The Diploids and Other Flghts of Fancy

by Katherine MacLean

  He said, “Leave me and escape. But remember…” No words came, just the feeling of being what he was, a dying old eagle, a chief of warriors, speaking to young warriors who would need the advice of seasoned humor and moderation to carry them through their young battles. He had to finish his speech, tell them something wise.

  Ronny tried harder, pulling the feeling around him like a cloak of resignation and pride, leaning indifferently against the tree where the arrow had pinned him, hearing dimly in anticipation the sound of his aged voice conquering weakness to speak wisely what needed to be said. They had many battles ahead of them, and the battles would be against odds, with so many dead already.

  They must watch and wait, be flexible and tenacious, determined and persistent—but not too rash; subtle and indirect—but not cowardly; and above all, be patient with the triumph of the enemy, and not maddened into suicidal attack.

  His stomach hurt with the arrow wound, and his braves waited to hear his words. He had to sum a part of his life’s experience in words. Ronny tried harder to make it real.

  Then suddenly it was real.

  He was an old man, guide and adviser in an oblique battle against great odds. He was dying of something, and his stomach hurt with a knotted ache, like hunger, and he was thirsty. He had refused to let the young men make the sacrifice of trying to rescue him. He was trapped in a steel cage, and dying, because he would not surrender to the enemy, nor cease to fight them. He smiled and said, “Do not be fanatical. Remember to live like other men, but remember to live like yourself…”

  And then he was saying things that could not be put into words, attitudes that were ways of taking bad situations that made them easier to smile at, complex feelings…

  He was an old man, trying to teach young men, and the old man did not know about Ronny. He thought sadly, how little he would be able to convey to the young men. He began to think sentences that were not sentences, but single alphabet letters pushing each other with signs, with a feeling of being connected like two halves of a swing, one side moving up when the other moved down, and like cogs and wheels interlaced inside a clock, only without the cogs, just the push.

  It wasn’t adding, and it used letters instead of numbers, but Ronny knew it was some kind of arithmetic.

  And he wasn’t Ronny.

  He was an old man, in an oblique battle against great odds. His stomach hurt, and he was dying. Ronny was the old man and himself, both at once.

  It was too intense. Part of Ronny wanted to escape and be alone, and that part withdrew and wanted to play something. Ronny sat on the grass and played with his toes like a much younger child.

  Part of Ronny that was Doctor Revert Purcell sat on the edge of a prison cot, concentrating on secret, unpublished equations of biogenic stability which he wanted to pass on to the responsible hands of young researchers in the concealed—research chain. He was thinking, using the technique of holding ideas in the mind which they had told him was the telepathic sending of ideas to anyone ready to receive. It was difficult, and made more difficult by the uncertainty, for he could never tell if anyone was receiving. It was odd that he himself could never tell when he was sending successfully. Probably a matter of age. They had started to teach him new tricks when his mind had stiffened and lost the old limber ability to jump through hoops.

  The water tap, four feet away, was dripping steadily, and it was hard for Purcell to concentrate, so intense was his thirst. He wondered if he could gather strength to walk that far. He was sitting up, and that was already success, but the effort to raise himself that far had left him dizzy and trembling. If he tried to stand, the effort would surely interrupt his transmitting of equations. All the data was not sent yet.

  Would the man with the keys who looked in the door twice a day care whether Purcell died with dignity? He was the only audience, and his expression never changed when Purcell asked him to point out to the authorities that he was not being given anything to eat. It was funny to Purcell that he wanted the respect of any audience to his death, even of a watcher without expression and without response, who treated him as if he were already an inanimate, indifferent object.

  Perhaps the man felt contempt for him. Perhaps the watcher would smile and respond only if Purcell said, “I have changed my mind. I will tell.”

  But if he said that, he would lose his own respect.

  At the National BioChemical Convention, the reporter had asked him if any of his researches could be applied to warfare.

  He had answered the reporter with no feeling of danger in what he said, knowing that what he did was common practice among research men, sure that he had an unchallengeable right to do it.

  “Some of them can apply to warfare, but those I keep to myself.”

  The reporter remained deadpan. “For instance?”

  “Well, I have to choose something that won’t reveal how it’s done now, but… ah… for example, a way of cheaply mass producing specific antitoxins against any germ. It sounds harmless if you don’t think about it, but actually it would make germ warfare the most deadly and inexpensive weapon yet developed, for it would make it possible to prevent the back-spread of contagion into a country’s own troops without much expense, they wouldn’t bother to inoculate bystanders and neutral nations, that would let out to the enemy that—Well, there would be hell to pay if anyone ever let that technique out.”

  Then he added, trying to get the reporter to understand enough to change his cynical un-impressed expression. “You understand, germs are cheap—there would be a new plague to spread every time some pipsqueak biologist mutated a new germ. It isn’t even expensive or difficult.”

  The headline was: “Scientist Refuses to Give Secret of Weapon to Government.”

  Government men came with more reporters, and asked him if the headline was correct. When he confirmed it they pointed out that he owed a debt to his country. The research foundations where he had worked were subsidized by Government money. He had been deferred from military service during his youthful years of study and work so that he could become a productive scientist instead of having to fight or die on the battlefield.

  “This might be so,” he had said. “I am making an attempt to serve mankind by doing as much good and as little damage as possible. If you don’t mind, I’d rather use my own judgment abut what constitutes service.”

  The statement seemed too blunt, and he recognized that it had implications that his judgement was superior to that of the Government. It probably was the most antagonizing thing that he could have said, but he could see no other possible statement, for it represented precisely what he thought.

  There were bigger headlines about the interview.

  Scientist Refuses to Give Secret. Patriotism Not Important Says Purcell. The evening and morning News Commentators mentioned the incident on the TV screens of the city.

  When he stepped outside his building for lunch the next day, several small gangs of patriots were waiting to persuade him that patriotism was important. They fought each other to reach him.

  The police rescued him after he had lost several front teeth and had one eye badly gouged. They then left him to the care of the prison doctor, in protective custody. Two days later, after having been questioned politely several times as to whether he considered it best to continue to keep important results of his researches secret, he was transferred to a place that looked like a military jail, and left alone. He was told that they were protecting him from threats against his life.

  When someone came to ask him further questions about his attitude, Purcell felt quite sure that his imprisonment was illegal. He stated that he was going on a hunger strike until he was allowed to have visitors and see a lawyer.

  The next time the dinner hour arrived, they gave him nothing to eat. There had been no food in the cell since, and that was probably two weeks ago. He was not sure just how long, for during part of the second week his memory had become garbled. He dimly remembered nightmares that might h
ave been delirium. He might have been sick for more than one day.

  Perhaps the military who wanted the antitoxins for germ warfare were waiting quietly for him to either talk or die. Perhaps they were afraid that someone else would get the information from him. Or perhaps no one cared if he lived or died, and they had stopped the food when he declared a hunger strike, and then forgotten he existed.

  Ronny got up from the grass and went into the kitchen, stumbling in his walk like a beginning toddler.

  “Choc-mil?” he said to his mother.

  She poured him some, and teased gently, “What’s the matter, Ronny—back to baby-talk?”

  He looked at her with big solemn eyes and drank slowly, not answering. The chocolate milk was creamy and cool.

  In the cell somewhere far away, Dr. Purcell, famous biochemist, began waveringly trying to rise to his feet, unable to remember hunger as anything that could ever be ended, but weakly wanting a glass of water. Ronny could not feed him with the chocolate milk. Even though this other person was also him, the body that was drinking was not the one that was thirsty.

  Ronny wandered out into the back yard again, carrying the half-empty glass.

  “Bang,” he said deceptively, pointing with his hand in case his mother was looking. “Bang.” Everything had to seem usual; he was sure of that. This was too big a thing, and too private, to tell a grownup.

  On the way back from the sink, Dr. Purcell slipped and fell, and hit his head against the edge of the iron cot. Ronny felt the edge gashing through skin and into bone, and then a relaxing blankness inside his head, like falling asleep suddenly when they are telling you a fairy story, even though you really want to stay awake to find out what happened next.

  “Bang,” said Ronny vaguely, pointing at a tree. “Bang.” He was ashamed because he had fallen down in the cell and hurt his head and become just Ronny again before he had finished sending out his equations. He tried to make believe he was alive again, but it didn’t work.

  You could never makebelieve anything to a real good finish. They never ended neatly—there was always something unfinished, and something that would go right on after the end.

  It would have been nice if the jailers had come in and he had been able to say something noble to them before dying, to show that he was brave.

  “Bang,” he said randomly, pointing his finger at his head, and then jerking his hand away as if it had burned him. He had become the wrong person that time. The feel of a bullet jolting the side of his head was startling and unpleasant, even though not real, and the flash of someone’s vindictive anger and self-pity while pulling a trigger… My wife will be sorry she ever… Ronny didn’t like that kind of makebelieve. It was not safe to do it without making up a story first, so you know what is going to happen.

  Ronny decided to be Indian braves again. They weren’t very real, and when they were, they had simple straightforward emotions about courage and skill and pride and friendship that he always liked.

  A man was leaning his arms on the fence, watching him.

  “Nice day.” What’s the matter, kid, are you an esper?

  “Hul-lo.” Ronny stood on one foot and watched him. Just making-believe. I only want to play adventures. They make it too serious, having all these troubles.

  “Good countryside.” The man gestured at the back yards, all opened in together with tangled bushes here and there to crouch behind, and trees to climb when the other kids were around to play with. It can be the Universe if you pick and choose who to be, and don’t let wrong choices make you shut yourself off from it. You can make yourself learn from this if you are strong enough. Who have you been?

  Ronny stood on the other foot and scratched the back of his leg with his toes. He didn’t want to remember. He always forgot right away, but this grownup was confident and young and strong looking, like the young men in adventure stories, and besides he meant something when he talked, not like most grownups. Nobody else had ever asked him by talking the inside way.

  “I was playing Indian.” I was an old chief, captured by enemies, trying to pass on to other warriors the wisdom of my life before I died. He made believe he was the chief a little bit, to show the young man what he was talking about.

  “Purcell!” The man drew in his breath between his teeth with a hiss, and his face paled. He pulled his feelings back from reaching Ronny, like holding his breath in. “Good game.” You can learn from him. Don’t let him shut off, I beg you. You can let him influence you without being pulled off your own course. He was a good man. You were honored, and I envy the man you will be if you contacted him because of basic similarity.

  The grownup put his hand over his own eyes. But you are too young. You’ll block him out and lose him. Kids have to grow and learn at their own speed. He looked frightened.

  He looked down at his hands on the fence, and his thoughts struggled against each other. I could prevent him. Not fair; kids should grow at their own speed. But to shut out Purcell—no. Maybe no one else so close to him anywhere, no one but this little boy with Purcell’s memories. He’d become—Not fair, kids should grow up in their own directions. But Purcell, someone special… Ronny, how strong are you? The young man looked up, and met his eyes.

  “Did you like being chief?”

  Grownups always want you to do something. Ronny stared back, clenching his hands and moving his feet uneasily.

  The thoughts were open to him. Do you want to be the old chief again, Ronny? Be him often, so you can learn to know what he knew? (And feel as he felt. It would be a stiff dose for a kid.) It will be rich and exciting, full of memories and skills. (But hard to chew. I’m doing, this for Purcell, Ronny, not for you. You have to make up your own mind.)

  “Did you like being chief, Ronny?”

  His mother would not like it. She would feel the difference in him, as much as if he had read one of the books she kept away from him, books that were supposed to be for adults only. The difference would hurt her. She liked him to be little and young. He was being bad, like eating between meals. But to know what grownups knew…

  He tightened his fists and looked down at the grass. “I’ll play chief some more.”

  The young man was still pale and holding half his feelings back behind a dam, but he smiled. Then mesh with me a moment. Let me in.

  He was in with the thought, feeling Ronny’s confused consent, reassuring him by not thinking or looking around inside while sending out a single call. Purcell, Doc, that found the combination key to Ronny’s guarded yesterdays and ten-minutes-agos. Then they were separate again, looking through their own eyes. Ronny, I set that door, Purcell’s memories, a little bit open. You can’t close it, but feel like this about it—Questioning, cool, a feeling of absorbing without words… It will give knowledge when you need it.

  The grownup straightened up and away from the fence, preparing to walk away. Behind a dam pressed grief and anger for the death of the man he called Purcell.

  “And any time you want to be the old chief, when he was young, or when he was a kid like you, or any age, just make believe you are him.”

  Grief and anger pressed more strongly against the dam, and the man turned and left rapidly, letting his thoughts flicker and scatter through private memories that Ronny did not share, that no one shared, breaking thought contact with everyone so that the man could be alone in his own mind to have his feelings in private.

  Ronny picked up the empty glass that had held his chocolate milk and went inside. As he stepped into the kitchen he knew what another kitchen had looked like for a five year old child who had been Purcell, sixty years ago. There had been an iron sink, and a brown and green-spotted faucet, and the glass had been heavy and transparent, like real glass.

  Ronny reached up and put the colored plastic tumbler on the table.

  “That was a nice young man, dear. What did he say to you?”

  Ronny looked up at his Mamma, comparing her with the remembered Mamma of sixty years ago. He loved the oth
er one too.

  “He told me he’s glad I play Indian.”

  Pictures Don’t Lie

  THE MAN FROM THE News asked, “What do you think of the aliens, Mr. Nathen? Are they friendly? Do they look human?”

  “Very human,” said the thin young man.

  Outside, rain sleeted across the big windows with at steady, faint drumming, blurring and dimming the view of the airfield where they would arrive. On the concrete runways the puddles were pockmarked with rain, and the grass growing untouched between the runways of the unused field glistened wetly, bending before gusts of wind

  Back at a respectful distance from the place where the huge spaceship would land were the gray shapes of trucks where TV camera crews huddled inside their mobile units, waiting. Farther back in the deserted, sandy landscape, behind distant sandy hills, artillery was ringed in a great circle, and in the distance across the horizon bombers stood ready at airfields, guarding the world against possible treachery from the first alien ship ever to land from space.

  “Do you know anything about their home planet?” asked the man from the Herald.

  The Times man stood with the others, listening absently; thinking of questions but reserving them. Joseph R. Nathen, the thin young man with the straight black hair and the tired lines on his face, was being treated with respect by his interviewers. He was obviously on edge, and they did not want to harry him with too many questions at once. They wanted to keep his good will. Tomorrow he would be one of the biggest celebrities ever to appear in headlines.

  “No, nothing directly.”

  “Any ideas or deductions?” the Herald persisted.

  “Their world must be Earthlike to them,” the weary-looking young man answered uncertainly. “The environment evolves the animal. But only in relative terms, of course.” He looked at them with a quick glance and then looked away evasively, his lank black hair beginning to cling to his forehead with sweat. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything?‘