The 13th Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack

by Lester Del Rey

  Bard gulped the coffee gratefully as he looked up to see the younger man holding out the food, but he only sampled that. His hands were less sure again. “Jimmy, I don’t know—I can’t think. I get so far, and everything seems clear; then—pfft ! It’s the same as when I first tried to remember the secret of atomic power; there are worn places in my mind—eroded by eighty years of death. And when I try to force my thoughts across them, they stagger and reel.”

  “Grandfather Bard, you’ve got to finish it! It’s almost five, and I have to report back at six!”

  Bard rubbed his wrinkled forehead with one hand, clenching and opening the other. For a time, then, he continued to work busily, but there were long quiet intervals. “It’s all here, except this one little section. If I could put that in right, it’d work—but if I make a mistake, it’ll probably blow out, unless it does nothing.” Jimmy stared at his watch. “Try it.”

  “You solder it; my hands won’t work anymore.” Bard slipped off the stool, directing the boy’s hands carefully. “If I could be sure of making it by going insane, as I did the atom-gun, I’d even force my mind through those nightmares again. But I might decide to do almost anything else, instead…No, that’s the antenna—one end remains free.”

  The hands of the watch stood at ten minutes of six as the last connection was made and Bard plugged it into the socket near the floor. Then the tubes were warming up. There was no blowout, at least; the tubes continued to glow, and a tiny indicator showed radiation of some form coming from the antenna. Jimmy grinned, relief stronger in him, but the older man shook his head doubtfully as they went back to the lift again.

  “I don’t know whether it’s working right, son. I put that last together by mental rule of thumb, and you shouldn’t work that way in delicate electronic devices, where even two wires accidentally running beside each other can ruin things! But at least we can pray. And as a last resort—well, I still have the atom-pistol.”

  “Use it, if you need to! I’ll take you to the back wall of my father’s inner office, and you can stay there watching while I go around the long way. And use it quickly, because I’ll know you’re there!”

  It took him three tries to find a hallway that was empty of the guards and slip out, but he was only seconds late as his father opened the door and let him in; the usual secretaries and guards were gone, and only the chief psychologist stood there, his small stock of equipment set up. But the Dictator hesitated.

  “Jimmy, I want you to know I have to do this, even though I don’t know whether you have any better chance of passing it now than when you were a kid—that’s just my private hunch, and the psychologist here thinks I’m wrong. But—well, something I was counting on is probably stolen by conspiracy, and there’s a helluva war brewing in Eurasia against us, which we’re not ready for; the oligarchs have something secret that they figure will win. It’s all on a private tape I’ll give you. I don’t know how much help you’ll be, but seeing you suddenly normal will back up the bluff I’m planning, at least. We Bards have a historic destiny to maintain, and I’m counting on you to do your part. You must pass!”

  Jimmy only half heard it. He was staring at the headpiece, looking something like a late-style woman’s hat with wires leading to a little box on the table, and varicolored spools of special tape. For a second, as it clamped down over his face, he winced, but then stood it in stiff silence. In the back of his mind, something tried to make itself noticed—but as he groped for it, only a vague, uneasy feeling remained. Words and something about the psychologist’s face…

  He heard the snap of the switch, and then his mind seemed to freeze, though sounds and sights still registered. But he knew that the device in the room so far below had failed! The pressure on his brain was too familiar by description; the Bard psychicompellor was functioning. For a second, before full impact, he tried to tear it off, but something else seemed to control his mind, and he sat rigidly, breathing hard, but unable to stop it. His thoughts died down, became torpid, while the machine went on driving its two hundred million impulses into his brain every second, doing things that science still could not understand, but could use.

  He watched stolidly as the spools were finished, one by one, until his father produced one from a safe and watched it used, then smashed it. The psychologist bent, picked up one last one, and attached it…The face of the man was familiar… “Like to have the brat in front of a burner like those we use in zombieing criminals…”

  Then something in his head seemed to slither, like feet slipping on ice. Numbed and dull of mind, he still gripped at himself, and his formerly motionless hands were clenching at the arms of the chair. Something gnawing inside, a queer distortion, that… Was this what a zombie felt, while its mind failed under education?

  The psychologist bent then, removing the headset. “Get up, James Bard!” But as Jim still sat, surprise came over his face, masked instantly by a look of delighted relief. “So you’re no zombie?”

  Jim arose then, rubbing his hands across his aching forehead, and managed to smile. “No,” he said quietly. “No, I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right! Perfectly.”

  “Praise be, Jimmy.” The Dictator relaxed slowly into his chair. “And now you know… What’s the matter?”

  Jim couldn’t tell him of the assurance necessary to keep Aaron Bard from firing, but he held his face into a pleasant smile in spite of the pain in his head as he turned to face his father. He knew now—everything. Quietly, unobtrusively, all the things he hadn’t known before were there, waiting for his mind to use, along with all the things he had seen and all the conversations he had spied upon in secret.

  He had knowledge—and a mind trained to make the most of it. The habits of thinking he had forced upon himself were already busy with the new information; even the savage, throbbing pain couldn’t stop that. Now he passed his hand across his head deliberately, and nodded to the outer office. “My head’s killing me, Father. Can’t I use the couch out there?”

  “For a few minutes, I guess. Doctor, can’t you give the boy something?”

  “Maybe. I’m not a medical doctor, but I can fix the pain, I think.” The psychologist was abstract, but he turned out. The Dictator came last, and they were out of the little room, into the larger one where no passages pierced the walls and no shot could reach him.

  The smile whipped from the boy’s face then, and one of his hands snapped out, lifting a small flame gun from his father’s hip with almost invisible speed. It came up before the psychologist could register the emotions that might not yet have begun, and the flame washed out, blackening clothes and flesh and leaving only a limp, charred body on the floor.

  Jim kicked it aside. “Treason. He had a nice little tape in there, made out by two people of totally opposite views, in spite of the law against it. Supposed to burn me into a zombie. It would have, except that I’d already studied both sides pretty well, and it raised Ned for a while, even then. Here’s your gun, Father.”

  “Keep it!” The first real emotion Jim had ever seen on his father’s face was there now, and it was fierce pride. “I never saw such beautiful gun work, boy! Or such a smooth job of handling a snake! Thanks be, you aren’t soft and weak, as I thought. No more emotional nonsense, eh?”

  “No more. I’m cured. And at the meeting of the Senators you’ve called, maybe we’ll have a surprise for them. You go on down, and I’ll catch up as soon as I can get some amidopyrene for this headache. Somehow, I’ll think of something to stop the impeachment they’re planning.”

  “Impeachment! That bad? But how—why didn’t you—”

  “I did try to tell you, years ago. But though I knew every little treason plot they were cooking then, you were too busy to listen to a nonadult, and I didn’t try again. Now, though, it’ll be useful. See you outside assembly, unless I’m late.”

  He grinned mirthlessly as his father went down the hall and awa
y from him. The look of pride in his too-heavy face wouldn’t have stayed there if he’d known just how deep in treason some of the fine Senator friends were. It would take a dozen miracles to pull them through. Jim found the panel he wanted, looked to be sure of privacy, and slipped through, tracing quickly down the corridor.

  But Aaron Bard wasn’t to be found. For a second he debated more searching, but gave it up; there was no time, and he could locate the old man later. It wasn’t important that he be found at the moment. Jim shrugged and slipped into one of the passages that would serve as a shortcut to the great assembly room. The headache was already disappearing, and he had no time to bother with it.

  They were already beginning session when he arrived, even so, and he slipped quietly through the Dictator’s private entrance, making his way unnoticed to the huge desk, behind a jade screen that would hide him from the Senators and yet permit him to watch. He had seen other sessions before, but they had been noisy, bickering affairs, with the rival groups squabbling and shouting names. Today there was none of that. They were going through the motions, quite plainly stalling for time, and without interest in the routine. This meeting was a concerted conspiracy to depose the Dictator, though only the few leaders of the groups knew that Eurasian bribery and treason were the real reasons behind it.

  It had been in the making for years, while those leaders carefully built up the ever-present little hatreds and discontents. Jim’s status had been used to discredit his father, though the man’s own weaknesses had been more popular in distorted versions. As Jim looked, he saw that the twelve cunning men lured to treason by promises of being made American Oligarchs, though supposedly heading rival groups, were all still absent; that explained the stalling. Something was astir, and Jim had a hunch that the psychologist’s corpse would have been of no little interest to them. The two honest group leaders were in session, grim and quiet; then, as he looked, the twelve came in, one by one, from different entrances. Their faces showed no great sense of defeat.

  Naturally. The Dictator had no chance; he had tried to rule by dividing the now-united groups and by family prestige, and had kept afloat so long as they were not ready to strike; the methods would not stand any strain, much less this attack. He had already muffed one attack opportunity while the leaders were out. A strong man would have cut through the stalling and taken the initiative; a clever orator, schooled in the dramatics and emotions of a Webster or a Borah might even have controlled them. But the Dictator was weak, and the compellor did not produce great oratory; that was incompatible with such emotional immaturity.

  But the Dictator had finally been permitted to speak, now. He should have begun with the shock of Jim’s adulthood to snap them out of their routine thoughts, built up the revival of Aaron Bard and his old atomic power work, to make them wonder, and then swept his accusations over them in short, hard blows. Instead, he was tracing the old accomplishments of the Bard Family, stock, familiar phrases with no meaning left in them.

  Jim sat quietly; it was best that his father should learn his own weakness, here and now. He peered down to watch the leading traitor, and the expression on the man’s face snapped his head around, even as his father saw the same thing and stopped talking.

  An arm projected from the left wall, waving a dirty scrap of paper at them, and Jim recognized the sheet Bard had used for his diagrams. Now the arm suddenly withdrew, to be replaced by the grinning head of Aaron Bard—but not the face Jim had seen; this one contained sheer lunacy, the teeth bared, the eyes protruding, and the muscles of the neck bunched in mad tension! As Jim watched, the old man emerged fully into the room and began stalking steadily down the aisles toward the Dictator’s desk, the atom-gun in one hand centered squarely on Jim’s father.

  He had full attention, and no one moved to touch him as his feet marched steadily forward, while the scrap of paper in his hand waved and fluttered. Now his voice chopped out words and seemed to hurl them outward with physical force. “Treason! Barbarism! Heathen idolatry!”

  For a second, Jim took his eyes from Bard to study his father, then to spring from the chair in a frantic leap as he saw the Dictator’s nerve crack and his finger slip onto one of the secret tiny buttons on the desk. But the concealed weapon acted too quickly, though there was no visible blast from it. Aaron Bard uttered a single strangled sound and crumpled to the floor!

  “Get back!” Jim wasted no gentleness on his father as he twisted around the desk to present the crowding Senators with the shock of his presence at assembly on top of their other surprise. He had to dominate now, while there was a power hiatus. He bent for a quick look. “Coagulator! Who carries an illegal coagulator here? Some one of you, because this man is paralyzed by one.”

  Mysteriously, a doctor appeared and nodded after a brief examination. “Coagulator, all right. His nerves are cooked from chest down, and it’s spreading. Death certain in an hour or so.”

  “Will he regain consciousness?”

  “Hard to say. Nothing I can do, but I’ll try, if someone will move him to the rest room.”

  Jim nodded and stooped to pick up the scrawled bit of paper and the atom-gun. He had been waiting for a chance, and now fate had given it to him. The words he must say were already planned, brief and simple to produce the impact he must achieve, while the assembly was still disorganized and uncertain; if oratory could win them, now was the time for it. With a carefully stern and accusing face, he mounted the platform behind the desk. His father started to speak, then stopped in shock as Jim took the gavel, rapped for order, and began, pacing with words in a slow rhythm while measuring the intensity for his voice by the faces before him.

  “Gentlemen, eighty years ago, Aaron Bard died on the eve of a great war, trying to perfect a simple atomic release that would have shortened that war immeasurably. Tomorrow you will read in your newspapers how that man’s own genius preserved his body and enabled us to revive him on this, the eve of an even grimmer war.

  “Now, a few moments ago, that same man gave his life again in the service of this country, killed by the illegal coagulator of some cowardly traitor. But he did not die in vain, or before he could leave us safely to find his well-earned rest. He has left his mark on many of us; on me, by giving me the adulthood that all our scientists could not; on some of you, in this piece of paper, he has left a grimmer mark…

  “You saw him emerge from a solid wall, and it was no illusion, however much he chose to dramatize his entrance; the genius that was his enabled him to discover a means to search out your treason and your conspiracy in your most secret places. You heard his cry of treason! And one among you tried to silence that cry, forgetting that written notes cannot be silenced with a coagulator.

  “Nor can you silence his last and greatest discovery, here in this weapon you saw him carry—portable atomic power…

  “Now there will be no war; no power would commit such suicide against a nation whose men shall be equipped as ours shall be. You may be sure that the traitors among you will find no reward for their treason, now. But from them, we shall have gained. We shall know the folly of our petty, foreign-inspired hatreds. We shall know the need of cleansing ourselves of the taint of such men’s leadership. We shall cease trying to weaken our government and shall unite to forge new bonds of strength, instead.

  “And because of that unintended good they have done us, we shall be merciful! Those who leave our shores before the stroke of midnight shall be permitted to escape; those who prefer to choose their own death by their own hands shall not be denied that right. And for the others, we shall demand and receive the fullest measure of justice!

  “In that, gentlemen, I think we can all agree.”

  He paused then for a brief moment, seeming to study the paper in his hand, and when he resumed, his voice was the brusque one of a man performing a distasteful task. “Twelve men—men who dealt directly with our enemies. I shall read them in the order of their
importance: First, Robert Sweinend! Two days ago, at three o’clock in his secretary’s office, he met a self-termed businessman named Yamimoto Tung, though he calls himself—”

  Jim went on, methodically reciting the course of the meeting, tensing inside as the seconds stretched on; much more and they would know it couldn’t all come from one small sheet of paper!

  But Sweinend’s hand moved then, and Jim’s seemed to blur over the desk top. Where the Senator had been, a shaft of fire—atomic fire—seemed to hang for a second before fading into nothing. Jim put the gun back gently and watched eleven men get up from their seats and dart hastily away through the exits. Beside him, his father’s face now shone with great relief and greater pride, mixed with unbelieving wonder as he stood up awkwardly to take the place the boy was relinquishing. The job had been done, and Jim had the right to follow his own inclinations.

  Surprisingly to him, the still figure on the couch, was both conscious and sane, as the boy shut the door of the little room, leaving the doctor outside. Aaron Bard could not move his body, but his lips smiled. “Hello, Jimmy. That was the prettiest bundle of lies I’ve heard in a lot more than eighty years! I’m changing my saying; from now on, the one-eyed man is king—so long as he taps the ground with a cane!”

  Jimmy nodded soberly, though most of the strain of the last hour was suddenly gone, torn away by the warm understanding of the older man and relief at not having to convince him that he was still normal, in spite of his actions since education. “You were right about the compellor; it can’t change character. But I thought…after I shot the psychiatrist… How did you know?”