brought to it so far as the Magnitogorsk public is concerned.” He nodded heavily again. “You can almost always be depended upon to do the right thing, Ilya. If you weren’t so confoundedly good a field man, I’d make you my deputy.”

  Which was exactly what Simonov would have hated, but he said nothing.

  “One thing,” his chief said. ‘The origin of this, ah, club which turned into a tiny underground all of its own. Did you detect the finger of the West, stirring up trouble?”

  “No.” Simonov shook his head. “If such was the case, the agents involved were more clever than I’d ordinarily give either America or Common Europe credit for. I could be wrong, of course.”

  “Perhaps,” the police head growled. He eyed the bottle before him but made no motion toward it. He wiped the palm of his right hand back over his bald pate, in unconscious irritation. “But there is something at work that we are not getting at.” Blagonravov seemed to change subjects. “You speak Czech, so I understand.”

  ‘That’s right. My mother was from Bratislava. My father met her there during the Hitler war.”

  “And you know Czechoslovakia?”

  “I’ve spent several vacations in the Tatras at such resorts as Tatranska Lomnica since the country’s been made such a tourist center of the satellites.” Ilya Simonov didn’t understand this trend of the conversation.

  “You have some knowledge of automobiles, too?”

  Simonov shrugged. “I’ve driven all my life.”

  His chief rumbled thoughtfully, “Time isn’t of essence. You can take a quick course at the Moskvich plant. A week or two would give you all the background you need.”

  Ilya laughed easily. “I seem to have missed something. Have my shortcomings caught up with me? Am I to be demoted to automobile mechanic?”

  Kliment Blagonravov became definite. “You are being given the most important assignment of your career, Ilya. This rot, this ever growing ferment against the Party, must be cut out, liquidated. It seems to fester worst among the middle echelons of ... what did that Yugoslavian Djilas call us? ... the New Class. Why? That’s what we must know.”

  He sat farther back in his chair and his heavy lips made a moue. “Why, Ilya?” he repeated. “After more than half a century the Party has attained all its goals. Lenin’s millennium is here; the end for which Stalin purged ten mill
ions and more is reached; the sacrifices demanded by Khrushchev in the Seven-Year Plans have finally paid off, as the Yankees say. Our gross national product, our per capita production, our standard of living, is the highest in the world. Sacrifices are no longer necessary.”

  There had been an almost whining note in his voice. But now he broke it off. He poured them still another drink. “At any rate, Ilya, I was with Frol Zverev this morning. Number One is incensed. It seems that in the Azerbaijan Republic, for one example, that even the Komsomols were circulating among themselves various proscribed books and pamphlets. Comrade Zverev instructed me to concentrate on discovering the reason for this disease.”

  Colonel Simonov scowled. “What’s this got to do with Czechoslovakia—and automobiles?”

  The security head waggled a fat finger at him. “What we’ve been doing, thus far, is dashing forth upon hearing of a new conflagration and stamping it out. Obviously, that’s no answer. We must find who is behind it. How it begins. Why it begins. That’s your job.”