Complete Fiction

by Hal Annas

  “You shouldn’t have made him wait,” said the girl. “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “That Sector Four is moving back into the Solar System with headquarters on Earth. That means a lot of ship movements here. He might be called back to his any moment.”

  “And I didn’t even ask him the name of his ship!”

  IT was well into the morning when sleep came and then she awoke long before daylight. She studied the bulletin board early and was among the first in the dining hall. She asked a man from the Center what the movement of Sector Four meant.

  “It’s like this,” he said. “All sectors move in perfect coordination. Four is the Supreme Command and Strategy Sector. Planning is done there and the Supreme Council on Earth is kept informed. If they pull back to Earth they can use the ships kept in reserve to protect this planet and release many of the Fourth Sector ships to replace losses in Sectors Three, Two and One. And it is a wise move. Fighting has been extensive of late and more strength is needed far out.”

  “Does it mean that men on leave may be called back suddenly?”

  “Never can tell. Men on leave are always subject to immediate recall.”

  It seemed that the morning would never pass. At lunchtime she ran out of the factory, looked everywhere, waited at the entrance to the dining hall. At last she went in and ate.

  The afternoon dragged. She hardly dared hope when she came out. Then she saw him.

  He hadn’t priority for a car tonight, and as they sat in a corner of the lounge of the dorm she tried to think of some way to tell him. For a time she hoped that he would bring up the subject, but he didn’t, and at last she made up her mind.

  Then he said “Sue, you’ve forgotten so soon that your husband-to-be has a special faculty. You were in so much confusion I couldn’t make out what it was at first. But now it’s fairly clear. We’ll make it tomorrow or next day or any day you wish.”

  Her cheeks stung so that she was afraid to look up. Finally she said, “Monday. That’s three days from now. And Sunday is a short working day. It will give me time to adjust my thoughts to the idea of being your wife.”

  “Sure. And I understand they give you three days for a honeymoon.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been wondering what it will be like to be free for three days.”

  Sunday came. They spent the meditation hours together. The news on the bulletin board was ignored.

  In the evening he seemed preoccupied. “They have begun calling men back,” he explained. Then: “But don’t think for a moment that I’ll let them call me before we’re married. Still, I wish I hadn’t studied up so on the new weapons. They’re putting the new ships in service, and—But I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  Early Monday morning she drew her wedding issue of clothes: tan linen blouse and slacks; nylox underthings and pajamas; woven sandals and nylox anklets.

  As she dallied under the shower she felt guilty, for production had to go on, and every moment she lost had to be made up somewhere.

  He came for her at mid-morning and they went before the Council and said their vows. Afterwards they flew above plains and ruins until they reached a city that had not been wholly destroyed. She waited while he filed their identification with the Council and the command post, and then went with him to a huge building which seemed almost devoid of life.

  Their suite was luxurious beyond her imagining, and it increased the sense of guilt and unrest in her being. During the next day and part of the third, as they wandered through galleries and planetariums and stellar-domes, she thought often of the girls at the machines in the factories.

  His orders came in the afternoon. She returned to the factory alone.

  If such were possible, she worked harder now. Her birthday had come and gone and she was on a sixteen-hour shift. She didn’t mind because she wanted the men to have everything they needed to win and hasten the day when the big job would be done.

  Food rations became less each day. At first there was grumbling among the trainees, but it died out in the knowledge that sacrifices were necessary and that boys and girls were sharing alike.

  The uniforms of the trainees began to look worn. The men no longer seemed quite as big and handsome and vital as they once had.

  And then the orders came for clinical tests. The Supreme Council sought an answer to why children were not being born.

  THROUGH June she had hoped, and again in July, but in August she was convinced that she wasn’t going to become a mother. And when the request came for volunteers to work eighteen and twenty hours, she took twenty. There were times when she couldn’t sleep and wanted to be doing something. This feverishness was shared by others. They seemed almost hysterically eager to produce more, to provide everything the men needed.

  The man who registered the volunteers was grim and his eyes were blood-rimmed. As she came out she heard him mutter to another, “There’s a breaking point somewhere. We’re driving them far beyond their strength.”

  The other came back, “It’s that or death—maybe both.”

  She got her test in September It said simply that she was fertile.

  Christmas came again, but this time there was no free hour to sing carols. It was like any other day, and the meditation hours on Sunday were discontinued.

  A series of strikes came in quick succession, but the protection was better and there was insulation against the pressure. She spent long hours with others huddled in padded dungeons a mile below the surface. She got so she could sleep through the strikes when they were not too close to the factory.

  Alfred came back in February. He looked much older, but his hair was not totally gray and his features were not wrinkled. He arranged for special accommodations, and late that night when he took off his clothes she saw the scars. It was the first time she had cried since her mother’s death.

  He chucked her under the chin and said, “This is nothing. You should’ve seen me before the surgeons got through.”

  The Council and the Center clashed over the rule that girls should not be permitted to work more than sixteen hours when their husbands were on leave. The Center won, claiming it was a morale factor. and she went back to a sixteen-hour shift.

  The age to go out was lowered to fourteen and a half and it was announced that the next class would be thirteen and a half. Boys now were going out with half the training earlier ones had had.

  When it was announced that production was catching up and that girls might be permitted to volunteer for training she mentioned it to Alfred. And that was the first time she ever saw his features show fear.

  “No, Sue,” he said. “Don’t even think of it. You can’t conceive of what it is.”

  In irritation she demanded, “Tell me about the Zeehites.”

  He looked startled. “You mustn’t think about them. That’s why we are fighting, so our women won’t ever have to see one.”

  “But I have to know.”

  He understood her thoughts, as he had in the past, and finally said, “I shan’t describe them because there is nothing on Earth to compare them with, and a picture of one would give you nightmares. They have remarkable minds but no emotions. They can concentrate on a single objective and persevere toward it with unbelievable endurance. They are almost incapable of suffering pain and as a result are cruel beyond imagining. They hardly know fear and are terrible fighters. Because they lack a faculty for caution we can trick them, and often we pick up their thoughts and know their plans in advance. Those are the things that have enabled us to survive, for they seem to number as the stars.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “Andromeda, originally. We know that they spread through the Milky Way millions of years ago. They wiped out life in their paths and colonized. There is evidence to indicate they struck the Solar System at that time. There are things to show they denuded Mars and attenuated its atmosphere. Earth may not have been sufficiently developed then to interest them. We don
’t know. We know that when Earth began colonizing the planets of other suns in our own galaxy the Andromedians didn’t take much notice at first. But as our strength grew they decided we were a threat. More than a quarter of a century ago they struck suddenly and wiped out hundreds of colonies.

  “We were weak at first and our expeditionary forces were annihilated. But we were fast building strength and when they turned toward the Solar System we met them well out. They had not expected so much strength and were turned back.

  “Then the race began to build up, and the struggle has been going on since. The tide has turned first one way and then the other, but the populace of Earth has slaved and starved itself to produce ships and man them, and to make better weapons, and the time is drawing near—Sue, I’m not supposed to talk to you like this.”

  “But, Ail, Eve heard all those things before: that all we need is just more time, more work and sacrifices.”

  “Sue, there are forces at work—”

  “I know. You’ve told me that, too, that there are forces at work I don’t know about.”

  The lines of pain showed in his features. Suddenly she realized she was on the verge of tears. She put her arms around him and murmured, “Al, I’ll never say anything like that again. I promise.”

  “No, Sue, don’t promise that. Just promise you’ll never volunteer to go out, and try not to think of the Zeehites.”

  “I promise.”

  When his orders came and she moved back to the dormitory and went back to the twenty-hour shift, she cried again. It was the third time since the big strike and she began to wonder if she was weaker than others.

  THE Fourth Sector established headquarters on Earth and by the middle of April she began to see more men, black, red, yellow, white. All spoke the same language, but their dialects and intonations varied extensively.

  She learned to distinguish the guttural of the Teutons, the clipped speech of the Norsemen, the rolling, laughing talk of the Eskimos, the singsong of the Chinese, the jerky tongued-tied speech of the Japanese, the soft tones of the Latins, the softer still of the Africans, all in some way differing from the even, forthright but restrained, speech of the North Americans.

  She was particularly fascinated by the Indians. Many were taller and broader than the Americans and were said to be good spacemen and courageous fighters.

  They were free to go anywhere when on leave, and nearly a hundred were assigned to the factory—center dining hall. They were friendly, didn’t mind the crowding, and told strange stories of their homelands. Sometimes they spoke of space battles, but generally were as reticent on this subject as the Americans.

  As time went on Sue lost weight. The curves of her willowy figure became less noticeable, and toward June she became more introspective. One day she came out of a reverie to realize she had been staring at a boy across the table. He was small, dark and had noticeably bright brown eyes. His lower features, his slender neck, his undeveloped arms and shoulders told her that he couldn’t possibly be over fourteen.

  This was not what held her attention. She was staring at the two ribbons tied at his throat and the two stars on the breast of his uniform. As she studied his eves again she was suddenly shocked into the realization that, however many years he had lived, he was a man full grown, aged by experience out in the void. What his eyes had seen had burned into his soul.

  She was ashamed of her own weakness, and determined henceforth to keep her hands from trembling to remain more alert and to make her machine produce more.

  Soon after she went back to work a man came and handed her two ribbons. She stared unbelievingly, murmured, “Al,” and then it seemed that the floor came up to meet her.

  She awoke in her own bed in the dormitory and remained there. The dorm mother came to talk, told her she must rest for another day.

  “Al,” she breathed, dry-eyed and feverishly. “Al.”

  The woman explained that the ribbons were not for Al, but for her father who had died somewhere out near Pluto.

  She rolled over on her face, but couldn’t cry. There were no tears left in her.

  A doctor came and gave her an injection and the fallowing day she went back to work.

  She got word indirectly that Al was back. A girl told her that she had heard it from one of the boys from the Center. “They carried him out of the ship,” she said.

  Sue refused to believe it. She set her jaw firmly and determined to wait. Late in the afternoon a man with a groundcar came and told her she was wanted at Recovery Seven Oh Six.

  She still couldn’t believe it, but went with him calmly.

  They told her at Recovery that Al would someday walk again and that they would give him a new left arm, if not of flesh, then mechanical. His lungs had been crushed by pressure, but such was the fire of life in him that he would live and maybe fight again.

  SHE went forty-eight hours without sleep in order to be with him all of the time she wasn’t working. On the third day his lone good arm came round her and drew her down on the bed, and she slept on his shoulder.

  From time to time she overheard nurses and doctors talking. The talk was usually about a subject that would always stir a woman.

  “If no babies are born,” one said, “far fifty years—”

  “That’s the length of time it’s calculated to work,” a doctor explained. “It’s devilship. We’ve prepared surprises for them, but they’ve given us the worst. It doesn’t kill the sperm, it paralyzes it or puts it in a sort of suspended state. Think of it! A boy two years old now will be unfertile until he’s about fifty-two. Then, if he’s healthy, the sperm will revive. Our studies indicate he will be perfectly able to become a father. But by that time hardly a woman on Earth will be able to produce the ovum. Some rare cases, but mankind will vanish anyway.”

  “The women are fertile now?”

  “Yes. And will be until they reach the menopause. But all of them will have passed it before men become fertile again.”

  “Isn’t there some way to delay the menopause?”

  “Everything will be tried, of course. But the cellular breakdown and many other factors have to be taken into account. It’s well-nigh hopeless. But somebody might eventually hit on something to revive the sperm earlier, though it’s likely the Zeehites made certain it can’t be done.”

  Sue asked the doctor if Alfred was suffering. He shook his head. “No pain whatever. We’ve taken care of that. And he’ll soon be up. Has a fierce determination to live, and, looking at you, I understand why.”

  She asked other questions. His replies were abrupt and reflected his exhaustion and preoccupation with matters of broader import.

  Commuting between the factory and Recovery was time-consuming and tiring and she was forbidden to visit Al more than once a week. She told him about it. Strangely, he made no protest, begged her to get every moment of rest she could.

  She asked for audience with the Council. Days passed and no word came. She tried again, and when they received her she understood the delay. They were hardly able to keep themselves awake.

  “Babies,” one mumbled. “Everybody has some answer to the problem. Worthless. But say what you have to say and if it has any merit we’ll pass it to the Upper Council.”

  “I don’t have the answer to babies,” she said, “but I think I understand why people die.”

  They showed interest.

  “They get tired,” she said. “That’s all. They just get tired. That’s what breaks down the cells and makes them die.”

  They looked at one another, back at her. “We know all of you girls are exhausted. It can’t be helped. We have to work on. We need time. Just a little while longer.”

  She tried again, explaining over and over, trying to make them understand why people die, and why they might remain young longer if things were different. They shook their heads. Finally she flared, “Send it on to the Upper Council as I’ve explained it.”

  That brought an inkling of a smile. “That’s the sp
irit,” they agreed. “We can never lose while we have that spirit.”

  They agreed to send her idea, however worthless, up the line.

  EARLY in the fall Alfred was up and able to come to the factory dining hall. He hadn’t got his new arm yet, but his leg worked fine and he seemed to have no trouble at all with his breathing. His hair was iron gray, but he was still handsome, his features unwrinkled. He wore two ribbons, was shown deference by high ranking officers, and at times went away on mysterious errands.

  Three men came while he was away and handed her a paper. It read merely: “Presence required at Nether Polaris.”

  She asked questions, but the men shook their heads, seemed impatient, urged her to hurry.

  She went with them in a groundcar to a blackened plain. Memories rushed back and brought terror, but they paid no attention, led her to an atmosphere craft. They flew high above the clouds for hours, and when they came down and broke into the clear she could see nothing but endless reaches of gleaming white. The positions of the stars told her she was somewhere near the North Pole.

  The craft landed near a dome which gleamed like the remainder of the expanse. They bundled her in thick heavy furs, hurried her across the snow to the dome, then removed the wraps.

  It was like summer inside the dome, and she went with the men to a shaft and got into a car which carried them miles down through the frozen ocean and into the earth. When the car stopped and they came out she held her breath. The place looked like a beautiful painting of a sparkling city that had never known war.

  The final surprise sent tremors through her. They told her she was going before the Supreme Council.

  In a large plastic hall she stood before the twelve and an array of advisers. Not a one looked more than forty, but the hair of most was white and in their eyes was that look that told her they had been out in the void.

  “Wilson Wildress Rover Alfred?” a man inquired.

  Sue admitted that was her name.

  “An idea you have suggested may be of great value. We have brought you here to discuss it further.”