A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Vol 2

Chapter 8

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It was a hot night. His shirt stuck clammily to him, and the air seemed thick. Overhead, between the darkened buildings and the dead neon signs, heat lightning flickered palely and all the earth yearned for rain. His headlights cut a dull swath through the gummy blackness.

There were more cars abroad than there had been even a week ago. The city was just about tamed now; the gang war between Portmen and Dynapsychists, suppressed two weeks back, seemed to have been the last flare of violence. Rations were still short, but people were being put to work again and they"d all live.

Corinth pulled up in the parking lot behind his apartment and walked around to the front. The power ration authority had lately permitted this building to resume elevator service, which was a mercy. He hadn"t enjoyed climbing fifteen flights when electricity was really short.

I hope---He was thinking of Sheila, but he left the thought unfinished.

She"d been getting thin, poor kid, and she didn"t sleep well and sometimes she woke with a dry scream in her throat and groped blindly for him. He wished his work didn"t take him away from her. She needed companionship badly. Maybe he could get her some kind of job to fill the hours.

When he came out on his floor, the hall was darkened save for a vague night light, but radiance streamed under his door. Glancing at his watch, he saw that it was later than her usual bedtime. So she couldn"tsleep tonight, either.

He tried the door, but it was locked and he rapped. He thought he heard a smothered scream from within, and knocked harder. She opened the door so violently that he almost fell inside.

"Pete, Pete, Pete!" She pressed herself to him with a shudder. With his arms about her, he felt how close the delicate ribs lay to her skin. The lamplight was harsh, filling the room, and oddly l.u.s.terless on her hair.

When she lifted her face, he saw that it was wet.

"What"s the matter?" he asked. He spoke aloud, in the old manner, and his voice was suddenly wavering...

"Nerves." She drew him inside and closed the door. In a nightgown and bathrobe she looked pathetically young, but there was something ancient in her eyes.

"Hot night to be wearing a robe," he said, groping for expression.

"I feel cold." Her lips trembled.

His own mouth fell into a harsh line, and he sat down in an easy chair and pulled her to his lap. She laid arms about him, hugging him to her, and he felt the shiver in her body.

"This is not good," he said. "This is the worst attack you"ve had yet."

"I don"t know what I"d have done if you"d been much longer about coming," she said tonelessly.

They began to talk then, in the new interweaving of word and gesture, tone and silence and shared remembering, which was peculiarly theirs.

"I"ve been thinking too much," she told him. "We all think too much these days." (Help me, my dearest! I am going down in darkness and only you can rescue me.) "You"ll have to get used to it," he answered dully. (How can I help? My hands reach for you and close on emptiness.) "You have strength---" she cried. "Give it to me!" (Nightmares each time I try to sleep. Waking, I see the world and man as a flickering in cold and nothingness, empty out to the edge of forever. I can"t endure that vision.) Weariness, hopelessness: "I"m not strong," he said. "I just keep going somehow. So must you."

"Hold me close, Pete," Father image, "hold me close," she whimpered. Pressing to him as if he were a shield against the blackness outside and the darkness within and the things rising through it: "Don"t ever let me go!"

"Sheila," he said. (Beloved: wife, mistress, comrade.) "Sheila, you"ve got to hang on. All this is just an increased power to think-to visualize, to handle data and the dreams you yourself have created.

Nothing more."

"But it is changing mel" The horror of death was in her now. She fought it with something like wistfulness: "-and where has our world gone? Where are our hopes and plans and togetherness?"

"We can"t bring them back," he replied. Emptiness, irrevocability: "We have to make out with what we have now.""I know, I know-and I can"t!" Tears gleamed along her cheeks. "Oh, Pete, I"m crying more for you now," (Maybe I won"t even go on loving you.) "than for me."

He tried to stay cool. "Too far a retreat from reality is insanity. If you went mad---"

Unthinkableness.

"I know, I know," she said. "All too well, Pete. Hold me close."

"And it doesn"t help you to know---" he said, and wondered if the engineers would ever be able to find the breaking strength of the human spirit. He felt very near to giving way.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

SUMMER WANED as the planet turned toward winter. On a warm evening late in September, Mandelbaum sat by the window with Rossman, exchanging a few low-voiced words. The room was unlit, full of night. Far below them the city of Manhattan glowed with spots of radiance, not the frantic flash and glare of earlier days but the lights of a million homes. Overhead, there was a dull blue wash of luminance across the sky, flickering and glimmering on the edge of visibility. The Empire State Building was crowned with a burning sphere like a small sun come to rest, and the wandering air held a faint tingle of ozone. The two men sat quietly, resting, smoking the tobacco which had again become minutely available, Mandelbaum"s pipe and Rossman"s cigarette like two ruddy eyes in the twilit room. They were waiting for death.

"Wife," said Rossman with a note of gentle reproach. It could be rendered as: (I still don"t see why you wouldn"t tell your wife of this, and be with her tonight. It may be the last night of your lives.) "Work, city, time," and the immemorial shrug and the wistful tone: (We both have our work to do, she at the relief center and I here at the defense hub. We haven"t told the city either, you and I and the few others who know. It"s best not to do so, eh?) We couldn"t have evacuated them, there would have been no place for them to go and the -fact of our attempting it would"ve been a tip-off to the enemy, an invitation to send the rockets immediately. Either we can save the city or we can"t; at the moment, there"s nothing anyone can do but wait and see if the defense works. (I wouldn"t worry my Liebchen-she"d worry on my account and the kids" and grandchildren"s. No, let it happen, one way or the other. Still I do wish we could be together now, Sarah and I, the whole family---) Mandelbaum tamped his pipe with a h.o.r.n.y thumb.

(The Brookhaven men think the field will stop the blast and radiation), implied Rossman. We"ve had them working secretly for the past month or more, antic.i.p.ating an attack. The cities we think will be a.s.sailed are guarded now-we hope. (But it"s problematic. I wish we didn"t have to do it this way.) "What other way?" We knew, from our spies and deductions, that the Soviets have developed their intercontinental atomic rockets, and that they"re desperate. Revolution at home, arms and aid being smuggled in to the insurgents from America. They"ll make a last-ditch attempt to wipe us out, and we believe the attack is due tonight. But if it fails, they"ve shot their bolt. It must have taken all their remaining resources to design and build those rockets. "Let them exhaust themselves against us, while the rebels take over their country. Dictatorship is done for."

"But what will replace it?"

"I don"t know. When the rockets come, it seems to me they"ll be the last gasp of animal man. Didn"t you once call the twentieth century the Era of Bad Manners? We were stupid before-incredibly stupidlNow all that"s fading away."

"And leaving-nothing." Rossman lit a fresh cigarette and stubbed out the old one. The brief red light threw his gaunt, fine-boned face into high relief against darkness.

"Oh, yes," he went on, "the future is not going to look anything like the past. Presumably there will still be society-or societies-but they won"t be the same kind as those we"ve known before. Maybe they"ll be purely abstract, mental things, interchanges and interactions on the symbolic level. Nevertheless, there can be better or worse societies developed out of our new potentialities, and I think the worse ones will grow up."

"Hm." Mandelbaum drew hard on his pipe. "Aside from the fact that we have to start from scratch, and so are bound to make mistakes, why should that necessarily be so? You"re a born pessimist, I"m afraid."

"No doubt. I was born into one age, and saw it die in blood and madness. Even before 1914, you could see the world crumbling. That would make a pessimist of anyone. But I think it"s true what I say.

Because man has, in effect, been thrown back into utter savagery. No, not that either; the savage does have his own systems of life. Man is back on the animal plane."

Mandelbaum"s gesture swept over the huge arrogance of the city. "Is that animal?"

"Ants and beavers are good engineers." Or were. I wonder what the beavers are doing now.

"Material artifacts don"t count for much, really. They"re only possible because of a social background of knowledge, tradition, desire-they"re symptoms, not causes. And we have had all our background stripped from us.

"Oh, we haven"t forgotten anything, no. But it"s no longer of value to us, except as a tool for the purely animal business of survival and comfort. Think over your own life. What use do you see in it now? What are all your achievements of the past? Ridiculous!

"Can you read any of the great literature now with pleasure? Do the arts convey anything to you? The civilization of the past, with its science and art and beliefs and meanings, is so inadequate for us now that it might as well not exist. We have no civilization any longer. We have no goals, no dreams, no creative work-nothing!"

"Oh, I don"t know about that," said Mandelbaum with a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt. "I"ve got enough to do-to help out with, at least-for the next several years. We"ve got to get things started on a worldwide basik, economics, politics, medical care, population control, conservation, it"s a staggering job."

"But after that?" persisted Rossman. "What will we do then? What will the next generation do, and all generations to come?"

"They"ll find something."

"I wonder. The a.s.signment of building a stable world order is herculean, but you and I realize that for the new humanity it"s possible-indeed, only a matter of years. But what then? At best, man may sit back and stagnate in an unchanging smugness. A horribly empty sort of life."

"Science---"

"Oh, yes, the scientists will have a field day for a while. But most of the physicists I"ve talked to lately suspect that the potential range of science is not unlimited. They think the variety of discoverable natural laws and phenomena must be finite, all to be summed up in one unified theory- and that we"re not far from that theory today. It"s not the sort of proposition which can ever be proved with certainty, but itlooks probable.

"And in no case can we all be scientists."

Mandelbaum looked out into darkness. How quiet the night is, he thought. Wrenching his mind from the vision of Sarah and the children: "Well, how about the arts? We"ve got to develop a whole new painting, sculpture, music, literature, architecture-and forms that have never been imagined before!"

"If we get the right kind of society." (Art, throughout history, has had a terrible tendency to decay, or to petrify into sheer imitation of the past. It seems to take some challenge to wake it up again. And again, my friend, we can"t all be artists either.) "No?" (I wonder if every man won"t be an artist and a scientist and a philosopher and---) "You"ll still need leaders, and stimulus, and a world symbol." (That"s the basic emptiness in us today: we haven"t found a symbol. We have no myth, no dream. "Man is the measure of all things"-well, when the measure is bigger than everything else, what good is it?) "We"re still pretty small potatoes." Mandelbaum gestured at the win-dow and the bluely glimmering sky.

(There"s a whole universe out there, waiting for us.) "I think you have the start of an answer," said Rossman slowly. (Earth has grown too small, but astronomical s.p.a.ce-it may hold the challenge and the dream we need. I don"t know. All I know is that we had better find one.) There was a thin buzz from the telephone unit beside Mandelbaum. He reached over and flipped the switch. There was a sudden feeling of weariness in him. He ought to be tense, jittering with excitement, but he only felt tired and hollow.

The machine clicked a few signals: "s.p.a.ce station robot reports flight of rockets from Urals. Four are due at New York in about ten minutes."

"Ten minutes!" Rossman whistled. "They must have an atomic drive."

"No doubt." Mandelbaum dialed for Shield Center in the Empire State Building. "Brace your machinery, boys," he said. "Ten minutes to go."

"How many?"

"Four. They must figure on our stopping at least three, so they"ll be powerful brutes. Hydrogen-lithium warheads, I imagine."

"Four, eh? Okay, boss. Wish us luck."

"Wish you luck?" Mandelbaum grinned crookedly.

The city had been told that the project was an experiment in illumination. But when the blueness strengthened to a steady glow, like a roof of light, and the sirens began to hoot, everyone must have guessed the truth. Mandelbaum thought of husbands clutching wives and children to them and wondered what else might be happening. Prayer? Not likely; if there -was to be a religion in the future, it could not be the animism which had sufficed /or the blind years. Exaltation in battle? No, that was another discarded myth. Wild panic? Maybe a little of that.

Rossman had seen at least a good deal of truth, thought Mandelbaum. There was nothing for manto do now, in the hour of judgment, except to scream with fear or to stoop over those he loved and try to shelter them with his pitiful flesh. No one could honestly feel that he was dying for something worthy. If he shook his fist at heaven, it was not in anger against evil, it was only a reflex.

Emptiness- Yes, he thought, I suppose we do need new symbols.

Rossman got up and felt his way through the dusk to a cabinet where he opened a drawer and took out a bottle. "This is some "42 burgundy I"ve been saving," he said. (Will you drink with me?) "Sure," said Mandelbaum. He didn"t care for wine, but he had to help his friend. Rossman wasn"t afraid, he was old and full of days, but there was something lost about him. To go out like a gentleman-well, that was a symbol of sorts.

Rossman poured into crystal goblets and handed one to Mandelbaum with grave courtesy. They clinked gla.s.ses and drank. Rossman sat down again, savoring the taste.

"We had burgundy on my wedding day," he said.

"Ah, well, no need to cry into it," answered Mandelbaum. "The screen will hold. It"s the same kind of force that holds atomic nuclei together- nothing stronger in the universe."

"I was toasting animal man," said Rossman. (You are right, this is his last gasp. But he was in many ways a n.o.ble creature.) "Yeah," said Mandelbaum. (He invented the most ingenious weapons.) "Those rockets-" (They do represent something. They are beautiful things, you know, clean and shining, built with utter honesty. It took many patient centuries to reach the point where they could be forged. The fact that they carry death for us is incidental.) (I don"t agree.) Mandelbaum chuckled, a sad little sound in the great quiet around him.

There was a luminous-dialed clock in the room. Its sweep-second hand went in a long lazy circle, once around, twice around, three times around. The Empire State was a pylon of darkness against the dull blue arc of sky. Mandelbaum and Rossman sat drinking, lost in their own thoughts.

There was a glare like lightning all over heaven, the sky was a sudden incandescent bowl. Mandelbaum covered his dazzled eyes, letting the goblet fall shattering to the floor. He felt the radiance on his skin like sunshine, blinking on and off. The city roared with thunder.

-two, three, four.

Afterward there was another stillness, in which the echoes shuddered and boomed between high walls. A wind sighed down the empty streets, and the great buildings shivered slowly back toward rest.

"Good enough," said Mandelbaum. He didn"t feel any particular emotion. The screen had worked, the city lived-all right, he could get on with his job. He dialed City Hall. "h.e.l.lo, there. All okay? Look, we got to get busy, check any panic and---"

Out of the corner of one eye he saw Rossman sitting quietly, his unfinished drink on the arm of the chair.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

CORINTH SIGHED and pushed the work from him. The murmurs of the evening city drifted faintly upto him through a window left open to the October chill. He shivered a little, but fumbled out a cigarette and sat for a while smoking.

s.p.a.ceships, he thought dully. Out at Brookhaven they"re building the first star ship.

His own end of the project was the calculation of intra-nuclear stresses under the action of the drive field, a task of some complexity but not of such overreaching importance that the workers couldn"t go ahead on the actual construction before he finished. He had been out there just today, watching the hull take shape, and his professional self had found a cool sort of glory in its perfected loveliness. Every organ of the ship, engine and armor and doors and ports and controls, was a piece of precision engineering such as Earth had never seen before. It was good to be a part of such work.

Only--- He swore softly, grinding out the cigarette in an overloaded ashtray and rising to his feet. It was going to be one of his bad nights; he needed Helga.

The Inst.i.tute hummed around him as he went down the familiar halls. They were working on a twenty-four hour schedule now, a thousand liberated minds spreading toward a horizon which had suddenly exploded beyond imagination. He envied the young technicians. They were the strong and purposeful and balanced, the future belonged to them and they knew it. At thirty-three, he felt exhausted with years.

Helga had come back to resume directorship here: on its new basis, it was a full-time job for a normal adult, and she had the experience and the desire to serve. He thought that she drove herself too hard, and realized with a muted guilt that it was largely his fault. She never left before he did, because sometimes he needed to talk to her. This was going to be one of those times.

He knocked. The crisp voice over the annunciator said, "Come in," and he did not miss the eagerness in her voice or the sudden lighting in her eyes as he entered.

"Come have dinner with me, won"t you?" he invited.

She arched her brows, and he explained hastily: "Sheila"s with Mrs. Mandelbaum tonight.

She-Sarah-she"s good for my wife, she"s got a sort of plain woman sense a man can"t have. I"m at loose ends---"

"Sure." Helga began arranging her papers and stacking them away. Her office was always neat and impersonal, a machine could have been its occupant. "Know a joint?"

"You know I don"t get out much these days."

"Well, let"s try Rogers". A new night club for the new man." Her smile was a little sour. "At least they have decent food."

He stepped into the small adjoining bathroom, trying to adjust his untidy clothes and hair. When he came out, Helga was ready. For an instant he looked at her, perceiving every detail with a flashing completeness undreamed of in the lost years. They could not hide from each other and-she with characteristic honesty, he with a weary and grateful surrender-had quit trying. He needed someone who understood him and was stronger than he, someone to talk to, to draw strength from. He thought that she only gave and he only took, but it was not a relationship he could afford to give up.

She took his arm and they went out into the street. The air was thin and sharp in their lungs, it smelled of autumn and the sea. A few dead leaves swirled across the sidewalk before them, already frost had come."Let"s walk," she said, knowing his preference. "It isn"t far."

He nodded and they went down the long half-empty ways. The night loomed big above the street lamps, the cliffs of Manhattan were mountain-ously black around them and only a rare automobile or pedestrian went by. Corinth thought that the change in New York epitomized what had happened to the world.

"How"s Sheila"s work?" asked Helga. Corinth had obtained a job for his wife at the relief center, in the hope that it would improve her morale. He shrugged, not answering. It was better to lift his face into the wind that streamed thinly between the dark walls. She fell into his silence; when he felt the need for communication, she would be there.

A modest neon glow announced Rogers" Cafe. They turned in at the door, to find a blue twilight which was cool and luminous, as if the very air held a trans.m.u.ted light. Good trick, thought Corinth, wonder how they do it?- and in a moment he had reasoned out the new principle of fluorescence on which it must be based. Maybe an engineer had suddenly decided he would prefer to be a restaurateur.

There were tables s.p.a.ced somewhat farther apart than had been the custom in earlier times. Corinth noted idly that they were arranged in a spiral which, on the average, minimized the steps of waiters from dining room to kitchen and back. But it was a machine which rolled up"t< p="">

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