by Various
But then.... A question loomed. If that were so, why hadn't he vanished like the others? Belief was an automatic process. Why hadn't it permeated to the basic matrix of his mind as it had with the others?
Was he, then, still on the wrong track?
But there was no other!
He saw the trap he had set for himself. He had believed with all his being that belief was the key he was searching for!
He had been on the wrong track. His beautiful theory of belief that spread downward into the subconscious, then down lower and lower into the basic matrix that held a person in this reality, was wrong. The evidence he had based it on was still there, but it was evidence of something else.
Of what?
The eastern horizon was suffused with light. It grew stronger, dimming the light of the moon.
From somewhere in the depths of his being rose a feeling that soon he would know, and when he did he would be close to crossing the threshold.
He unclasped his arms and straightened out his legs, feeling stabs of pain in his weary muscles. He got to his feet, tingling with weariness.
By the side of the road, he could see the police car he had stolen--infinite ages ago. He walked toward it, and when he reached it he climbed in and closed the door.
"Beautiful morning," Captain Waters said, starting the motor.
* * * * *
Fred awoke and opened his eyes. Across the room the French doors were open. Sunlight was filtering through the copper screens. A breeze was playing gently with the drapes. For a moment the flight, the long walk into the country, his rendezvous with Aloneness, Captain Water's coming to bring him back, all seemed the stuff of dreams. He had the feeling that he had never left this enormous bed.
Then it returned. Reality. The miracle of his reorientation to belief, the new vistas that went with it. The full realization of the true nature of the vanishments.
He became aware of a figure in the doorway, watching him. It was Mrs. Waters. "Awake?" she asked cheerfully.
"Yes," Fred said.
"Want some breakfast?"
He nodded. She went away.
He raised his head and looked about the room, at the homey touches, the family pictures on the dresser and the walls, the hand sewed knickknacks and frills. This was probably the Waters' own bedroom that they had given up for him.
He could vanish while Mrs. Waters was away. She would come in with the breakfast tray and find him gone.
When would the moment of reorientation come?
He frowned in thought. That had stirred up something about what he had dreamed, or thought, while he was asleep. Something that had the flavor of being very important.
"Here you are!" Mrs. Waters said, sweeping into the room with the tray and its Swedish design dishes and steaming coffee and hot cereal. As she bent over to set the tray on the bed, there came the sound of the front door opening. "There's Pa, home already." She smiled worriedly at Fred. "Will you be all right? I'll tell Pa to come in and keep you company while I fix his supper."
"Yes ma'am," Fred said, eyeing the food hungrily. "Only--" She was at the door. She stopped and looked around questioningly. "I--I think I'd like to be alone while I eat."
"All right," she said, and hurried away.
But Captain Waters had brushed in without giving her a chance to tell him to stay away. "Hello, son," he said warmly. "Have a good sleep?"
Mrs. Waters said, "You let him alone while he eats."
"It's all right," Fred said hastily.
"Sure it's all right," the police captain said. He sat down and took out his pipe. He concerned himself with filling it and lighting it, saying nothing.
Fred picked up a piece of golden toast and bit into one corner absently. The thoughts he had had during sleep were filtering into consciousness.
He recalled how his mother had looked. There had been a fleeting expression just before she had vanished. She had been going to say something. She had changed her mind and had vanished instead!
And Curt--he had had his reorientation at least several seconds before vanishing. He had had it, and then, with his new perspective, had said, "So that's it!"
It was as though the new orientation made everything else unimportant.
One common factor stood out in every case, those two he had personally witnessed, and the others he hadn't seen. One common factor. Vanishing, or whatever happened that produced the vanishing, had been an impulse.
There had been time for thought. For example, Curt might have considered the practicality of telling Fred what had happened to him. But he might have reflected that eventually Fred would discover what he had just discovered, so why bother?
In the office Curt had told him of a whole city of a million people vanishing, leaving empty houses and streets. Had the cause been the same? A true orientation?
Fred looked at Captain Waters, sitting quietly, puffing slowly on his pipe. With deliberation Waters uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. "You know, son, when you get around to it--that is, if you feel up to it sometime--I wish you'd tell me about it. What it is that's troubling you. I'll try to understand."
"You'll try--?" Fred echoed. And the police captain's words started a train of thought. The others--had the place they'd gone been a heaven or a hell? So many of them--. Fred started suddenly. "The book!" he cried.
"What book?"
"I've got to see the publisher about my father's book. It's very important."
"It can wait until you're feeling better," Waters said.
"No. I've got to see Mr. Browne!"
"Why?"
"I--I can't tell you."
"All right." Captain Waters gave in. "I'll take you down and bring you back."
It was half an hour later, in the reception room at the publishing company. Fred stared numbly at the big poster on the wall advertising his father's book.
"Mr. Browne will see you," the receptionist said.
"Wait here," Fred told Captain Waters. "I want to talk to him alone." He went to the door and opened it, stepping inside and closing it behind him.
"Fred Grant?" Browne said, getting up from his desk and coming toward him, hand outstretched. "What can I do for you? Need some money?"
Fred was shaking his head. "I don't want any money," he said. "I want you to stop my father's book. You can't publish it."
"Now wait," Browne said. "We aren't going through that again, are we?"
"You can't!" Fred said. "People will read it and vanish!"
"Huh?"
"People will read it and vanish! You've got to believe me. The cause of those disappearances is in that book!"
Browne stared for a moment, then dragged over a notepad, wondering how his publicity boys had missed this one. He stood up and came around his desk. "You leave it to me," he said. "You won't have a thing to worry about. I'll take care of everything."
"Then you won't publish it?"
Browne was guiding him toward the door. "You leave it to me. Drop in again soon. If you need money just drop in any time and I'll fix you up."
Fred found himself outside the door, not quite sure what Mr. Browne had promised.
Inside, Browne went back to his desk, muttering, "What a killing! Have to tell Nichols about it tomorrow at lunch. That vanishing stuff is a terrific publicity angle."
* * * * *
"You still don't want to tell me what's troubling you?" Police Captain Waters said wistfully.
A frown crossed Fred's features and vanished into a smile. "Nothing's troubling me," he lied. "I'm all right. I'll be all right."
"You'll stay with us a while longer?"
"Sure. Sure. You make me feel--okay. I'm just going out for a ride. Be back for supper."
* * * * *
It had been two months now since his mother and Curt had vanished. In that two months he had come to realize something. He didn't quite know how to express it even in his thoughts.
It wasn't that he didn't want to vanish. He would, some day. But he had g
iven up trying. It was the wrong way. The others hadn't tried. It had just come to them out of a clear sky.
Some day it would come to him that way, and he would welcome it.
He drove downtown and parked. A block away was a show he wanted to see. He started toward it. Abruptly he stopped. In front of him was a bookstore. In its window was a large display, and every book had his father's picture on the front under the title THEORY FOR THE MILLIONS.
In back of the display was a large poster with a still larger picture, and the teaser--(DO YOU DARE READ THIS BOOK?)
Anger flamed in Fred's mind. The anger died as abruptly as it had come. It was replaced by a homesickness, a longing. Unconsciously his footsteps carried him into the store.
A man had the book in his hands.
"You aren't going to buy that, George," the woman beside him was saying.
"And why not?" the man asked, laughing. "I've never turned down a dare in my life!" He looked at the girl waiting on him. "Do you think I'll vanish, Miss?"
The clerk smiled. "I wouldn't know. I have strict orders not to read the book."
A solemn-faced man appeared out of nowhere and thrust a copy of the book at the clerk. "I want this, please," he said.
"I'll be with you in a moment, sir," the clerk said.
Others were waiting also.
Fred stumbled from the store, bumping into someone in the doorway as he went through, and too confused and frightened to stop and apologize. There was no way of stopping it. Maybe the police would become alarmed at the disappearances.
"What's wrong with me?" he mumbled, walking blindly in the crowds on the sidewalks. "Maybe I do lack the ability to believe. I think I believe. What have I missed?"
Only he, of all those who had learned the theory, had not vanished. Was faith, then, something so common, and yet impossible for he, himself, to reach?
Ahead was another bookstore. In its windows were the same displays.
He stopped. People were pushing through the doors. Inside they were picking up the book and looking for a clerk.
The clerks were smiling and saying things Fred couldn't hear, and wrapping the books and handing them to their new owners--people who would take them home and read--and vanish.
Into what? Something they would see, and smile at, and say, "Why, of course!" And with a simple acceptance they would enter it.
He watched them.
And from the depths of his being Fred longed to be one of them; to be able to go in and buy the book, and read it, and....
* * * * *
On the other side of the window, in the store, a clerk was waiting on a customer. The customer turned to look at him, with his nose flattened against the glass. He didn't see them. In his eyes was a faraway look, a startled light.
"Why of course!" he said in quiet wonder.
There was just a little blur, where a nose had pressed against the window, and the customer frowned and said to the clerk, "That young man outside--he--he--"
"Three-fifty, please," the clerk said.
"Ah--oh. Oh, sure."
* * *
Contents
A SLAVE IS A SLAVE
By H. Beam Piper
There has always been strong sympathy for the poor, meek, downtrodden slave--the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and overbearing masters. Could it possibly have been misplaced...?
Jurgen, Prince Trevannion, accepted the coffee cup and lifted it to his lips, then lowered it. These Navy robots always poured coffee too hot; spacemen must have collapsium-lined throats. With the other hand, he punched a button on the robot's keyboard and received a lighted cigarette; turning, he placed the cup on the command-desk in front of him and looked about. The tension was relaxing in Battle-Control, the purposeful pandemonium of the last three hours dying rapidly. Officers of both sexes, in red and blue and yellow and green coveralls, were rising from seats, leaving their stations, gathering in groups. Laughter, a trifle loud; he realized, suddenly, that they had been worried, and wondered if he should not have been a little so himself. No. There would have been nothing he could have done about anything, so worry would not have been useful. He lifted the cup again and sipped cautiously.
"That's everything we can do now," the man beside him said. "Now we just sit and wait for the next move."
Like all the others, Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak wore shipboard battle-dress; his coveralls were black, splashed on breast and between shoulders with the gold insignia of his rank. His head was completely bald, and almost spherical; a beaklike nose carried down the curve of his brow, and the straight lines of mouth and chin chopped under it enhanced rather than spoiled the effect. He was getting coffee; he gulped it at once.
"It was very smart work, Commodore. I never saw a landing operation go so smoothly."
"Too smooth," Shatrak said. "I don't trust it." He looked suspiciously up at the row of viewscreens.
"It was absolutely unnecessary!"
That was young Obray, Count Erskyll, seated on the commodore's left. He was a generation younger than Prince Trevannion, as Shatrak was a generation older; they were both smooth-faced. It was odd, how beards went in and out of fashion with alternate generations. He had been worried, too, during the landing, but for a different reason from the others. Now he was reacting with anger.
"I told you, from the first, that it was unnecessary. You see? They weren't even able to defend themselves, let alone...."
His personal communication-screen buzzed; he set down the coffee and flicked the switch. It was Lanze Degbrend. On the books, Lanze was carried as Assistant to the Ministerial Secretary. In practice, Lanze was his chess-opponent, conversational foil, right hand, third eye and ear, and, sometimes, trigger-finger. Lanze was now wearing the combat coveralls of an officer of Navy Landing-Troops; he had a steel helmet with a transpex visor shoved up, and there was a carbine slung over his shoulder. He grinned and executed an exaggeratedly military salute. He chuckled.
"Well, look at you; aren't you the perfect picture of correct diplomatic dress?"
"You know, sir, I'm afraid I am, for this planet," Degbrend said. "Colonel Ravney insisted on it. He says the situation downstairs is still fluid, which I take to mean that everybody is shooting at everybody. He says he has the main telecast station, in the big building the locals call the Citadel."
"Oh, good. Get our announcement out as quickly as you can. Number Five. You and Colonel Ravney can decide what interpolations are needed to fit the situation."
"Number Five; the really tough one," Degbrend considered. "I take it that by interpolations you do not mean dilutions?"
"Oh, no; don't water the drink. Spike it."
Lanze Degbrend grinned at him. Then he snapped down the visor of his helmet, unslung his carbine, and presented it. He was still standing at present arms when Trevannion blanked the screen.
* * * * *
"That still doesn't excuse a wanton and unprovoked aggression!" Erskyll was telling Shatrak, his thin face flushed and his voice quivering with indignation. "We came here to help these people, not to murder them."
"We didn't come here to do either, Obray," he said, turning to face the younger man. "We came here to annex their planet to the Galactic Empire, whether they wish it annexed or not. Commodore Shatrak used the quickest and most effective method of doing that. It would have done no good to attempt to parley with them from off-planet. You heard those telecasts of theirs."
"Authoritarian," Shatrak said, then mimicked pompously: "'Everybody is commanded to remain calm; the Mastership is taking action. The Convocation of the Lords-Master is in special session; they will decide how to deal with the invaders. The administrators are directed to reassure the supervisors; the overseers will keep the workers at their tasks. Any person disobeying the orders of the Mastership will be dealt with most severely.'"
"Static, too. No spaceships into this system for the last five hundred years; the Convocation--equals Parliament, I assume--hasn't been in special session for two hun
dred and fifty."
"Yes. I've taken over planets with that kind of government before," Shatrak said. "You can't argue with them. You just grab them by the center of authority, quick and hard."
Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.
But, at the same time, he was opposed to authoritarianism, except, of course, when necessary for the real good of the people. And he did not like rulers who called themselves Lords-Master. Good democratic rulers called themselves Servants of the People. So he relapsed into silence and stared at the viewscreens.
One, from an outside pickup on the Empress Eulalie herself, showed the surface of the planet, a hundred miles down, the continent under them curving away to a distant sun-reflecting sea; beyond the curved horizon, the black sky was spangled with unwinking stars. Fifty miles down, the sun glinted from the three thousand foot globes of the two transport-cruisers, Canopus and Mizar.
Another screen, from Mizar, gave a clearer if more circumscribed view of the surface--green countryside, veined by rivers and wrinkled with mountains; little towns that were mere dots; a scatter of white clouds. Nothing that looked like roads. There had been no native sapient race on this planet, and in the thirteen centuries since it had been colonized the Terro-human population had never completely lost the use of contragravity vehicles. In that screen, farther down, the four destroyers, Irma, Irene, Isobel and Iris, were tiny twinkles.
* * * * *
From Irene, they had a magnified view of the city. On the maps, none later than eight hundred years old, it was called Zeggensburg; it had been built at the time of the first colonization under the old Terran Federation. Tall buildings, rising from wide interspaces of lawns and parks and gardens, and, at the very center, widely separated from anything else, the mass of the Citadel, a huge cylindrical tower rising from a cluster of smaller cylinders, with a broad circular landing stage above, topped by the newly raised flag of the Galactic Empire.