American Science Fiction

by Gary K. Wolfe

  “Do the very best you can. It’s important that you get that body back.”

  “I will, Wallace. I didn’t know . . .”

  “And, Lewis.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t try to play it smart. Don’t add any frills. Just do what I tell you. I’m trying to be reasonable because that’s the only thing to be. But you try one smart move . . .”

  He reached out a hand and grabbed Lewis’s shirt front, twisting the fabric tight.

  “You understand me, Lewis?”

  Lewis was unmoved. He did not try to pull away.

  “Yes,” he said. “I understand.”

  “What the hell ever made you do it?”

  “I had a job.”

  “Yeah, a job. Watching me. Not robbing graves.”

  He let loose of the shirt.

  “Tell me,” said Lewis, “that thing in the grave. What was it?”

  “That’s none of your damn’ business,” Enoch told him, bitterly. “Getting back that body is. You’re sure that you can do it? Nothing standing in your way?”

  Lewis shook his head. “Nothing at all. I’ll phone as soon as I can reach a phone. I’ll tell them that it’s imperative.”

  “It’s all of that,” said Enoch. “Getting that body back is the most important thing you’ve ever done. Don’t forget that for a minute. It affects everyone on Earth. You and me and everyone. And if you fail, you’ll answer to me for it.”

  “With that gun?”

  “Maybe,” Enoch said. “Don’t fool around. Don’t imagine that I’d hesitate to kill you. In this situation, I’d kill anyone—anyone at all.”

  “Wallace, is there something you can tell me?”

  “Not a thing,” said Enoch.

  He picked up the lantern.

  “You’re going home?”

  Enoch nodded.

  “You don’t seem to mind us watching you.”

  “No,” Enoch told him. “Not your watching. Just your interference. Bring back that body and go on watching if you want to. But don’t push me any. Don’t lean on me. Keep your hands off. Don’t touch anything.”

  “But good God, man, there’s something going on. You can tell me something.”

  Enoch hesitated.

  “Some idea,” said Lewis, “of what this is all about. Not the details, just . . .”

  “You bring the body back,” Enoch told him, slowly, “and maybe we can talk again.”

  “It will be back,” said Lewis.

  “If it’s not,” said Enoch, “you’re as good as dead right now.”

  Turning, he went across the garden and started up the hill.

  In the yard, Lewis stood for a long time, watching the lantern bobbing out of sight.

  22

  ULYSSES WAS alone in the station when Enoch returned. He had sent the Thuban on his way and the Hazer back to Vega.

  A fresh pot of coffee was brewing and Ulysses was sprawled out on the sofa, doing nothing.

  Enoch hung up the rifle and blew out the lantern. Taking off his jacket, he threw it on the desk. He sat down in a chair across from the sofa.

  “The body will be back,” he said, “by this time tomorrow.”

  “I sincerely hope,” Ulysses said, “that it will do some good. But I’m inclined to doubt it.”

  “Maybe,” said Enoch bitterly, “I should not have bothered.”

  “It will show good faith,” Ulysses said. “It might have some mitigating effect in the final weighing.”

  “The Hazer could have told me,” Enoch said, “where the body was. If he knew it had been taken from the grave, then he must have known where it could be found.”

  “I would suspect he did,” Ulysses said, “but, you see, he couldn’t tell you. All that he could do was to make his protest. The rest was up to you. He could not lay aside his dignity by suggesting what you should do about it. For the record, he must remain the injured party.”

  “Sometimes,” said Enoch, “this business is enough to drive one crazy. Despite the briefings from Galactic Central, there are always some surprises, always yawning traps for you to tumble into.”

  “There may come a day,” Ulysses said, “when it won’t be like that. I can look ahead and see, in some thousands of years, the knitting of the galaxy together into one great culture, one huge area of understanding. The local and the racial variations still will exist, of course, and that is as it should be, but overriding all of these will be a tolerance that will make for what one might be tempted to call a brotherhood.”

  “You sound,” said Enoch, “almost like a human. That is the sort of hope that many of our thinkers have held out.”

  “Perhaps,” Ulysses said. “You know that a lot of Earth seems to have rubbed off on me. You can’t spend as long as I did on your planet without picking up at least a bit of it. And by the way, you made a good impression on the Vegan.”

  “I hadn’t noticed it,” Enoch told him. “He was kind and correct, of course, but little more.”

  “That inscription on the gravestone. He was impressed by that.”

  “I didn’t put it there to impress anyone. I wrote it out because it was the way I felt. And because I like the Hazers. I was only trying to make it right for them.”

  “If it were not for the pressure from the galactic factions,” Ulysses said, “I am convinced the Vegans would be willing to forget the incident and that is a greater concession than you can realize. It may be that, even so, they may line up with us when the showdown comes.”

  “You mean they might save the station?”

  Ulysses shook his head. “I doubt anyone can do that. But it will be easier for all of us at Galactic Central if they threw their weight with us.”

  The coffeepot was making sounds and Enoch went to get it. Ulysses had pushed some of the trinkets on the coffee table to one side to make room for two coffee cups. Enoch filled them and set the pot upon the floor.

  Ulysses picked up his cup, held it for a moment in his hands, then put it back on the table top.

  “We’re in bad shape,” he said. “Not like in the old days. It has Galactic Central worried. All this squabbling and haggling among the races, all the pushing and the shoving.”

  He looked at Enoch. “You thought it was all nice and cozy.”

  “No,” said Enoch, “not that. I knew that there were conflicting viewpoints and I knew there was some trouble. But I’m afraid I thought of it as being on a fairly lofty plane—gentlemanly, you know, and good-mannered.”

  “That was the way it was at one time. There always have been differing opinions, but they were based on principles and ethics, not on special interests. You know about the spiritual force, of course—the universal spiritual force.”

  Enoch nodded. “I’ve read some of the literature. I don’t quite understand, but I’m willing to accept it. There is a way, I know, to get in contact with the force.”

  “The Talisman,” said Ulysses.

  “That’s it. The Talisman. A machine, of sorts.”

  “I suppose,” Ulysses agreed, “you could call it that. Although the word, ‘machine,’ is a little awkward. More than mechanics went into the making of it. There is just the one. Only one was ever made, by a mystic who lived ten thousand of your years ago. I wish I could tell you what it is or how it is constructed, but there is no one, I am afraid, who can tell you that. There have been others who have attempted to duplicate the Talisman, but no one has succeeded. The mystic who made it left no blueprints, no plans, no specifications, not a single note. There is no one who knows anything about it.”

  “There is no reason, I suppose,” said Enoch, “that another should not be made. No sacred taboos, I mean. To make another one would not be sacrilegious.”

  “Not in the least,” Ulysses told him. “In fact, we need another badly.
For now we have no Talisman. It has disappeared.”

  Enoch jerked upright in his chair.

  “Disappeared?” he asked.

  “Lost,” said Ulysses. “Misplaced. Stolen. No one knows.”

  “But I hadn’t . . .”

  Ulysses smiled bleakly. “You hadn’t heard. I know. It is not something that we talk about. We wouldn’t dare. The people must not know. Not for a while, at least.”

  “But how can you keep it from them?”

  “Not too hard to do. You know how it worked, how the custodian took it from planet to planet and great mass meetings were held, where the Talisman was exhibited and contact made through it with the spiritual force. There had never been a schedule of appearances; the custodian simply wandered. It might be a hundred of your years or more between the visits of the custodian to any particular planet. The people hold no expectations of a visit. They simply know there’ll be one, sometime; that some day the custodian will show up with the Talisman.”

  “That way you can cover up for years.”

  “Yes,” Ulysses said. “Without any trouble.”

  “The leaders know, of course. The administrative people.”

  Ulysses shook his head. “We have told very few. The few that we can trust. Galactic Central knows, of course, but we’re a close-mouthed lot.”

  “Then why . . .”

  “Why should I be telling you. I know; I shouldn’t. I don’t know why I am. Yes, I guess I do. How does it feel, my friend, to sit as a compassionate confessor?”

  “You’re worried,” Enoch said. “I never thought I would see you worried.”

  “It’s a strange business,” Ulysses said. “The Talisman has been missing for several years or so. And no one knows about it—except Galactic Central and the—what would you call it?—the hierarchy, I suppose, the organization of mystics who take care of the spiritual setup. And yet, even with no one knowing, the galaxy is beginning to show wear. It’s coming apart at the seams. In time to come, it may fall apart. As if the Talisman represented a force that all unknowingly held the races of the galaxy together, exerting its influence even when it remained unseen.”

  “But even if it’s lost, it’s somewhere,” Enoch pointed out. “It still would be exerting its influence. It couldn’t have been destroyed.”

  “You forget,” Ulysses reminded him, “that without its proper custodian, without its sensitive, it is inoperative. For it’s not the machine itself that does the trick. The machine merely acts as an intermediary between the sensitive and the spiritual force. It is an extension of the sensitive. It magnifies the capability of the sensitive and acts as a link of some sort. It enables the sensitive to perform his function.”

  “You feel that the loss of the Talisman has something to do with the situation here?”

  “The Earth station. Well, not directly, but it is typical. What is happening in regard to the station is symptomatic. It involves the sort of petty quarreling and mean bickering that has broken out through many sections of the galaxy. In the old days it would have been—what did you say, gentlemanly and on a plane of principles and ethics.”

  They sat in silence for a moment, listening to the soft sound that the wind made as it blew through the gable gingerbread.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Ulysses said. “It is not your worry. I should not have told you. It was indiscreet to do so.”

  “You mean I shouldn’t pass it on. You can be sure I won’t.”

  “I know you won’t,” Ulysses said. “I never thought you would.”

  “You really think relations in the galaxy are deteriorating?”

  “Once,” Ulysses said, “the races all were bound together. There were differences, naturally, but these differences were bridged, sometimes rather artificially and not too satisfactorily, but with both sides striving to maintain the artificial bridging and generally succeeding. Because they wanted to, you see. There was a common purpose, the forging of a great cofraternity of all intelligences. We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques—that working together, by putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant than any race, alone, could hope of accomplishing. We had our troubles, certainly, and as I have said, our differences, but we were progressing. We brushed the small animosities and the petty differences underneath the rug and worked only on the big ones. We felt that if we could get the big ones settled, the small ones would become so small they would disappear. But it is becoming different now. There is a tendency to pull the pettiness from underneath the rug and blow it beyond its size, meanwhile letting the major and the important issues fall away.”

  “It sounds like Earth,” said Enoch.

  “In many ways,” Ulysses said. “In principle, although the circumstances would diverge immensely.”

  “You’ve been reading the papers I have been saving for you?”

  Ulysses nodded. “It doesn’t look too happy.”

  “It looks like war,” said Enoch bluntly.

  Ulysses stirred uneasily.

  “You don’t have wars,” said Enoch.

  “The galaxy, you mean. No, as we are set up now we don’t have wars.”

  “Too civilized?”

  “Stop being bitter,” Ulysses told him. “There has been a time or two when we came very close, but not in recent years. There are many races now in the cofraternity that in their formative years had a history of war.”

  “There is hope for us, then. It’s something you outgrow.”

  “In time, perhaps.”

  “But not a certainty?”

  “No, I wouldn’t say so.”

  “I’ve been working on a chart,” said Enoch. “Based on the Mizar system of statistics. The chart says there is going to be war.”

  “You don’t need the chart,” Ulysses said, “to tell you that.”

  “But there was something else. It was not just knowing if there’d be a war. I had hoped that the chart might show how to keep the peace. There must be a way. A formula, perhaps. If we could only think of it or know where to look or whom to ask or . . .”

  “There is a way,” Ulysses said, “to prevent a war.”

  “You mean you know . . .”

  “It’s a drastic measure. It only can be used as a last resort.”

  “And we’ve not reached that last resort?”

  “I think, perhaps, you have. The kind of war that Earth would fight could spell an end to thousands of years of advancement, could wipe out all the culture, everything but the feeble remnants of civilizations. It could, just possibly, eliminate most of the life upon the planet.”

  “This method of yours—it has been used?”

  “A few times.”

  “And worked?”

  “Oh, certainly. We’d not even consider it if it didn’t work.”

  “It could be used on Earth?”

  “You could apply for its application.”

  “I?”

  “As a representative of the Earth. You could appear before Galactic Central and appeal for us to use it. As a member of your race, you could give testimony and you would be given a hearing. If there seemed to be merit in your plea, Central might name a group to investigate and then, upon the report of its findings, a decision would be made.”

  “You said I. Could anyone on Earth?”

  “Anyone who could gain a hearing. To gain a hearing, you must know about Galactic Central and you’re the only man on Earth who does. Besides, you’re a part of Galactic Central’s staff. You have served as a keeper for a long time. Your record has been good. We would listen to you.”

  “But one man alone! One man can’t speak for an entire race.”

  “You’re the only one of your race who is qualified.”


  “If I could consult some others of my race.”

  “You can’t. And even if you could, who would believe you?”

  “That’s true,” said Enoch.

  Of course it was. To him there was no longer any strangeness in the idea of a galactic cofraternity, of a transportation network that spread among the stars—a sense of wonder at times, but the strangeness had largely worn off. Although, he remembered, it had taken years. Years even with the physical evidence there before his eyes, before he could bring himself to a complete acceptance of it. But tell it to any other Earthman and it would sound like madness.

  “And this method?” he asked, almost afraid to ask it, braced to take the shock of whatever it might be.

  “Stupidity,” Ulysses said.

  Enoch gasped. “Stupidity? I don’t understand. We are stupid enough, in many ways, right now.”

  “You’re thinking of intellectual stupidity and there is plenty of that, not only on Earth, but throughout the galaxy. What I am talking about is a mental incapacity. An inability to understand the science and the technique that makes possible the kind of war that Earth would fight. An inability to operate the machines that are necessary to fight that kind of war. Turning the people back to a mental position where they would not be able to comprehend the mechanical and technological and scientific advances they have made. Those who know would forget. Those who didn’t know could never learn. Back to the simplicity of the wheel and lever. That would make your kind of war impossible.”

  Enoch sat stiff and straight, unable to speak, gripped by an icy terror, while a million disconnected thoughts went chasing one another in a circle through his brain.

  “I told you it was drastic,” Ulysses said. “It has to be. War is something that costs a lot to stop. The price is high.”

  “I couldn’t!” Enoch said. “No one could.”

  “Perhaps you can’t. But consider this: If there is a war . . .”

  “I know. If there is a war, it could be worse. But it wouldn’t stop war. It’s not the kind of thing I had in mind. People still could fight, still could kill.”

  “With clubs,” said Ulysses. “Maybe bows and arrows. Rifles, so long as they still had rifles, and until they ran out of ammunition. Then they wouldn’t know how to make more powder or how to get the metal to make the bullets or even how to make the bullets. There might be fighting, but there’d be no holocaust. Cities would not be wiped out by nuclear warheads, for no one could fire a rocket or arm the warhead—perhaps wouldn’t even know what a rocket or a warhead was. Communications as you know them would be gone. All but the simplest transportation would be gone. War, except on a limited local scale, would be impossible.”