The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories

by Sterling E. Lanier

  Well, we swore all the Government oaths about never allowing an Escape, even if we died to prevent it. I can tell you, it made me feel creepy. To me the whole thing belonged on a Tridee screen, not for real. People were killed doing what we were. All the time it makes the papers. I still don't know why I didn't quit right then.

  Anyway, I signed all the releases, next of kin, all that garbage, and then we went out and climbed in the Kombat Kamper. Some car. Armor and two turrets with sealed ports yet. Just the thing to make you relax. The glass on the ports was thicker than the armor.

  The gate guard opened the three gates, one at a time, and we rolled into the Reserve. I knew there were cannon and gas guns trained on us as the last gate opened, in case there was a planned rush. That had happened once or twice in the past, I knew from reading up on the history of the Reserves. It was considered the real danger point.

  To be honest, as long as I'm on the subject, I don't really see why we have to have the Reserves anyway. I'm not going to pretend I think it's a good idea, and don't kid yourself. I felt exactly the same way before I went in, and I'm not lying. I saw a Tridee program once, something on the Ed-Yu channel, where this big whisker of a skull tapper explained the whole thing. According to him, we all have a guilt complex and that's why the Reserves. I thought it over and so did some of the other guys in the bar, and well, we decided it was all crazy. Look, it was them or us, see? A war over the whole world, that lasted over twenty years. A war of extermination, that's the way I learned it in school. No quarter, no prisoners, no truce.

  So as far as I care, you could clean out every Reserve there is and eliminate all of them, which is what they tried to do to us.

  To get back to my thrilling tale of adventure, we saw nothing but a few deer and some birds that night. Nobody was packing laser blast rifles for things like that. For what the Boss was paying, you wanted only the Big Stuff.

  We slept the day through behind the high voltage, portable stockade the guide and his two flunkies set up. He made out that he wouldn't have used it if it weren't the law. What a phoney! The Boss didn't say much, but the tramp ate it up with the "Oh how brave you must be" routine. Enough to make you choke. I slept as well as I could, and we woke at dusk.

  We had to listen to a lot of nothing from the guide while we ate our breakfast. All about trails and patterns and how he knew their habits and would put us in a position where even dopes like us couldn't miss. The Boss finally had enough and said sharply that this was his eighth hunt. That shut the clown up, because any one who will go into a Reserve that often is a real hunter. The fact is, the Reserves get even the guides down.

  The danger is too real and the feeling of being watched too constant. You just can't shake five thousand years of heredity that easy, and anyone that says you can is a liar.

  We packed up and moved out in the Kamper as evening began to blur the details. I felt better without the glare of the Sun, but not so much better I wouldn't have led a run for the nearest gate at the drop of a suggestion. No one made it.

  After about an hour, nice and dark out, the guide tells the driver, who is one of his flunkies, to stop. Then he turns to the Boss and says, "I have been watching this area for some time. No recent hunts or sweeps here have turned up any traces. The gate people think there may be a combined movement going on here and asked me to check it. But I, ah, must warn you that it will be very risky if there is anything. If you wish, you can stay here in the vehicle, while alone I blah, blah blah." Finally, he ran down.

  "Let's go," says the Boss, grabbing his gun. "You coming?" he says to me.

  "Right you are," I say, grabbing my gun, just like in the Tridees. I get to the door before I realize what I'm doing, and by then it's too late to back out. Then I hear the tramp yacking it up. Oh no! Oh yes! She wants to come. After all she has her gun, just like we do. She pulls out all the charm, leans all over the guide and the Boss and finally uses the ultimate argument.

  "If that little poop can go, it ought to be safe enough for an infant in arms." You get one guess whom she is pointing at. When the Boss looks at me in a calculating way and says OK, I really get angry. But what can I do?

  We start off in a fan formation, guide on the extreme left, Boss on the extreme right. In the middle, me and the tramp, all of us about fifty paces apart. We carry our guns at the ready, and nobody talks, not even bigmouth, the guide. I remember everything I ever read in school about Them, and I guess the others feel the same way.

  Pretty soon, I see the guide stop. He hand signals us to stop too and points ahead a way. It takes me a minute, but finally I see that we are close to a boundary fence, and that's what he is pointing at.

  At his signal, we move along the fence, but not next to it, I can tell you. Those fences are loaded! Get too close and you are hit by every automatic weapon ever invented, plus mines and lasers, all firing in a random set up.

  We had come maybe a thousand paces along the fence and about a hundred out from it, when I see the Boss tense up and stop. We all stop, even the tramp, and he points at something ahead of us in a grove of trees. All I see is a bunch of trees with no leaf on them, but I find out later on that it's the framework for a giant catapult, which is almost complete. The Boss signals with his free hand for the guide to join him. And then the fun starts.

  The guide decides he will be a hero and waves us back while he goes forward alone. As if this idiocy isn't enough, the tramp follows him! What she has in mind no one will ever know, but I'll bet it's nothing more than some scheme to humiliate the Boss.

  Then all hell starts. There's a scream like you never heard from the tramp, and something vast and dark rises out of the ground in front of us. In one easy motion the guide is hammered into the earth like a tent peg. Another giant limb sweeps the tramp up and away and I hear her hit a tree with a crunch. All of this takes seconds. I am frozen stiff.

  But not the Boss! He may be old and a little fat, but you can't change a real fighting veteran.

  He shoots his rifle into the middle of that colossus as cool as if it were a target. And he's been thinking too, not just acting on reflex. As the red flash of the laser zeroes in on the monster, the Boss is running towards me, shouting. Even before the beast begins to scream in its giant voice, I can hear the Boss.

  "It's an escape! We have to get back and warn them! Stay with me and we'll cover each other!"

  Well, you know, even I got a medal. The guide and the tramp got a posthumous citation apiece. What a farce that was. Because the only one of the whole outfit who deserved it was the Boss.

  We know now that it was the most dangerous attempt ever discovered. They had a working catapult, rigged it at night, assembled the pieces and set it up to shoot a number of Them over the fence. Crazy! And so were the enormous parachutes made of animal hide chewed fine. So half of them get killed getting over, maybe two thirds even.

  Would you want to meet one of the ones that didn't, one of the ones that got into the mountains and couldn't be found until it, or they, dug up some old weapons stores, buried since the war two hundred years ago? Maybe atomic weapons? Makes you think doesn't it?

  Who knows what the Boss saved?

  Personally, I remember almost nothing. The Boss and I ran back toward the Kombat Kamper. He knew where to go, I didn't. I just did what he told me.

  "Shoot left!" He'd shout, and by God there would be one of Them, rising out of the bushes, those great paws spread out to grab. And I'd shoot. The fiery streak of the laser would hit the middle and the awful stink of burnt meat would come at once. Sometimes they screamed, a terrible howl; the volume alone would split your ear drums. Mostly though, they died quiet. And that shows you. That takes training, discipline. They were willing to die that way in the hope of not alerting the others, our two drivers and roustabouts back at the Kamper.

  It all seems like a nightmare still, us running and ducking, shooting and dodging. Only an old counterpuncher like the Boss could have got us through, and even he says we're luck
y to be alive. If it had been just a tiny bit farther to the Kamper, our blaster charges would have run out. There was the luck, I guess. Hitting the escape attempt on target like that was luck too, of course.

  The two techs finally heard something and got the perimeter lights on. When one of them spotted us and saw what we were shooting at, he got into the top turret and started the flame cannon going over our heads. By that time we needed help. Just as we made the perimeter, one of them made a last try. He had a stone-headed club twice as long as I'm tall, and he brought it down in a long, looping slice at my head. Thanks to the Boss, I'm still alive. His shot caught the brute just as it swung. As you can see, it cut right through the fur on my head, grazed the top of my right ear and finally took off the last third of my tail.

  Pain? Hell, I was in shock! I didn't feel any pain. You won't believe this, but as I stood there looking down at that naked monster lying dead there, what I felt was pity. Yes sir, pity. Those huge things had almost finished us off once, if you can believe the books. And now all they had were clubs, and we had the whole planet that they'd tamed for us. We had all the knowledge, the cities, the whole culture. All they had was the Reserves and clubs made of stone.

  That's why I felt pity.

  Of course when I learned how close they'd come to getting out, after we'd radioed the guards and the planes had come, the copters and hover craft and all, why I lost the pity. That was just a bit too close for comfort. The old slogan about "even a cornered man will fight" wouldn't leave my thoughts.

  That's why I want the Reserves abolished. Soft-heartedness could mean we'd be right back where we started, and you know where that was.

  In a hole.

  The End

  Deathchild

  Worlds of If – October 1968

  This was the ultimate Quarantine. Upon its total security depended the life—or death—of humanity!

  Chapter One

  HIS NAME was Joseph. He was a blue-eyed blond and just a little bald in front, although a fuzz over his round forehead gave a promise of new hair still to come. He was healthy, weighed twenty-two pounds and was barely eight months old. He wore diapers and rubber pants, nothing else.

  At the moment, he had a very intent expression on his small, fat face. Somehow, the brightly colored plastic beads on a wood-bordered wire frame were not doing what he wanted. They simply would not come off the frame to be thoroughly tested by his four teeth for true intrinsic play-ability and actual baby value. It was very unsatisfactory. He whimpered slightly and then sat up straighten his creased, plump legs assuming what looked like a Yoga position as they curled in front of him. A little sigh, almost inaudible, but weary, escaped him. It did not sound like a baby noise at all, but rather like the wistful regret of an aged man, brooding over the many mistakes of a long life. Babies make strange noises at times.

  Joseph abandoned the beads to survey his domain out of round, cobalt eyes, thumb in mouth. The room was circular, dome-shaped and about twenty feet across. Soft white padding, spotlessly clean, covered the floor on which Joseph sat and ran up the gradually curving walls to a height of four feet. Above the edge of the padded covering, smooth dark metal, non-reflecting, rose to the top of the igloo-shaped room. Light, soft and lambent, flooded in from a round opening in the center of the dome, thirty feet over the middle of the room. Square black openings were spaced at regular intervals on the walls at a height of six feet. They gave back the blankest of mirrors where the light hit them, and the baby paid no attention to them. He now had located and seized a large, floppy, green dog among the simple playthings which lay about him on the floor. Staring absently off into some far distance, he held the cloth dog firmly in his chubby hands and began to gnaw reflectively on one of its tattered ears. Inside his small body, chemical warnings were starting to send an alert throughout his system. Dinner time was approaching.

  Even as Joseph chewed on the dog's ear, his whole attitude was beginning to change. He was now watching only one section of the wall, a section which he had learned to keep an eye on, although it differed in no way from any other to a casual observer. Joseph stared at this particular part of the wall more eagerly now, and the green dog was dropped and abandoned. The child actually could hear nothing but the soft, almost inaudible hissing of the hidden air ducts, but his own body gave him a clock without compare, a timer provided by nature. The graduated intensity of the light in the room was an unnecessary assistance. Joseph knew it was noon.

  HIS EYES widened in pleasure, and he held out his small, plump arms in what was obviously a gesture of welcome, combined with an involuntary plea.

  Soundless, an opening the size of a standard door had appeared in the section of the wall he was facing. Framed in it stood a massive figure, six feet tall, which advanced slowly with a faint humming noise toward the eager baby, who now crowed with pleasure. Behind the figure, the opening in the wall closed as silently as it had appeared—with one difference, that is. From the figure a six-inch thick, shining cable led back through the wall, fitting a circular hole in the base of where the original door had appeared with micrometer smoothness.

  A rich, warm voice broke the room's silence and two long arms reached down to gather up Joseph, who was now panting inaudibly and squirming and wiggling with pleasure.

  "Baby, hungry? Joseph hungry? Here's the bottle, Love. Easy now, don't try and drink it all at once. There's still din-din. Mashed lamb and carrots coming, you know."

  His blue eyes half closed, Joseph lay back in the warm, padded cloth-covered arms and inhaled his milk with mighty slurps and gurgles. While he drank and sucked on the bottle's nipple, he looked up with contentment at the immobile pink and white plastic mask and the blue, glassined eyes. As he continued his meal, the tapes played steadily, reeling off coo-ings and murmurs, loving gurgles and bits of lullaby with programmed precision. The pre-set warmth of the circuits in arms and breast reassured the baby and the duraluminum limbs rocked him ever so gently.

  Joseph belched and then continued to drink. All was well. Mother had come again. She always did.

  Chapter Two

  BRIGADIER General Albert Hardwick was thin, brown-eyed and a bachelor, young for his rank at thirty-eight. The fact that he was a deputy-Director of G-2, Army Intelligence, and had been promoted to General's rank while serving in that capacity as a full colonel, made him even more of an anomaly. As he drove, he mused over these facts and others, while keeping a sharp eye on the road.

  Only a superb combat record in Viet Nam and the acquisition of the Distinguished Service Cross and a Purple Heart with two clusters had warded off the mutterings within the inner circles of command. An M.A. in Political Science, earned while recovering from wounds, was distinctly not regarded as an asset in some eyes, some rather senior eyes indeed. Hardwick had gone as an undergraduate to Michigan State and entered the Army through R.O.T.C. A good school, Michigan State, fine American institution. Still, not the Point, though, was it now? And a general at thirty-eight!

  Hardwick drove steadily on through the flat countryside of southeastern New Jersey. He was not worried about the rumblings higher up. He had faced them before when it came to a crisis point, and his record had always been more than enough—his record plus a few seniors of very high rank who cared nothing for mutterings and valued performance alone.

  Cruising along through the unending scrub pines of the Jersey Barrens, illumined by a hazy September afternoon sun, Hardwick was not really concerned with military hierarchy. At the moment, the machinery of his mind was locked in on his present assignment, which presented enough puzzles for a decade of musing.

  He had been working very hard of late. As head of G-2's Chinese desk, he had to co-ordinate with the C.I.A., the Navy, the Air Force and the whole network of Defense Department Intelligence. As the Far Eastern landmass gave birth to one confrontation after another in a grim and mounting progression, his task grew worse by the week.

  The Chinese takeover of Burma in 1974, two years earlier, had be
en awesome in its smoothness and precision. Burma had gone lock, stock and barrel into the Chinese camp, albeit on a privileged and semi-independent basis, led by its own neutralist rulers in a calculated gamble. The opposition leaders, including a former Secretary of the U.N., had been liquidated by their own secret police overnight, with Chinese assistance when necessary. In something like a week, Burma was solidly Peking communist, from Rangoon to the Kachin hills.

  Everyone, including the Russians, had been caught napping.

  FOR THE NEXT two years, a relentless dual pressure had been grinding at India to the West and Thailand to the East. Well fed on Burmese rice and led by professionals, the Chinese Armies, their proletarian militia outlook totally discarded since the counter-purge of 1968, were now armed with the latest weapons. And they were firmly based on all their perimeters, facing out from every point of the compass. The Russian relinquishment of Outer Mongolia to Chinese Influence was now a year old. The long moribund Viet Cong had re-emerged in strength and American troops were again engaged in full scale war from the South China Sea to the Thai-Burmese border, and not winning either. A strongly hostile note had intruded into U.S.-Japanese relations, and Japan's government was pursuing a cold and distant attitude to United States overtures. And a month ago, two well-armed, well-led Hukbalahap corps had erupted overnight from the mountains of Western Luzon and attacked the Philippine Army in open and initially successful battle. Naval intelligence reports on a vast new fleet of Chinese nuclear-powered subs, mostly cargo and troop carriers, were pouring in. Everything, in short, was blowing up.