After Judd had shaken his head, Dr. Jamison continued: "Very well, Black Eyes should not be able to survive on Venus—and yet, obviously the creature did. We can assume there are more of the breed, too. Anyway, Black Eyes survives. And I'll tell you why.
"Black Eyes has a very uncommon ability to sense danger when it approaches. And sensing danger, Black Eyes can thwart it. Your creature sends out certain emanations—I won't pretend to know what they are—which stamp aggression out of any predatory creatures. Neither of you could fire upon it—right?"
"Umm-mm, that's true," Judd said.
Lindy nodded.
"Well, that's one half of it. There's so much about life we don't understand. Black Eyes uses energy of an unknown intensity, and the result maintains Black Eyes' life. Now, although that is the case, your animal did not live a comfortable life in the Venusian swamp. Because no animal would attack it, it could not be harmed. Still, from what you tell me about that swamp ...
"Anyhow, Black Eyes was glad to come away with you, and everything went well until you landed in New York. The noises, the clattering, the continual bustle of a great city—all this frightened the creature. It was being attacked—or, at least that's what it must have figured. Result: it struck back the only way it knew how. Have you ever heard about sub-sonic sound-waves, Mr. Whitney, waves of sound so low that our ears cannot pick them up—waves of sound which can nevertheless stir our emotions? Such things exist, and, as a working hypothesis, I would say Black Eyes' strange powers rest along those lines. The whole city is idle because Black Eyes is afraid!"
In his exploration of Mars, of Venus, of the Jovian moons, Judd Whitney had seen enough of extra-terrestrial life to know that virtually anything was possible, and Black Eyes would be no exception to that rule.
"What do you propose to do?" Judd demanded.
"Do? Why, we'll have to kill your creature, naturally. You can set a value on it and we will meet it, but Black Eyes must die."
"No!" Lindy cried. "You can't be sure, you're only guessing, and it isn't fair!"
"My dear woman, don't you realize this is a serious situation? The city's people will starve in time. No one can even bring food in because the trucks make too much noise! As an alternative, we could evacuate, but is your pet more valuable than the life of a great city?"
"N-no...."
"Then, please! Listen to reason!"
"Kill it," Judd said. "Go ahead."
Dr. Jamison withdrew from his pocket a small blasting pistol used by the Department of Domestic Animals for elimination of injured creatures. He advanced on Black Eyes, who sat on its haunches in the center of the room, surveying the scientist.
Dr. Jamison . "I can't," he said. "I don't want to."
Judd smiled. "I know it. No one—no thing—can kill Black Eyes. You said so yourself. It was a waste of time to try it. In that case—"
"In that case," Dr. Jamison finished for him, "we're helpless. There isn't a man—or an animal—on Earth that will destroy this thing. Wait a minute—does it sleep, Mr. Whitney?"
"I don't think so. At least, I never saw it sleep. And your team of scientists, did they report anything?"
"No. As far as they could see, the creature never slept. We can't catch it unawares."
"Could you anesthetize it?"
"How? It can sense danger, and long before you could do that, it would stop you. It's only made one mistake, Mr. Whitney: it believes the noises of the city represent a danger. And that's only a negative mistake. Noise won't hurt Black Eyes, of course. It simply makes the animal unnecessarily cautious. But we cannot anesthetize it any more than we can kill it."
"I could take it back to Venus."
"Could you? Could you? I hadn't thought of that."
Judd shook his head. "I can't."
"What do you mean you can't?"
"It won't let me. Somehow it can sense our thoughts when we think something it doesn't want. I can't take it to Venus! No man could, because it doesn't want to go."
"My dear Mr. Whitney—do you mean to say you believe it can think?"
"Uh-uh. Didn't say that. It can sense our thoughts, and that's something else again."
Dr. Jamison threw his hands up over his head in a dramatic gesture. "It's hopeless," he said.
* * * *
Things grew worse. New York crawled along to a standstill. People began to move from the city. In trickles, at first, but the trickles became torrents, as New York's ten million people began to depart for saner places. It might take months—it might even take years, but the exodus had begun. Nothing could stop it. Because of a harmless little beast with the eyes of a tarsier, the life of a great city was coming to an end.
Word spread. Scientists all over the world studied reports on Black Eyes. No one had any ideas. Everyone was stumped. Black Eyes had no particular desire to go outside. Black Eyes merely remained in the Whitney house, contemplating nothing in particular, and stopping everything.
Dr. Jamison, however, was a persistent man. Judd got a letter from him one day, and the following afternoon he kept his appointment with the scientist.
"It's good to get out," Judd said, after a three hour walk to the Department of Science Building. "I can go crazy just staring at that thing."
"I have it, Whitney."
"You have what? Not the way to destroy Black Eyes? I don't believe it!"
"It's true. Consider. Everyone in the world does not yet know of your pet, correct?"
"I suppose there are a few people who don't—"
"There are many. Among them, are the crew of a jet-bomber which has been on maneuvers in Egypt. We have arranged everything."
"Yes? How?"
"At noon tomorrow, the bomber will appear over your home with one of the ancient, high-explosive missiles. Your neighbors will be removed from the vicinity, and, precisely at twelve-o-three in the afternoon, the bomb will be dropped. Your home will be destroyed. Black Eyes will be destroyed with it."
Judd looked uncomfortable. "I dunno," he said. "Sounds too easy."
"Too easy? I doubt if the animal will ever sense what is going on—not when the crew of the bomber doesn't know, either. They'll consider it a mighty peculiar order, to destroy one harmless, rather large and rather elaborate suburban home. But they'll do it. See you tomorrow, Whitney, after this mess is behind us."
"Yeah," Judd said. "Yeah." But somehow, the scientist had failed to instill any of his confidence in Judd.
* * * *
With Lindy, he left home at eleven the following morning, after making a thorough list of all their properties which the City had promised to duplicate. Judd did not look at Black Eyes as he left, and the animal remained where it was, seated on its haunches under the dining room table, nibbling crumbs. Judd could almost feel the big round eyes boring a pair of twin holes in his back, and he dared not turn around to face them....
They were a mile away at eleven forty-five, making their way through the nearly deserted streets. Judd stopped walking. He looked at Lindy. Lindy looked at him.
"They're going to destroy it," he said.
"I know."
"Do you want them to?"
"I—I—"
Judd knew that something had to be done with Black Eyes. He didn't like the little beast, and, anyway, that had nothing to do with it. Black Eyes was a menace. And yet, something whispered in Judd's ear, Don't let them, don't let them ... It wasn't Judd and it wasn't Judd's subconscious. It was Black Eyes, and he knew it. But he couldn't do a thing about it—
"I'm going to stay right here and let them bomb the place," he said aloud. But as he spoke, he was running back the way he had come.
Fifteen minutes.
He sprinted part of the time, then rested, then sprinted again. He was somewhat on the beefy side and he could not run fast, but he made it. Just.
He heard the jet streaking through the sky overhead, looked up once and saw it circling. Two blocks from his house he was met by a policeman. The entire area had been
roped off, and the officer shook his head when Judd tried to get through.
"But I live there!"
"Can't help it, Mister. Orders is orders."
Judd hit him. Judd didn't want to, but nevertheless, he grunted with satisfaction when he felt the blow to be a good one, catching the stocky officer on the point of his chin and tumbling him over backwards. Then Judd was ducking under the rope and running.
He reached his house, plummeted in through the front door. He found Black Eyes under the kitchen table, squatting on its haunches. He scooped the animal up, ran outside. Then he was running again, and before he reached the barrier, something rocked him. A loud series of explosions ripped through his brain, and instinctively—Black Eyes' instincts, not his—he folded his arms over the animal, protecting it. Something shuddered and began to fall behind him, and debris scattered in all directions. Something struck Judd's head and he felt the ground slapping up crazily at his face—
He was as good as new a few days later.
And so was Black Eyes.
"I have it," Judd said to his nurse.
"You have what, sir?"
"It's so simple, so ridiculously simple, maybe that's why no one ever thought of it. Get me Dr. Jamison!"
Jamison came a few moments later, breathless. "Well?"
"I have the solution."
"You ... do?" Not much hope in the answer. Dr. Jamison was a tired, defeated man.
"Sure. Black Eyes doesn't like the city. Fine. Take him out. I can't take him to Venus. He doesn't like Venus and he won't go. No one can take him anyplace he doesn't want to go, just as no one can hurt him in any way. But he doesn't like the city. It's too noisy. All right: have someone take him far from the city, far far away—where there's no noise at all. Someplace out in the sticks where it won't matter much if Black Eyes puts a stop to any disturbing noises."
"Who will take him? You, Mr. Whitney?"
Judd shook his head. "That's your job, not mine. I've given you the answer. Now use it."
Lindy had arrived, and Lindy said: "Judd, you're right. That is the answer. And you're wonderful—"
No one volunteered to spend his life in exile with Black Eyes, but then Dr. Jamison pointed out that while no one knew the creature's life-span, it certainly couldn't be expected to match man's. Just a few years and the beast would die, and ... Dr. Jamison's arguments were so logical that he convinced himself. He took Black Eyes with him into the Canadian Northwoods, and there they live.
* * * *
Judd was right—almost.
This was the obvious answer which escaped everyone.
But scientists continued their examinations of Black Eyes, and they discovered something. Black Eyes' fears had not been for herself alone. She is going to have babies. The estimate is for thirty-five little tarsier-eyed creatures. No doctor in the world will be able to do anything but deliver the litter.
THE DICTATOR
Originally published in Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy, Jan. 1955
Just looking at Ellaby, you could tell he was going places. He was five feet nine inches tall and weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. He had an I. Q. of ninety-eight point five-seven, less than four hundredths off the mode. His hair was mousey and worn slightly long for a man, slightly short for a woman. Back in High Falls, where he was born, he was physically weaker than sixty percent of the men but stronger than sixty percent of the women.
He had been in training since his twentieth birthday to assassinate the Dictator. Ellaby was now thirty years old.
Dorcas Sinclair met Ellaby at the pneumo-station. She was too big and strapping for a woman, but otherwise not unattractive with her lusterless hair, slightly thick-featured face, small sagging bosom and heavy-calved legs.
"I'll take your bags," she told Ellaby, and led him from the station. She walked quickly, but not too quickly. You always had to find the happy medium, thought Ellaby. For Ellaby, finding the happy medium had always come easy. Ten years ago, when Ellaby had been graduated from the High Falls secondary school, the four words MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED had been printed under his picture in the yearbook. It was expected by everyone: young Ellaby had learned his three R's—rules, rights, responsibilities—satisfactorily. Ellaby had neither excelled nor failed: he was by nature a first class citizen.
Running to keep up with the too big, too long-legged Dorcas Sinclair who was carrying one of his suitcases in each hand, Ellaby was led from the pneumo-station. The splendid, unimaginative geometric precision of the Capitol stretched out before him in the dazzling summer sunlight, the view serving as a leaven for Ellaby's usually phlegmatic disposition. He could feel his spirits rise, his heart thump more rapidly, speeding the sudden flow of adrenalin through his body.
This was the city. It was here where the fruits of whatever had gone wrong in Ellaby's upbringing or whatever had gone wrong in the linear arrangement of his genes would ripen. It was here where Ellaby, modal Ellaby would pass his tests for top-secret work; unsuspected, average Ellaby, would write his name in flaming letters across the pages of history. It was here where Ellaby would kill the Dictator.
And after that—what? Chaos? A new order based not on modality but something else? Ellaby wasn't sure. No one in the organization knew for sure. The concept was staggering to Ellaby. It was the system—or nothing. Well, let the others worry about it. They did the planning. Ellaby was only the executioner.
* * * *
The house was like all the others on the block, all the others in the Capitol, a grimly solid structure of lets-pretend brick fronting on a street which faded into distant haze, straight as a ruled line, to north and south, crossing the east-west avenues at precise right angles every five hundred feet. The grid pattern city, Ellaby remembered from his rights course in school, (every man has the right to a room and bath in any city as long as he is employed) made the best use of available space for houses. The strip city is unnecessary in time of peace—was there ever, had there ever been any other time? the radial city is preferred for rapid transportation, being the accepted pattern in the great economic hubs and ports like Greater New York and Hampton Roads.
"You will have to live here with me" Dorcas Sinclair told Ellaby, "until you pass your tests for employment. I don't have to tell you how much depends on the outcome of those tests, Ellaby."
"But I can't fail them. I thought you knew my record."
With an unnerving unmodal violence, Dorcas Sinclair's strong fingers dug into the flabby muscle of Ellaby's upper arm. "Well, you had better not," she said, her large teeth hardly parting to let the sounds out.
Ellaby was suddenly alarmed. He had had very little truck with people of this sort. They were as unpredictable as the weather in High Falls which having a population under twenty-five thousand, had never qualified for weather control. Unlike modal man, they had never been exhaustively studied. Their likes and dislikes were not catered to, but their passions couldn't be predicted, either.
"Ease up, Dorcas," a deep voice said from the doorway leading to the kitchen.
Ellaby stared in that direction gratefully. It was indecent for a woman, for anyone, to expose her emotions that way. Ellaby was almost inclined to thank the stranger.
"Stranger, nothing!" Ellaby blurted aloud. Ellaby's face reddened and he apologized. "I didn't mean to raise my voice," he explained. "You surprised me."
"I guess you didn't expect to find me here, at that. You haven't changed much, Ellaby."
Automatically, Ellaby mumbled his thanks for the compliment. Sam Mulden, though, had changed. He'd always been a radical. He wore his hair cropped too short. He was tall and thin, his elbows and knees exposed by the tunic he wore like knots on gnarled, living wood. Mulden looked older. He hadn't bothered to dye his graying hair, or to smooth the premature wrinkles on his long-nosed, thin-lipped face. He was smiling sardonically at Ellaby now, as if he could read Ellaby's mind. "I might have known it would be you," he said. "As soon as they said the assassin was coming from High
Falls, I should have guessed."
"Why?" asked Ellaby. It was a question which had nudged for ten years at his docile patience. When people go out of their way to train you, though, to spend ten years teaching you every inch of Capitol territory without once taking you there, to make you proficient with various deadly weapons although your reflexes are splendidly modal, to teach you meaningless phrases like democratic inequality (?) and individuality (?) and the right to live a self-directed (?) life, to make your own decisions (?), when people act, in short, like a very thorough government school, even if their motives seem strangely misdirected, you don't question them.
"For two reasons," Mulden said. "You can understand the first, Ellaby. If the second one bothers you, forget it. In the first place, you're so perfectly modal, the government would never suspect you. In the second place, you're so well adjusted you're bound to follow our instructions."
"Or any instructions," Dorcas Sinclair said. "That's what I'm afraid of, Mulden."
* * * *
Ellaby still couldn't get over it. He never expected to find poor, unfortunate Sam Mulden in such a high position in the organization or anywhere. He remembered Mulden clearly from their school days together. Mulden was a character, a real character. Physically, he was barely acceptable: more than eighty percent of the men and some sixty-five percent of the women were able to knock Mulden down in the High Falls gymnasium classes. But mentally Mulden was a misfit. His I. Q. was in the neighborhood of a hundred and fifty. His gangling, ineffectual physique wasn't too far below the mode, but mentally he soared intolerably above it.
Now Mulden told Dorcas Sinclair, "Don't worry about that. We've had ten years to work on him. They can't undo it in a few days. Ellaby, you are quite sure you know what you must do?"
The 8th Golden Age of Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: Milton Lesser Page 3