“That’s funny. It should be cold, if anything,” said Jim. “There’s nothing out there but starlight. Except—” A most peculiar expression flitted across his face. He drew his feet up and touched the magnetic soles with his fingertips.
“Eeeee! Jim! Jim!”
Steve tried to whirl around and got nowhere. That was Sue! He switched on his shoes, thumped to the floor, and went to help.
Sue was surrounded by bewildered people. They split to let Jim Davis through, and he tried to lead her out of the lounge. He looked frightened. Sue was moaning and thrashing, paying no attention to his efforts.
Steve pushed through to her. “All the metal is heating up,” Davis shouted. “We’ve got to get her hearing aid out.”
“Infirmary,” Sue shouted.
Four of them took Sue down the hall to the infirmary. She was still crying and struggling feebly when they got her in, but Jim was there ahead of them with a spray hypo. He used it and she went to sleep.
The four watched anxiously as Jim went to work. The autodoc would have taken precious time for diagnosis. Jim operated by hand. He was able to do a fast job, for the tiny instrument was buried just below the skin behind her ear. Still, the scalpel must have burned his fingers before he was done. Steve could feel the growing warmth against the soles of his feet.
Did the aliens know what they were doing?
Did it matter? The ship was being attacked. His ship.
Steve slipped into the corridor and ran for the control room. Running on magnetic soles, he looked like a terrified penguin, but he moved fast. He knew he might be making a terrible mistake; the aliens might be trying desperately to reach the Angel’s Pencil; he would never know. They had to be stopped before everyone was roasted.
The shoes burned his feet. He whimpered with the pain, but otherwise ignored it. The air burned in his mouth and throat. Even his teeth were hot.
He had to wrap his shirt around his hands to open the control-room door. The pain in his feet was unbearable; he tore off his sandals and swam to the control board. He kept his shirt over his hands to work the controls. A twist of a large white knob turned the drive on full, and he slipped into the pilot seat before the gentle light pressure could build up.
He turned to the rear-view telescope. It was aimed at the solar system, for the drive could be used for messages at this distance. He set it for short range and began to turn the ship.
The enemy ship glowed in the high infrared.
“It will take longer to heat the crew-carrying section,” reported the Alien Technologies Officer. “They’ll have temperature control there.”
“That’s all right. When you think they should all be dead, wake up the Telepath and have him check.” The Captain continued to brush his fur, killing time. “You know, if they hadn’t been so completely helpless I wouldn’t have tried this slow method. I’d have cut the ring free of the motor section first. Maybe I should have done that anyway. Safer.”
The A-T Officer wanted all the credit he could get. “Sir, they couldn’t have any big weapons. There isn’t room. With a reaction drive, the motor and the fuel tanks take up most of the available space.”
The other ship began to turn away from its tormentor. Its drive end glowed red.
“They’re trying to get away,” the Captain said, as the glowing end swung toward them. “Are you sure they can’t?”
“Yes sir. That light drive won’t take them anywhere.”
The Captain purred thoughtfully. “What would happen if the light hit our ship?”
“Just a bright light, I think. The lens is flat, so it must be emitting a very wide beam. They’d need a parabolic reflector to be dangerous. Unless—” His ears went straight up.
“Unless what?” The Captain spoke softly, demandingly.
“A laser. But that’s all right, sir. They don’t have any weapons.”
The Captain sprang at the control board. “Stupid!” he spat. “They don’t know weapons from sthondat blood. Weapons Officer! How could a telepath find out what they don’t know? WEAPONS OFFICER!”
“Here, sir.”
“Burn—”
An awful light shone in the control dome. The Captain burst into flame, then blew out as the air left through a glowing split in the dome.
Steve was lying on his back. The ship was spinning again, pressing him into what felt like his own bunk.
He opened his eyes.
Jim Davis crossed the room and stood over him. “You awake?”
Steve sat bolt upright, his eyes wide.
“Easy.” Jim’s gray eyes were concerned.
Steve blinked up at him. “What happened?” he asked, and discovered how hoarse he was.
Jim sat down in one of the chairs. “You tell me. We tried to get to the control room when the ship started moving. Why didn’t you ring the strap-down? You turned off the drive just as Ann came through the door. Then you fainted.”
“How about the other ship?” Steve tried to repress the urgency in his voice, and couldn’t.
“Some of the others are over there now, examining the wreckage.” Steve felt his heart stop. “I guess I was afraid from the start that alien ship was dangerous. I’m more psychist than emdee, and I qualified for history class, so maybe I know more than is good for me about human nature. Too much to think that beings with space travel will automatically be peaceful. I tried to think so, but they aren’t. They’ve got things any self-respecting human being would be ashamed to have nightmares about. Bomb missiles, fusion bombs, lasers, that induction projector they used on us. And antimissiles. You know what that means? They’ve got enemies like themselves, Steve. Maybe nearby.”
“So I killed them.” The room seemed to swoop around him, but his voice came out miraculously steady.
“You saved the ship.”
“It was an accident. I was trying to get us away.”
“No, you weren’t.” Davis’s accusation was as casual as if he were describing the chemical makeup of urea. “That ship was four hundred miles away. You would have had to sight on it with a telescope to hit it. You knew what you were doing, too, because you turned off the drive as soon as you’d burned through the ship.”
Steve’s back muscles would no longer support him. He flopped back to horizontal. “All right, you know,” he told the ceiling. “Do the others?”
“I doubt it. Killing in self-defense is too far outside their experience. I think Sue’s guessed.”
“Oooo.”
“If she has, she’s taking it well,” Davis said briskly. “Better than most of them will, when they find out the universe is full of warriors. This is the end of the world, Steve.”
“What?”
“I’m being theatrical. But it is. Three hundred years of the peaceful life for everyone. They’ll call it the Golden Age. No starvation, no war, no physical sickness other than senescence, no permanent mental sickness at all, even by our rigid standards. When someone over fourteen tries to use his fist on someone else we say he’s sick, and we cure him. And now it’s over. Peace isn’t a stable condition, not for us. Maybe not for anything that lives.”
“Can I see the ship from here?”
“Yes. It’s just behind us.”
Steve rolled out of bed, went to the window.
Someone had steered the ships much closer together. The Kzinti ship was a huge red sphere with ugly projections scattered at seeming random over the hull. The beam had sliced it into two unequal halves, sliced it like an ax through an egg. Steve watched, unable to turn aside, as the big half rotated to show its honeycombed interior.
“In a little while,” said Jim, “the men will be coming back. They’ll be frightened. Someone will probably insist that we arm ourselves against the next attacks, using weapons from the other ship. I’ll have to agree with him.
“Maybe they’ll think I’m sick myself. Maybe I am. But it’s the kind of sickness we’ll need.” Jim looked desperately unhappy. “We’re going to become an armed socie
ty. And of course we’ll have to warn the Earth…”
MADNESS HAS ITS PLACE
A world that had forgotten war did not easily accept the possibility of invading aliens.
LN
I A lucky few of us know the good days before they’re gone.
I remember my eighties. My job kept me in shape and gave me enough variety to keep my mind occupied. My love life was imperfect but interesting. Modern medicine makes the old fairy tales look insipid; I almost never worried about my health.
Those were the good days, and I knew them. I could remember worse.
I can remember when my memory was better, too. That’s what this file is for. I keep it updated for that reason and also to maintain my sense of purpose.
The Monobloc had been a singles bar since the 2320s.
In the 2330s I’d been a regular. I’d found Charlotte there. We held our wedding reception at the Monobloc, then dropped out for twenty-eight years. My first marriage—hers, too—both in our forties. After the children grew up and moved away, after Charlotte left me, too, I came back.
The place was much changed.
I remembered a couple of hundred bottles in the hologram bar display. Now the display was twice as large and seemed more realistic—better equipment, maybe—but only a score of bottles in the middle were liquors. The rest were flavored or carbonated water, high-energy drinks, electrolytes, a thousand kinds of tea; there was also food to match: raw vegetables and fruits kept fresh by high-tech means, arrayed with low-cholesterol dips, bran in every conceivable form short of injections.
The Monobloc had swallowed its neighbors. It was bigger, with curtained alcoves and a small gym upstairs for working out or for dating.
Herbert and Tina Schroeder still owned the place. Their marriage had been open in the 2330s. They’d aged since. So had their clientele. Some of us had married or drifted away or died of alcoholism, but word of mouth and the Velvet Net had maintained a continuous tradition. Twenty-eight years later they looked better than ever…wrinkled, of course, but lean and muscular, both ready for the Gray Olympics. Tina let me know before I could ask: she and Herb were lockstepped now.
To me it was like coming home.
For the next twelve years the Monobloc was an intermittent part of my life.
I would find a lady or she would find me, and we’d drop out. Or we’d visit the Monobloc and sometimes trade partners, and one evening we’d go together and leave separately. I was not evading marriage. Every woman I found worth knowing ultimately seemed to want to know someone else.
I was nearly bald even then. Thick white hair covered my arms and legs and torso, as if my head hairs had migrated. Twelve years of running construction robots had turned me burly. From time to time some muscular lady would look me over and claim me. I had no trouble finding company.
But company never stayed. Had I become dull? The notion struck me as funny.
I had settled myself alone at a table for two early on a Thursday evening in 2375. The Monobloc was half-empty. The earlies were all keeping one eye on the door when Anton Brillov came in.
Anton was shorter than me and much narrower, with a face like an ax. I hadn’t seen him in thirteen years. Still, I’d mentioned the Monobloc once or twice; he must have remembered.
I semaphored my arms. Anton squinted, then came over, exaggeratedly cautious until he saw who it was.
“Jack Strather!”
“Hi, Anton. So you decided to try the place.”
“Yah.” He sat. “You look good.” He looked a moment longer and said, “Relaxed. Placid. How’s Charlotte?”
“Left me after I retired. Just under a year after. There was too much of me around, and I…maybe I was too placid? Anyway. How are you?”
“Fine.”
Twitchy. Anton looked twitchy. I was amused. “Still with the Holy Office?”
“Only citizens call it that, Jack.”
“I’m a citizen now. Still gives me a kick. How’s your chemistry?”
Anton knew what I meant and didn’t pretend otherwise. “I’m okay. I’m down.”
“Kid, you’re looking over both shoulders at once.”
Anton managed a credible laugh. “I’m not the kid anymore. I’m a weekly.”
The ARM had made me a weekly at forty-eight. They couldn’t turn me loose at the end of the day anymore because my body chemistry couldn’t shift fast enough. So they kept me in the ARM building Monday through Thursday and gave me all of Thursday afternoon to shed the schitz madness. Another twenty years of that and I was even less flexible, so they retired me.
I said, “You do have to remember. When you’re in the ARM building, you’re a paranoid schizophrenic. You have to be able to file that when you’re outside.”
“Hah. How can anyone—”
“You get used to the schitz. After I quit, the difference was amazing. No fears, no tension, no ambition.”
“No Charlotte?”
“Well…I turned boring. And what are you doing here?”
Anton looked around. “Much the same thing you are, I guess. Jack, am I the youngest one here?”
“Maybe.” I looked around, double-checking. A woman was distracting me, though I could see only her back and a flash of a laughing profile. Her back was slender and strong, and a thick white braid ran down her spine, two and a half feet of clean, thick white hair. She was in an animated conversation with a blond companion of Anton’s age plus a few.
But they were at a table for two: they weren’t inviting company. I forced my attention back. “We’re gray singles, Anton. The young ones tend to get the message quick. We’re slower than we used to be. We date. You want to order?”
Alcohol wasn’t popular there. Anton must have noticed, but he ordered guava juice and vodka and drank as if he needed it. This looked worse than Thursday jitters. I let him half finish, then said, “Assuming you can tell me—”
“I don’t know anything.”
“I know the feeling. What should you know?”
The tension eased behind Anton’s eyes. “There was a message from the Angel’s Pencil.”
“Pencil…oh.” My mental reflexes had slowed down. The Angel’s Pencil had departed twenty years earlier for…was it Epsilon Eridani? “Come on, kid, it’ll be in the boob cubes before you have quite finished speaking. Anything from deep space is public property.”
“Hah! No. It’s restricted. I haven’t seen it myself. Only a reference, and it must be more than ten years old.”
That was peculiar. And if the Belt stations hadn’t spread the news through the solar system, that was peculiar. No wonder Anton was antsy. ARMs react that way to puzzles.
Anton seemed to jerk himself back to the here and now, back to the gray singles regime. “Am I cramping your style?”
“No problem. Nobody hurries in the Monobloc. If you see someone you like—” My fingers danced over lighted symbols on the rim of the table. “This gets you a map. Locate where she’s sitting, put the cursor on it. That gets you a display…hmm.”
I’d set the cursor on the white-haired lady. I liked the readout. “Phoebe Garrison, seventy-nine, eleven or twelve years older than you. Straight. Won a second in the Gray Jumps last year…that’s the Americas skiing matches for seventy and over. She could kick your tail if you don’t watch your manners. It says she’s smarter than we are, too.
“Point is, she can check you out the same way. Or me. And she probably found this place through the Velvet Net, which is the computer network for unlocked lifestyles.”
“So. Two males sitting together—”
“Anyone who thinks we’re bent can check if she cares enough. Bends don’t come to the Monobloc, anyway. But if we want company, we should move to a bigger table.”
We did that. I caught Phoebe Garrison’s companion’s eye. They played with their table controls, discussed, and presently wandered over.
Dinner turned into a carouse. Alcohol was involved, but we’d left the Monobloc by then. When we
split up, Anton was with Michiko. I went home with Phoebe.
Phoebe had fine legs, as I’d anticipated, though both knees were Teflon and plastic. Her face was lovely even in morning sunlight. Wrinkled, of course. She was two weeks short of eighty and wincing in anticipation. She ate with a cross-country skier’s appetite. We spoke of our lives as we ate.
She’d come to Santa Maria to visit her oldest grandson. In her youth she’d done critical work in nanoengineering. The Board had allowed her four children. (I’d known I was out-classed.) All were married, scattered across the Earth, and so were the grandkids.
My two sons had emigrated to the Belt while still in their twenties. I’d visited them once during an investigation trip paid for by the United Nations—
“You were an ARM? Really? How interesting! Tell me a story…if you can.”
“That’s the problem, all right.”
The interesting tales were all classified. The ARM suppresses dangerous technology. What the ARM buries is supposed to stay buried. I remembered a kind of time compressor and a field that would catalyze combustion, both centuries old. Both were first used for murder. If turned loose or rediscovered, either would generate more interesting tales yet.
I said, “I don’t know anything current. They bounced me out when I got too old. Now I run construction robots at various spaceports.”
“Interesting?”
“Mostly placid.” She wanted a story? Okay. The ARM enforced more than the killer-tech laws, and some of those tales I could tell.
“We don’t get many mother hunts these days. This one was wished on us by the Belt.” And I told her about a lunie who’d sired two clones. One he’d raised on the moon, and one he’d left in the Saturn Conserve. He’d moved to Earth, where one clone is any normal citizen’s entire birthright. When we found him, he was arranging to culture a third clone…
I dreamed a bloody dream.
It was one of those: I was able to take control, to defeat what had attacked me. In the black of an early Sunday morning the shreds of the dream dissolved before I could touch them, but the sensations remained. I felt strong, balanced, powerful, victorious.