The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories

by Sterling E. Lanier

  "He's mine, Al. Had you got that far?"

  Hardwick exhaled a gust of air and sat down suddenly in the vacated chair.

  "And there's nothing wrong with him at all is there?"

  "Not a thing, dear."

  "Who else knows?" asked Hardwick. He got up and made himself a new drink, feeling curiously lightheaded.

  "Make me another one too, will you? No one knows the whole story but the President, Tom Allen, me—and now you. It had to be that way. I'll have to report you, of course, unless you'd rather do it yourself."

  "Who's the father?" Hardwick asked thickly. He was not looking at her and had faced the other way.

  "A man who had supplied the sperm bank of a small hospital in Billings, Montana," came the unruffled reply from behind him. "He was medically fit and a citizen. That's all I know, except that Tom destroyed all his hospital records, whoever he was."

  "I checked on a few things while going over the personnel record files, Joanne," he said, at length. "You have a small birthmark on your left calf. It didn't register until I noticed that Joseph does too. These things frequently are hereditary. My father and brother had identical ones. No proof, but it got me to thinking. It seemed absurd, of course. It meant everything had to be a fraud, from beginning to end. Then I thought of the code name of this operation which, by the way, the Chinese never heard. "Inside Straight"! Who thought that up, I wondered? A desperate and unlikely gamble, using a sucker's attempt to fill a bad hand. A bad, almost hopeless hand, one intrinsically worth nothing! I'm no psychologist, but that struck me as odd. Who could believe the United States, with life or death, at stake would gamble on nothing, a dud poker hand? But if it filled, as it just has, then it's a real hand! The most colossal gamble in human history!"

  HE DRANK and turned to face her. "Who thought it up?"

  "Tom Allen and I. His wife, Lee, is—was my sister. Do you want me to tell you the whole story, in order?" Her placidity was once again restored, as it had been when they first met.

  "You know very well that I do."

  "All right, here's what happened."

  Joanne and Allen had seen a lot of each other in Washington after the death of Allen's wife. They had often played complicated games for amusement, including one they had invented, which they called Superspy. In this game, each one had to present the other, who represented a major power, with a fait accompli, a means meticulously worked out, by which his or her country was absolutely compelled to surrender. The opponent, faced with this overwhelming menace, had to somehow frustrate or nullify it. From this game came the concept of the Deathchild, the lethal mutant in reverse, the one weapon to end them all. But something was missing, the actual convincer, the gimmick which really caused death.

  Then, exactly at the right time, a report had crossed Allen's desk, coming directly from a field agent who operated in the Virgin Islands. No one else in Washington had seen it before Allen. It told how a young biochemist in a small, marine laboratory, working with animal proteins and alkaloids derived from corals and other forms of sea life, had discovered and isolated a terrible poison. So awful did he feel this substance to be, he had actually contacted the C.I.A. directly, not even informing his superiors at the research station where he worked.

  Allen had called Joanne at once and simultaneously sent a pickup order for the man and his family.

  "Where are they now?" interrupted Hardwick.

  "On our Ascension Island base, under total security wraps. He had always wanted to write, and now he has the best private library in his field. He and his wife volunteered, without knowing why. One more group of unsung heroes, but his job is a lot easier than most."

  ALLEN HAD had the authority to go, and did go, straight to the White House. Approval came after a week, and meanwhile six C.I.A. chemists had died testing the poison, which acted in many ways much like the nerve gases, only in far smaller quantities. Further, like a number of proteins, it left absolutely no trace. The original discoverer had simply not refined it sufficiently and thus had lived.

  Joanne had then become pregnant under a false identity. They had felt this was the only way to insure complete security, and it had been Allen's suggestion. She had asked him to be the father, and he had refused, feeling it would make her task unbearable. The whole matter from then on had been so falsified that no one concerned had known anything but inconsequential bits of the total story.

  Next had come the selection of the hospital. Houston General was fairly old and a new one was badly needed. The pictures of the dead and other evidence were fakes, all concerned being of C.I.A. agents, none of whom were later associated with the project. The staff of the hospital was a harder problem, but not insoluble. Mostly they had been carefully dispersed, with only a final hard core remaining, who were put under National Security Oath. None of them were in the hospital on the day of Joseph's supposed birth. The dead firemen and patients, the heroic doctors and nurses who gave their lives, were all agents, and all were pulled off the project immediately after and reassigned as far away as possible.

  At each level, a new team was introduced and an old one scattered to the winds. A few of the more pertinacious inquiries were dealt with by top level interviews, and the blanket of National Security was invoked.

  Only Allen and Joanne were in it all the way. Not even the Cabinet knew the real story, nor did the Intelligence department heads. The Secretary of Defense and the Chief Justice didn't even know the details of the cover story, a fact they were well aware of, and indeed had been instructed to tell the Chinese.

  THE PLANT installation had certainly been built with every precaution, just as if the whole thing were true. To everyone who thought he knew the actual truth, save for the President, Joanne and Allen, the precautions, guards and secrecy were vital.

  "I can understand that," said Hardwick. "If it wasn't believable to the last ounce, the whole atmosphere was gone. But I don't see how the stuff got moved around. Does it really kill in the atmosphere in those minute quantities?"

  "Al, G-gas practically does too, and that's been around since the Second World War. But Josephine, which is what Tom and I call the poison, dissipates almost at once. There are no traces any test can detect. It seems to be a close cousin of Ciguatera, the tropical poison that kills people after they eat certain marine fish. They may even be two aspects of the same thing."

  The chemical fiddling was very tricky, she went on, but not impossible. Every technical loophole they could think of had been blocked a month before Hardwick had arrived. In a way, he was the last test. Allen had a high belief in Hardwick's intelligence and had argued that if he could be fooled, anyone could. Hardwick felt professionally pleased at the tribute, but was still puzzled.

  "Couldn't any of your science people have realized that vents and hidden ducts and secret pipes in the filters were feeding this stuff in and that none of it came from the baby?"

  "They could, but only if the idea were given them first. The place was built to be believed. Workmen who had no idea of what they were doing installed all those hidden bits and pieces on the orders of engineers who had no idea why they were wanted. Then they all left. Then and only then, don't you see, did the science staff come and get the full treatment. Why shouldn't they believe it?"

  "Yes, I see," said Hardwick. "The belief just grew and grew, until it spread to every new person like a miasma. And I suppose you and Tom checked the mysterious machinery and the poison apparatus yourselves?"

  This was correct, she said. Allen was, among other things, a trained electrical engineer, and she was a competent chemist as well as a psychologist The two could not have built the apparatus originally, but it was no trouble to monitor and maintain it, once installed. Any heavy or serious checking was always done during a mock evacuation or fire drill of the particular area needed.

  THERE WAS a long silence while Hardwick simply sat and stared at the floor, hands clasped between his knees.

  Eventually he looked up and met her sympatheti
c gaze.

  "What now, Joanne? It worked. Sounds banal, but you seem to have saved the world. But what about Joseph? Who saves him? And what happens to this place? I've never had a chance to think about that aspect before, but you and Tom must have." He signed. "What happens now? And what about your child, your little boy?"

  She got off the bed, came over and knelt at his side.

  "We stay here, dear. Joseph stays, and we stay. He's my son, and I love him desperately, fatherless, alone and thinking that a filthy robot, padded with cloth, is his mother. But he stays. Tom stays. We all stay. The play goes on.

  "We can't let up. You can see that, if you think a minute. In five or ten years, peace may be secure enough for us to come out and change our names. Maybe it will I don't knew.

  "But meanwhile, the Deathchild has to stay. He had to be believed in, hidden, guarded, cared for. Tom says the enemy will never, never stop looking for him. We may have to move, may have to rebuild this whole place somewhere else. So everyone has to believe in it, totally, religiously, especially our staff. They're giving their lives and devotion to an idea. The idea has to stay valid. It may be trite," she ended, "but we have each other now. That helps."

  It helped, Hardwick guessed, as he sat looking down at her, but somehow all he saw in his mind was a round-faced baby, who might have been his son. It was silly, in the face of world peace, to quibble about one atom of mortality, but he wondered if he would ever be able to hold Joseph in his arms.

  The End

  Never Cry Human

  Worlds of IF – January-February 1971

  (1971)**

  Always know your enemy—but know yourself even better!

  Chapter One

  THE GREAT blue sun was a long way from the planet called after it, Origen VII. As he ran heavily over the hot sand under its glare, William Powers, Field Agent of Survey and Contact Bureau, Syrian Combine, thanked the One God that its heat was no worse. It barely approximated 105° F on Terra. Even so, only Powers' superb condition enabled him still to keep moving at the steady trot he was forcing himself to maintain.

  Beside him the lean, seven-foot form of his Lyran partner sped on with no visible effort, flexible tail streaming behind him, slender five-clawed toes making only a faint rustle in the black sand of the canyon's floor, a noise imperceptible to anyone but the man running beside him. Powers could barely hear the thud of his heart but he had no trouble with the crunch of his feet as the plastic sandals bit into the ground and occasional patches of naked rock over which the two ran. Sweat poured from his nearly naked body. It was kept from his eyes by a crude headband, hastily made of cloth torn from the coat of his vanished uniform. Other than this, sandals and his calf-length service pants, he wore nothing at all.

  In the waste all was still save for the two running figures. Above them, on both sides, the towering walls of the mighty gorge rose sheer and stark, black and red rock making a pattern of ferocious beauty. Except for an occasional gray cactus—like shrub clinging to the rock or rooted in some crevice, no vegetation was visible. Down the almost straight hundred-foot width of the canyon floor the two ran, as if competing in some strange contest.

  In another quarter of a mile Powers stole a glance at his wristchron.

  "Break," he croaked and came to an abrupt stop.

  The Lyran checked at once and whirled in one easy motion to look back up the canyon, his long tail curling gracefully as he did so. Seeing nothing, he turned his great red goggle eyes on his human companion, his immobile, snouted face looking like nothing as much as a magnified head of a Terran chameleon. But there was both intelligence and concern in the huge, lambent orbs as he saw how Powers panted while he crouched on one knee.

  "Bill," he said in Universal, making it sound more like Hipeel, "you don't look so good. Can you last much longer?"

  "Why in hell, you overgrown skink, you don't get out of here, is beyond me," gasped Powers. "How much water you got left?"

  The Lyran examined the skin water bag slung over one bony shoulder.

  "Maybe a quart. Maybe a touch more. Want some?"

  "Yeah," said the man, holding up one hand for the water. He drank rapid gulps of the muddy, lukewarm fluid and handed the skin back in silence. The olive-scaled Lyran stood above him, lean double-ankled legs locked as he braced himself on his long stiffened tail, the whole forming a rigid triangle on which to rest. In this position he also shaded Powers from the sun but neither one mentioned it, any more than he did the fact that only Powers had used the water.

  SAHK MAZZECHAZZ was a native of Beta Lyrae IV or Zzorm, an ancient, arid planet, a world not unlike the Karoo desert of Southern Africa over much of its expanse. He needed little water at any time and the hot blue glare of giant Origen bothered him hardly at all. It was the man who was in really bad trouble and they both knew it. There was no need to make any comment. The help was an automatic reflex and on a different, perhaps wetter, world, would have been as freely given in reverse.

  Powers' breath had subsided to normal and he checked his chron again.

  "Let's go," he said, coming to his feet. "I've had five minutes and we haven't got time to hang around. We don't know what those hellions turned loose after us. We only have the one chance and we need cover."

  "Quiet a moment, please," said the Lyran. He was now standing fully erect and his broad, plate-like tympanum surfaces, far more sensitive than human ears to vibration, were quivering as he strained to catch a sound. Powers waited, also staring up canyon. He could see and hear nothing. The shimmering haze, caused by heat reflected off the rocks and sand, made visibility almost nil more than two hundred yards away.

  "Yes," said Mazzechazz after a moment. "Something comes, something large and with many limbs, my friend. We had best resume our journey. We can do nothing here."

  The two began to run down canyon again, their eyes ceaselessly scanning the terrain ahead and on either side. They needed an ambush spot, anything at all that would give them a chance against whatever horror had been loosed on their trail. A chance to use their one weapon.

  As he ran Powers cursed the grim humor of the Arghor war chiefs to himself, not for the first time. They had carefully deprived the two agents of all their weapons, even down to knives, leaving them only a food pack, water and a limited amount of clothing. Two items of Powers' personal jewelry had been overlooked or considered unimportant. One was his wristchron, the other the large Space Academy ring he wore, set with a green stone. Next, the Arghor had left them at the head of the great gorge and told them to run.

  "One comes perhaps, whom it would not be well to meet," the oldest chief had growled jovially and all the surrounding warriors had yelped in what passed for delighted laughter, some even slapping their black-furred thighs in a fair approximation of mirth.

  For the tenth time since their capture at the end of the previous night, Powers had, with dignity, pointed out that he and the Lyran had the status of ambassadors and that the sky gods would curse any who harmed such.

  "We have harmed no one, Sky-dweller," snarled the old chief venomously. "You came unasked, out of nowhere, on behalf of other irreligious, muck-eating monsters like yourselves down on the plain yonder. Whom we will kill in due course. You claim to be heralds, ambassadors? We asked for none, nor were we asked by your people to receive any. We found you at night lurking on our land near your sky machine, doubtless engaged in some vile sky-people plot. We could kill you at once without losing honor. This one with you looks like an evil spirit.

  "But you are heralds, you say? Perhaps. We will release you then. If you are true warriors you need no cowardly death beams," and he pointed a massive, pelted hand at the two Ferraby handlasers lying on the ground.

  "Let us have our knives then, Eldest," rejoined Powers, staring impassively into the angry yellow eyes. "If you leave us defenseless entirely, then who will be the coward?"

  "No!" roared the angry old chief. Standing so close to Powers that his sharp-snouted, hairy face was only inche
s away. "No—we give you a chance for life, no more. You deserve no more, like all the dirty leaf and root eaters in your tribe. If you are true people, true hunters, make the most of it and save yourselves. Otherwise, die here and now."

  "We are ready," interrupted the Lyran. He had been standing, arms folded, not speaking, while Powers argued. Now he took Powers by the arm and gently pulled him back.

  The Unitrans machine which had taught them both to speak the Arghor dialect could not help to make the barks, growls and grunts as fluent for the reptilian mouth of the Lyran, but the tribemen nevertheless fell silent when he spoke. Humans they were used to seeing, but Mazzechazz was uncanny, and the fact that he could speak to them in their own tongue made them even more nervous. They were not afraid, exactly, but there was a grudging respect in their attitude toward the towering lizard shape that was absent in their attitude toward Powers.

  "Go then," grunted the old chief, "You have been given food and a skin of water. If you escape from the Hunter of the Sands we will kill you later—but in fair fight. Now go."

  Powers turned and followed his partner down the crude vine ladder to the canyon floor far below. At the bottom he looked up, expecting to see the assembled tribe gazing down, prick-eared in the clear light of the coming dawn. But the ladder was hauled up by invisible hands and then there was nothing. The Arghors had vanished, apparently uninterested.

  "I think we had better run, friend," said Mazzechazz gently, taking the unspoken thought from his mind. "They surely would like to see us die—and that means they are probably extremely scared of what's coming. They are not hanging around to see how we'll make out."

  NOW, THREE hours later, they had been running, running and running, thought Powers. And still they had found no position for making a stand. The level bottom of the canyon had stayed smooth, large, flat rocks alternating with fine gravel and sand, but with no break or usable crevice in the towering walls. The gentle downward slope never varied or ceased. Only the timed rests and his iron will had kept Powers from collapsing, but Sakh Mazzechazz could still go a long way. Powers knew that the big Lyran ought to have left him but he had given up arguing. The other had made it plain that he was not going to desert his partner for any reason whatsoever, mission or no mission.