“Not just the same. No. We’ve got our own plans for you.”
“Then you admit killing the greatest painter of our day?”
“Why not?” Hartle asked casually. “You’re not telling anybody.” Then he added more loudly, “Come on in, boys.”
Garrett’s cheek smarted; the effect of the ointment was wearing off. As his nightacquired sunburn tingled, he glanced at Hartle’s prop pistol. More of the picture began to shape up as clearly as though beams were focusing on a Cassellite screen in front of him. “Valentinez had perfected the control of lovestonite,” he said slowly. “He was fool enough to show his device to you.”
A half dozen men filed into the room. They were a crummy lot—the scrapings of the dives in Luna City, or those outcasts that gravitate to extra work in Sollywood as they used to drift into the Foreign Legion. They all held pistols.
Garrett lounged back, both hands comfortably in his pockets. His left encountered the knife which had missed him on his entrance to Metropolis Pictures. Yes, there was even that left if everything else failed him, though if he could bring himself to use it— “Valentinez thought,” he went on calmly, “that he had simply invented a device for self-portraiture. You realized that what he had actually created was a gadget for storing sunlight and releasing it at will in any desired strength. You—or someone behind you—began the processing of vast amounts of lovestonite. Metal and explosives are unobtainable for weapons; but the mirrors that you have manufactured, when the right electromagnetic hookup is attached to them, will arm a host that can set a city ablaze and blind its every defender. There are tiny lovestonite ‘mirrors’ in those pistols. They’ve been exposed to sunlight; the trigger releases the stored energy.”
“Smart, ain’t he, boys?” Stag Hartle demanded. “Figured it out all by himself, too.
Garrett’s hand was firm on his popgun. Uranov’s copter was gone, but there must be another outside that had brought this crew. If he could keep talking, build to a moment of distraction— “But why?” he wondered aloud. “You’ve found a new weapon that can be manufactured without overt violation of the law. But why? The quantities you’ve been turning out—what mob are you arming, and for what purpose?”
“For a purpose that good little boys from the W.B.I. shouldn’t ought to understand. Because you’re the backbone of this cockeyed peace that’s sapping the guts of the world. Hell, there ain’t no fun in life now. But there will be, brother. Christmas on wheels, but there will be!”
A luxurious gloat spread over Hartle’s narrow face. His self-satisfaction provided the one necessary instant of diversion. For the first time, his lovestonite pistol was not pointed in Garrett’s face.
No frontiersman in an historical epic of the Old West was quicker on the draw than a good W.B.I. man. The anaesthetic gun was in Gan Garrett’s hand now, and trained neatly on Hartle. “You realize,” said Garrett with dry factuality, “that the comatin crystals would penetrate before you could raise your weapon. I’ve learned as much as I need at the moment, and thank you, Hartle. Now I’m leaving—and I wouldn’t try to stop me.”
His mind was clear and cool. He could even reflect that that last sentence of his was itself something of an Irish bull. He deliberately turned his back on Hartle; he was reasonably sure that a lovestonite blast would have little effect though thicknesses of clothing, and he felt that Hartle’s mysterious “plans” for him did not include anything so direct as another dagger.
His trained muscles carried him with rapid deftness. He was past the crew while they still goggled at their leader’s discomfiture. One remained. In the doorway stood a huge bulk of a man with a flowing blond beard. Gan Garrett squeezed his trigger. The pellet made a little plop as it penetrated clothing and skin. Blond Beard opened his mouth, half moved his own pistol hand, and then crumpled.
Seconds made the difference here, and the huge bulk of Blond Beard caused the seconds’ delay. His body, even unconscious, still blocked the doorway, and Garrett had to pause, to gather himself for a leap. In that momentary pause, he felt a sharp burning pang in his right hand. He did not quite drop his popgun, but his hand sank. Wiry fingers clutched his wrist and forced it down still farther.
He twisted to glimpse his antagonist. It was a squat and extremely hairy oriental— probably an Ainu—whose sinewy arms were devoting their utmost effort to turning him to face Hartle.
Garrett’s uninjured left hand drew out the knife. He still did not know within himself whether he could use it. But to free himself now, when so much, the very structure of the peace itself might depend on his use of what he had learned here—
He heard Hartle’s sardonic laugh. “So the W.B.I. boys don’t mind a little killing so long as they’re the guys that do it. Garrett, you don’t know how much easier you’re making our job.”
Garrett’s body twisted with the Ainu’s like one sculptural mass. The muscles of his left arm tightened. Then a sudden jerk brought him face to face with Hartle. He saw the flicker of pleasure on the man’s face and the slight movement of his pistol hand.
The world exploded around him. The sight of his eyes flared up to searing incandescence and then went out. He was in blackness filled with red and green glints of chaotic vividness. The skin of his face ached with burning pain. His mind whirled, and he felt himself spinning into limitless space.
He could see again when he regained consciousness. It must have been a conservative release of sunpower; a lovestonite pistol could, he was sure, induce permanent blindness, and possibly much more. He was surprised that Stag Hartle had showed him such mercy. He was, in fact, surprised to find himself alive at all. But he was most surprised to find himself where he was.
He had seen these clean, sunny, and terrible empty white cells often enough before. A W.B.I. man makes arrests and often finds it necessary later to visit his prisoners. But he does not expect to find himself in prison.
The doctor said, “Conscious now? Good. Feeling better? No, don’t touch your face. That’s a nasty burn, but it’ll heal up. In time for your one-way trip.”
Gan Garrett gasped. For a minute he thought the red-and-green-speckled blackness was coming back. “One-way trip—” he fumbled out. “What—” But the doctor had already left.
Garrett knew the layout of these cells. He found his way to the tablet dispenser and swallowed a mouthful of condensed food. Damn these dispensers! No need now for a guard to bring meals. A guard could be questioned. But instead he must sit here wondering—
Had he indeed stabbed that Ainu? In some sort of muscular spasm after unconsciousness? If so— He straightened his shoulders and took a deep breath. The laws were good. Man must not kill man. If he had done so, no matter under what circumstances, then a one-way trip was his only possible reward. But if he had been somehow framed by Stag Hartle— Could that have been what the jackal had meant by “what we’d planned for you”—
There was the buzz which meant that the cell door was being dilated for an official visitor. The man who came in was very young, very alert, and very precise. He said, “Garrett?”
“I guess so. I’m not too sure of anything.”
“Breckenridge. I’ve been appointed to defend you before the judicial council. I might as well warn you to start with that I have no hope whatsoever.” He made the statement with efficient impartiality.
“That’s cheery. But first of all—what are you defending me for?”
“Killing. It’s a one-way trip for sure. But if you’ll tell me your story—”
“First tell me the prosecution.”
“Very simple. And I may add, convincing. One Stag Hartle—not too good a witness, I know, but plentifully corroborated—was worried about the continued silence of the painter Emigdio Valentinez and took a searching party down to his beach studio. They did not find Valentinez, but they did find an unidentified Ainu lying dead on the sand, stabbed through the back. You lay beside him; apparently you had fainted from the shock of killing him and lain on the beach lo
ng enough to acquire a startlingly severe sunburn. Thie prosecution’s theory is that you disposed of Valentinez, perhaps into the ocean, and that this unknown was his bodyguard, or perhaps a mere tramp who saw you and so had to be finished off.”
“Nuts,” said Gan Garrett. “If that’s all they’ve got—”
“TheAinu’s blood was all over you—spurted out of his back when hewas stabbed. Positions of stains indicate your left arm did the stabbing. Besides, there are your prints all over the knife handle. Why on earth couldn’t you have had the sense to use paraderm?” the defense lawyer moaned sadly.
The trial took fifteen minutes. In the two days before it, Gan Garrett had worked harder than ever before in his life. He had managed to get an interview with the police chief himself, and spent an hour desperately trying to rip holes in the prosecution’s case, with no success whatsoever. In all his cases, the chief had never had a murderer before; he was loath to relinquish this one. And if a man can’t convince his own attorney of his of his innocence—
Through his lawyer he sent desperate but restrained appeals to Hesketh Uranov and Sacheverell Breakstone. He had no answer at all from the writer, which confirmed him in his growing belief that Uranov was a traitor rather than a weakling and had deliberately lured him down to the lonely beach studio. S.B. spent a half-hour with him, told him three new fictional sub-plots to the Devarupa epic—just groping with words, you understand—wondered if he could recommend another historical technician, regretted that he himself could not attend the trial because he’d be on the Moon by then, and heard not a word of Garrett’s defense or his accusations against Hartle.
Garrett knew that there was no hope in appealing to the secretary who had sent him on this job or to the W.B.I. itself. The standing rule was “Get yourself out.” At last a sort of stoic resignment settled on him. He spent the last twelve hours before the trial preparing a minute precis of everything he had learned about lovestonite, Valentinez, and Stag Hartle. His lawyer promised to see that it was forwarded to the Secretary of Allocation.
His trial began at 14:15, on a fine sunny California afternoon. At 14:30 it was over. At 15:45 he was looking at the one-man rocket through a hazy mist of the beginning effects of dormitol. By 16:00 the lid was down, the pressure screws turned, and Gan Garrett was ready to set out on the one-way trip.
Somewhere in Sollywood Stag Hartle was probably celebrating.
III.
The one-way trip is a form of punishment—or penalty is perhaps the better word— unique in the world’s history. But it evolved logically and inevitably from the fact of a world at peace, even if the world itself had paradoxically evolved as a direct consequence of the War of the Twentieth Century.
At any time in the world’s history before the year 2000, the voice of Devarupa would have gone unheard—unheard, that is, even as the voice of Christ went unheard by a nominally Christian world devoted to greed and murder. Only after the total destruction wrought by that world-wide and century-long war could man have listened seriously to the true message of peace.
The world had first heard of Devarupa when India was being overrun by both sides during the last vicious years of the German-Japanese War. The official Domei and DNB dispatches slurred over or perverted his acts; but the legend had seeped through somehow and spread over the world, the legend of that one province which had finally succeeded in practicing in its perfection the traditional doctrine of nonresistance, so successfully that each horde of invaders in turn at last drew back with almost supernatural awe.
But that was a minute island of success. Not until after the Revolt of the Americas, when a united North and South America arose in glorious daring to cast off and destroyed their masters—already weakened by their own Kilkenny-cattery—did the teachings of Devarupa begin to spread.
Who or what he was, it is impossible now to say. He was the second coming of Christ; he was a latter-day John the Baptist; he was a prophet of Allah; he was the Messiah; he was an avatar of Vishnu; he was an old god returned; he was a new god born; he was all the gods; he was no god.
All these things have been said, and all are still believed. For every religion accepted Devarupa, as god or as prophet; and Devarupa rejected none of them. To many of the irreligious he became a new religion; to others he represented only the deepest greatness of mankind, and as such was even more holy.
What religion he himself professed cannot now be historically determined; each church has certain proof that he belonged to it. But all churches, and all those without the churches, agree on the doctrines that he taught.
There was nothing novel about these. Christ or Buddha or Kung-fu-tse had said them all. But Devarupa was aided by the time in which he spoke; and by the fact that his own mixed heritage enabled him to fuse, as none other had ever done, the practical vigor and solemnity of western religion with the sublime mysticism of the Orient.
The weary world at last truly and sincerely wanted peace. The teachings of Devarupa showed it the way. And from this fortunate meeting of the time and the man came the World State, the world peace, and, inevitably, the one-way trip.
For if man may not kill man—and no Devarupian teaching is more basic than this—surely the State may not do so. And yet man is but slowly perfectible; even a weary and repentant world contains its individual fiends. There must be some extreme penalty for the most extreme offenses.
Life imprisonment, even when it came to be enforced literally, proved unavailing. The prisoner’s mind inevitably grows to the shape of one purpose: to destroy his bars. Segregation, in something like a humane and idealized version of the old system of penal colonies without their imperialist element, seemed promising for a while. The independent state of segregates on Madagascar was apparently a complete success until that black year of’73 and the invasion of the African mainland.
Again the coincidence of time was fortunate, for the first rocket reached the Moon in ’74, and in ’75 Bright-Varney conceived the one-way trip.
The State may not kill, but it must dispose of certain individuals. Then ship them off into space. Put them in one-man nondirigible rockets, with a supply of condensed food and oxygen corresponding to their calculated normal life span, and send them forth on indeterminate journeys.
Most of these rockets became satellites of the Earth. Some chanced to enter the orbit of attraction of the Moon. And a few went off into the unknown reaches of space. Science-fiction writers were fond of the plot of a one-way tripper as the first man to set foot on an alien planet.
For, despite the discovery of the spaceship, the Solar System remained unexplored. Only the Moon and Mars had been reached, and only the Moon had been developed. For the exploratory voyages to Mars had themselves been one-way trips of the most fatal sort.
There had been five of these voyages, and thirty fine men had been lost on them in vain. The ships had landed; that much was almost certain from astronomical calculation and observation. But there had been no return. The ships could not carry enough fuel for a two-way trip; and a small crew could not maintain itself long enough on the planet to accumulate fuel from the known resources there present. Until ships could be built with greater fuel capacity, or enough men jolted themselves from their lethargy of peace, the farther reaches of space would be known only to those who never returned.
The possibility that a deliberately one-way rocket might find a strange landing place had been considered by the planners. As a result, the nose was equipped with repulsion jets which would function automatically upon sufficiently close contact with a larger body to effect a safe landing, and the equipment of the rockets included a pressure-regulating breathing suit and indestructible materials with which to leave a record for future explorers.
There were even microbooks in the rocket, with a small pocket-model viewer; there was hardly space for a projector. Every comfort of life, in fact, except companionship—which meant, to a man of a world believing so firmly and truly in the brotherhood of man, except life itself.
A nineteenth-century poet, still read not only by scholars, wrote of “the Nightmare Life-in-Death Who thicks man’s blood with cold.” And was this Life-in-Death who had replaced Death as the State’s reward to malefactors.
Gan Garrett woke feeling as refreshed, after the dormitol, as a ten-year-old on a summer morning when school was over. He started to spring carefree to his feet, ready to begin a vigorous day, and only when his movements floated him about free of gravity did he realize his situation.
This brought gravity enough to his thoughts, if not to his body. The days before the trial had gone by too fast for him to attain any true perception of what was happening. And there had always been the hope that something—
But there was no hope now. Nothing at all forever any more. Nothing but coursing through space in this rocket until the carefully calculated end of his allotted days, a Vanderdecken of the spaceways.
There woulci be others out here, too, others sealed in their rocketlets, cut off forever from communication with each other, going their several courses, yes, even when the inhabitant lay—or rather floated—dead and the rocket moved on forever in whatever path the chance combination of forces had decreed for it. Space zombies, moving bodies with the souls dead within them.
These were not cheery thoughts for waking. He breakfasted off the proper average ration of concentrates, and washed them down—to his great surprise and pleasure—with a swig of first-rate brandy, which he was sure was not standard one-way equipment.
He wondered how long it had been since the take-off. Time obviously had no direct meaning for him any longer, but he still wondered. He did not know what the standard dose of dormitol for the occasion was; he might have been asleep anywhere from an hour to a week. He tried to judge by his unshaven cheeks; but his beard was so light and slow-growing that he could conclude nothing. Nor did he know the rate of the rocket. Had he already settled into a cirucumterrestrial orbit? Or was he one of the few who had excitingly escaped the Earth’s grasp anci shot onward into the unknown? Might he—
The Compleat Boucher Page 39