FINAL WAR AND OTHER FANTASIES by K.M. O’DONNELL AN ACE BOOK Ace Publishing Corporation 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINAL WAR is one of those unusual stories that come along in science fiction which manage to remain off-trail from even the off-trail standards that have gone before. Indeed some may ask if it is science fiction at all—though definitely taking place in the future—or some sort of reflective allegory on the present. The decision, at least of those who write science fiction, was in favor of it being science fiction—and very good science fiction at that. They nominated it for their Nebula Award in its class—and it came mighty close to winning. K. M. O’Donnell, which is a pen-name for a man who has been editor of two of fantasy’s professional newsstand magazines, as well as an agent, a writer, and a sharp critic, with a dozen books to his credit (in other lines of literature), brings a collection of fantasies here that show it is still possible to find something new under the imaginative sun. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FINAL WAR AND OTHER FANTASIES Copyright © 1969, by K. M. O’Donnell All Rights Reserved Cover art by Patios Koutroubotwsis ACKNOWLEDGMENTS FINAL WAR, DEATH TO THE KEEPER, HOW I TAKE THEIR MEASURE, A TRIPTYCH copyright © Mercury Press, Inc. 1968, 1969. Published in Fantasy and Science Fiction. WE’RE COMING THROUGH THE WINDOW, THE MARKET IN ALIENS, BY RIGHT OF SUCCESSION copyright © Galaxy Publications, Inc., 1967, 1968, 1969. Published in Galaxy. OATEN, THE MAJOR INCITEMENT TO RIOT, THE ASCENSION copyright © Ultimate Publications, Inc.1968, 1969. Published in Fantastic. COP-OUT copyright © Avant Publications, Inc. 1968. Published in Escapade. For Edward L. Ferman and Donald A. Woliheim with thanks. And for Harry Harrison and Kris Neville with affection. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- INTRODUCTION THE FACT IS that I fell into science fiction. A literary writer with a fellowship background whose first sale—an indifferent sex story to a tenth rate men’s magazine—occurred almost by indirection past my 26th birthday. I came into the field because it is, today, probably the only consistent, paying market left for serious short fiction. Having come in in that spirit, and achieving a modicum of success, I have now discovered that the piper must be paid off in his own intricate way . . . That is to say that literary short-stories published in science-fiction magazines tend to be considered as “science-fictional” as anything else in the category, with attending difficulties in getting the work recognized in the academic/literary nexus that controls what we mislabel “the mainstream.” But that is a bitch of a different color. If I have been able, in less than three years, to sell 16 science-fiction stories for rent money, have seen several of these stories anthologized here and there already, have come close to winning a SFWA Nebula Award for the title story of this collection and, in fact, have succeeded in placing this collection, it is clear that science-fiction has recognized, rewarded and pacified me if not out of all relation to my talents, then, at any rate, in a way that the original field of direction never would. And I am properly grateful. I am more than grateful because the interesting irony is that like so many repressed, slightly didactic, over-intellectualized adolescents, I came out of science-fiction in the first place, learned to read and love the field in my early teens and then left it (ingrate that I was) for the higher pretensions and larger disasters of the literary marketplace, only returning in disrepair for the aforementioned reasons a few years ago. In a sense, then, I combine in my outlook, if not my writing, the best (my critics would say the worst) of both the worlds: I know this field of science-fiction very well as a historian; as a literary writer, I have a little perspective on it. That perspective, simply stated, is a simple and (for me) a crucial one: I believe that the future of literature, to the extent that literature does have a future—as a fulltime freelance writer I’m afraid to argue that point—resides in science-fiction. If there is any energy left in genre writing and any large unexplored areas with which that energy can deal, it lies in science fiction. The literary market has become exhausted, desiccated, killed by imitation, irrelevance and the very possible mining out of all the basic approaches; it flourishes now only through occasional masterworks by writers transcending their form, but seems to have fallen, overall, on evil days. This is not true of science fiction, where I think it can be truly said that 98% of the available material and implications which could concern a writer have not been touched. And I think not of sex or sexuality in saying this. So why then is most of the writing in this field so bad? And why are so many of its practitioners such hopeless hacks? (I do bite the hand that feeds me after all, it would seem.) And why does so much of the best writing in this genre often seem to occur and be treated as if it were against the grain of the category? I am not sure that there are easy answers to these questions. It has to do, of course, with the original roots of the field in pulp literature: in dreams and the substitution of megalomania for torment. But this kind of thing is too easy. It denies the consistently good work that has managed to come out of science fiction almost from the very beginning; our earliest masterpieces were already around by 1935. Whatever those answers are, they would, in any case, be irrelevant to the future, which, I think, is the only legitimate concern of this field, not only by reason of content, but also in terms of critical appraisal. This field, as no other in the history of genre writing, is in its infancy and I do not believe that any of these stories, as good as they are (and at least three of them are by my standard, anyway, very, very good), will be more than embryonic attempts placed against what we shall be seeing in 1980 or so. And it is doubtful whether this large work which is to be done will be done by any of us currently making noises in the field. Self-promotion, after all, has never been the indulgence of the serious writers being read seriously. In any event, it is appropriate to thank those people who have made what work I’ve done possible: Ed Ferman and Donald Wollheim, to whom this book is dedicated; Harry Harrison, Frederik PohI and Robert Hoskins who have also encouraged me much and people like Alfred Bester, C. L. Moore, Paul Linebarger, the aforementioned Frederik Pohl, Damon Knight and some others who were proving years and years before a new wave that serious work could be done in this form to equal the best of serious work done anywhere. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Final War was written in February of 1965, rejected by The Atlantic Monthly, Playboy, Esquire, The Kenyon Review (one of these, incidentally, called the piece “too grimly realistic”) and other publications, was put away for two and a half years, was resuscitated in time to be offered to the science-fiction market, was bought by Edward L. Ferman, published in his Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, came within six votes of winning the 1968 Nebula Award for best novelette, has been triply (now quadruply) anthologized and was the basis of the sale of this collection—ample substantiation of that basic point in the introduction: under pressure always go back to your history, a lesson that good pro quarterbacks and cowardly jockeys have both learned. FINAL WAR “‘Twas a mad stratagem, To shoe a troop of horse with felt...” Lear, Act III HASTINGS HAD NEVER LIKED the new Captain. The new Captain went through the minefield like a dancer, looking around from time to time to see if anyone behind was looking at his trembling rear end. If he found that anyone was, he immediately dropped to the end of the formation, began to scream threats, told the company that the minefield would go up on them. This was perfectly ridiculous because the company had been through the minefield hundreds of times and knew that all of the mines had been defused by the rain and the bugs. The minefield was the safest thing going. It was what lay around the minefield that was dangerous. Hastings could have told the new Captain all of this if he had asked. The new Captain, however, was stubborn. He told everyone that, before he heard a thing, he wanted to become acclimated. Background: Hastings’ company was quartered, with their enemy, on an enormous estate. Their grounds began in a disheveled forest and passed across the minefield to a series of rocks or dismally piled and multicolored stones which formed into the grim and blasted abutments two miles away. Or, it began in a set of rocks or abutments and, passing through a scarred mine field, ended in an exhausted forest two miles back. It all depended upon whether they were attacking or defending; it all depended upon the day of the week. On Thursdays, Saturdays and Tuesdays, the company moved east to capture the forest; on Fridays, Sundays and Wednesdays, they lost the battles to defend it. Mondays, everyone was too tired to fight. The Captain stayed in his tent and sent out messages to headquarters; asked what new course of action to take. Headquarters advised him to continue as previously. The forest was the right place to be. In the first place, the trees gave privacy, and in the second, it was cool. It was possible to play a decent game of poker, get a night’s sleep. Perhaps because of the poker, the enemy fought madly for the forest and defended it like lunatics. So did Hastings’ company. Being there, even if only on Thursdays, Saturdays and Tuesdays, made the war worthwhile. The enemy must have felt the same way, but they, of course, had the odd day of the week. Still, even Hastings was willing to stay organized on that basis. Monday was a lousy day to get up, anyway. But, it was the new Captain who wanted to screw things up. Two weeks after he came to the company, he announced that he had partially familiarized himself with the terrain and on this basis, he now wanted to remind the company not to cease fighting once they had captured the forest. He advised them that the purpose of the war went beyond the forest; it involved a limited victory on ideological issues, and he gave the company a month to straighten out and learn the new procedure. Also, he refused to believe his First Sergeant when the First Sergeant told him about the minefield but sent out men at night in dark clothing to check the area; he claimed that mines had a reputation for exploding twenty years later. The First Sergeant pointed out that it was not twenty years later, but the Captain said this made no difference; it could happen anytime at all. Not even the First Sergeant knew what to do with him. And, in addition to all of these things, it was rumored that the Captain talked in private to his officers of a total victory policy, was saying things to the effect that the war could only be successful if taken outside of the estate. When Hastings had grasped the full implication of all of this, he tried to imagine for a while that the Captain was merely stupid but, eventually, the simple truth of the situation came quite clear: the new Captain was crazy. The madness was not hateful: Hastings knew himself to be quite mad. The issue was how the Captain’s lunacy bore on Hastings’ problem: now, Hastings decided, the Captain would never approve his request for convalescent leave. This request was already several months old. Hastings had handed it to the new Captain the day that the new Captain had come into the company. Since the Captain had many things on his mind at this time—he told Hastings that he would have to become acclimated to the new situation—Hastings could understand matters being delayed for a short while. But still, nothing had been done, and it was after the election; furthermore, Hastings was getting worse instead of better. Every time that Hastings looked up the Captain to discuss this with him, the Captain fled. He had told the First Sergeant that he wanted Hastings to know that he felt he was acting irresponsibly and out of the network of the problem. This news, when it was delivered, gave Hastings little comfort. I am not acting irresponsibly, he told the First Sergeant who listened without apparent interest, as a matter of fact, I’m acting in quite a mature fashion. I’m trying to get some leave for the good of the company. The First Sergeant had said that he guessed he didn’t understand it either and he had been through four wars, not counting eight limited actions. He said that it was something which Hastings would have to work out for his own satisfaction. Very few things, however, gave Hastings that much satisfaction, anymore. He was good and fed up with the war for one thing and, for another, he had gotten bored with the estate even if the company hadn’t: once you had seen the forest, you had seen all of it that was worthwhile. Unquestionably, the cliffs, the abutments and the minefield were terrible. It might have been a manageable thing if they could have reached some kind of understanding with the enemy, a peaceful allotment of benefits, but it was obvious that headquarters would have none of this and besides, the enemy probably had a headquarters, too. Some of the men in the company might have lived limited existences; this might be perfectly all right with them, but Hastings liked to think of himself as a man whose horizons were, perhaps, a little wider than those of the others. He knew the situation was ridiculous. Every week, to remind him, reinforcements would come from somewhere in the South and tell Hastings that they had never seen anything like it. Hastings told them that this was because there had never been anything like it; not ever. Since the reinforcements had heard that Hastings had been there longer than anyone, they shut up then and left him alone. Hastings did not find that this improved his mood, appreciably. If anything, it convinced him that his worst suspicions were, after all, completely justified. On Election Day, the company had a particularly bad experience. The president of their country was being threatened by an opposition which had no use for his preparedness policy; as a defensive measure, therefore, he had no choice on the day before election, other than to order every military installation in the vicinity of the company’s war to send out at least one bomber and more likely two to show determination. Hastings’ company knew nothing whatever of this; they woke on the morning of the election cheerful because it was their turn to take the forest. Furthermore, the tents of the enemy seen in the distance were already being struck, a good sign that the enemy would not contest things too vigorously. The men of the company put on their combat gear singing, goosing one another, challenging for poker games that night: it looked as if it were going to be a magnificent day. All indications were that the enemy would yield like gentlemen. Some of the company began to play tag, leaping through the abutments, comparing them to the forest that would soon be theirs. Then, from all conceivable directions, airplanes came; they wandered, moaning, a few hundred feet above the surface of the cliffs and apparently waited. When all of them were quite sure that no others were coming (there would have been no room for them anyway), they began to methodically drop bombs on the company. Naturally, the pilots and crews of the airplanes were terribly excited and, as a result, they misplaced their fire quite badly, missing direct hits on the company more often than not. After a while, there was so much smoke around the vicinity of the cliffs that the pilots were unable to see at all, and they drifted over and peevishly sent excess bombs on the minefield. Hastings, lying on his back, guessed that the First Sergeant had been proved right because, just as everyone had been telling the Captain, the minefield did not go up. It took the bombs quite nicely, as a matter of fact, not heaving a bit. When every plane had released its bomb (some had to actually go over the forest and drop one on the enemy; there was no other space left), they flew off in a dazzle of satisfaction, leaving the largest part of the company choking with laughter. Those that were not choking were unable to because they were dead. The point seemed to be that here it was the company’s day in the forest, and now their own or some other force had come in and had screwed everything up. In the distance, the enemy could be seen holding cautious formation and then, with no hesitation whatsoever, they put themselves into lines and marched briskly away from the forest, taking the long route back to the cliffs. The new Captain got up on an abutment and made a speech; he said that this had been the first step in a whole series leading to mass realignment. The company applauded thinly, wondering if there was any chance that he might have a stroke. Then everybody packed up and went over to the forest; all of them, of course, except those who were dead. Hastings stayed with a work detail and labeled all of them so that headquarters, if they ever sent anyone up, would know who in the company had failed to take the proper precautions and was therefore to be permanently removed from the master roster list and placed in the in-active files, never to be bothered by formations again. It was the Election Day disaster that caused certain men in the company to begin behaving in a very bizarre fashion. News received through the First Sergeant that headquarters believed that the president had won re-election ‘had no effect upon the decision of these men to take up indefinite residence in the forest; they told anyone who asked them that the whole thing was a futile proposition and the company was always going to come back there, anyway. They refused to make formations and had friends answer for them; they covered their tents with mud and pitched them in the shadow of trees; they washed their garments in the rain and, furthermore, they told everyone in the company that they were fools not to join them. One morning, lining up in the cliffs, the First Sergeant noticed for the first time that five men were gone. He became furious and said he would not stand for it; he told the company that he had been through four wars, not including eight limited actions, and there was simply no basis, ever, to performances of this sort. The First Sergeant said that he was going personally to lead the company back to the forest to shoot those five men. They were all prepared to go, looking forward to the objective really, when a misguided enemy pilot flew uncertainly over the forest and, perhaps in retaliation, dropped thirty-seven bombs on it, blowing every tree to the ground, leaving the earth quite green and shuddering and completely decimating his own troops. They were unable to fight for a week because the enemy had to ship reinforcements, and when they finally got back to the forest, they could find, of course, no trace of their five men at all; only a few belt buckles. It was right then that Hastings decided that the matter of his convalescent leave had come to a head. He had had the idea and he knew that it was covered in regulations: he was entitled to it. Army manuals noted the existence of something called convalescent leave: if it wasn’t for situations such as these, well then, for what was it? They had to deal with it. One morning, he carefully re-drafted his original request with a borrowed pencil on the back of an old letter from his fiancée and brought it again into the First Sergeant. Hastings reminded the First Sergeant that he had originally put this request in months ago. The First Sergeant, groaning, said that the Captain could not possibly look at it because he was still getting acclimated to the situation. But, the First Sergeant added, he had been talking to the Captain on and off and he had some promising news: the Captain had been saying that he would probably be completely familiarized by Christmas. It was only a matter of taking time to get hold of a situation. Hastings said was that a fact and, mumbling promises to himself, left the headquarters tent; he told the Corporal with whom he slept that he hoped to be out of this sooner or later. Most of the company were still gathering for hours around the belt buckles, looking solemnly, telling each other that it was a damned shame what the Army did to people. Hastings, looking it over again, decided that he had written a strong appeal: how could it be ignored? Gentlemen (Hastings had written), listen: I am applying for convalescent leave as I have already done because I have been in vigorous combat and, while adding little or nothing to the company effort, have driven myself to the ridges of neurasthenia. What fighting skills I do possess and what morale I have acquired through recommended reading materials have fallen to a very low point because of the discouragement involved in the present situation. We are capturing and capturing again one forest and some wasted hills. The forest is bearable; the hills are not, but in the exhaustion of this repeated effort, both have leveled to a kind of hideous sameness; now there is no difference. Indeed, everything has become the same, as is common now in cases of great tensions occurring under stress situations. Recently, I have had cold sweats, nausea, some vomiting and various nervous reactions including migraine of relative severity that has cut my diminishing effectiveness even further. Most of the time, I can barely lift a rifle . . . and for all of these reasons, I am repeating my ignored request of three months duration that I be given convalescent leave for a period of several weeks to months for the purposes of renewed vision. Ideally, I would like to go back home, see my civilian friends, share my experiences with them, but if it is found that I cannot be sent there due to problems with transportation allotments and the like, I would settle for being sent alone to the nearest town where there are women and where it is possible to sleep. I would even be willing, if the nights were quiet, to go to a place without women; as a matter of fact, this might be the best action at this time. I am certainly in no condition for relationships, not even those of the fragmentary kind necessitated by copulation. Hoping that this request meets with your attention and approval; hoping that you will not see it as the frenzied expression of a collapsed man but only as the cool and reasoned action of the professional soldier under stress, I remain yours truly, Hastings, 114786210. P.S. I wish to note that my condition is serious; how serious only a qualified professional judgment could determine. If this request is not met with your prompt attention, therefore, or not, at least sent to a competent psychiatrist for an opinion, it is impossible for me to predict what the scope of my reactions will be: I can no longer control my behavior. I have been brought up all my life to believe that institutions are the final repository of all the good sense left in this indecent world; at this point in my life it would assume the proportion of a major disaster if I were to learn that the Army, one of our most respected and ancient institutions, were not to be trusted. P.P.S. Please note that the mines here are already defused; inform the Captain that they need not worry him. On the other hand, the first request had been good, too. The day that the old Captain’s reassignment to headquarters came through, all of the men in the company had come to his tent to stand around him, giving him notes and wishes of good will. Hastings had given him his request in a sealed envelope, and the Captain had taken it for another farewell message and placed it carefully in his knapsack; he told Hastings and the others that he was moved by their display of affection and he hoped that any of them who came into his territory later in the war would like to find out personally how everything was going. After all of this was over, the old Captain had crawled into his tent, saying, over his shoulder, that the company had given him an experience that he simply would never forget. The company smiled at the Captain’s closed tent and wandered off to play poker. (They had been in the forest that day.) Hastings thought that he would join them and then decided that this would not do; he would have to force the issue, and so he crawled, quite respectfully, into the Captain’s tent and, finding him wrapped in an embryonic ball on his bunk, told him that he had a few things to explain. Hastings told the Captain that he had submitted a request for convalescent leave and not a good will message. At this, the Captain’s legs kicked from the ball he had made of himself, and he told Hastings that he felt that he had very little consideration. Hastings said that this might all well be true, but he was a sick man and he then outlined the substance of his request. The Captain wrapped himself up intently and thought about it, said that he could court-martial Hastings. He added cheerfully that, since he was not legally in command of the company now, Hastings could be placed in the stockade for divulging confidential material to an outsider. Hastings kneeled then and asked the Captain what the proper thing would be to do, and the Captain said that he hadn’t the faintest idea. He suggested that Hastings recall his request and, as a concession, court-martial proceedings would be dropped. He said that the appeal itself was unexceptionable; the new Captain, if one ever came, surely would approve it. Hastings took his envelope and left the Captain, went hack to his tent singing an Army song and fixed up his pegs neatly, but by the time he had all of them firmly in the ground, he found himself stricken with a terrible intimation. He went back to see the Captain, learned that he was in the officers’ latrine, and waited outside there until the Captain came out. Hastings asked the Captain if headquarters or the new Captain might think that his request was a joke. The Captain said that he could not speak professionally but from what he had gathered from summation, he saw nothing funny in it at all; it seemed quite serious, quite to the point. Hastings said that the Captain might feel that way but, after all, he had been heading up the war, maybe at headquarters, they did not glimpse the urgencies. The Captain said that headquarters was filled with understanding people: they were people who had approved his own request for transfer, and they could be counted upon to comprehend the necessary. Hastings said a few unfortunate words about possible prejudice against enlisted men, and the Captain’s face became bright green: he said that be suddenly realized that he had not finished his own business in the latrine. Hastings could not follow him in there, of course, but he waited two hours until the Captain came out and tried to pursue the matter. But the Captain, walking away hurriedly, said that he did not know what Hastings was talking about: he did not even know what this request was, had never heard of it in fact; and then he said that, upon consideration, he realized that he did not know Hastings either; surely, he had never seen him before. The Captain ordered Hastings to return to his proper company, wherever that might be. Hastings explained that theirs was the only company within two hundred miles, and the Captain said that Hastings was obviously an AWOL with energy. Then, he ran briskly away. Hastings gathered that there would be very little point in following and instead went back to his tent. His tent mate was sleeping inside, and Hastings methodically demolished the tent, wrapped it around the Corporal, picked all of this up, groaning, and threw it into a tree. The Corporal hit with a dull noise. When he came out rubbing himself, he said that he was shocked at this; he did not know that Hastings was the type. Hastings shrugged and said that some men changed personality under stress. He wandered away, not breathing very hard, and bought a pencil from someone, took some toilet paper from the latrine and began a very serious letter to his fiancée. He had just brought matters through the Captain’s second flight when the sun set violently, and he had to put everything away. He slept quite badly in the minefield that night (he did not feel like returning to his tent; not quite yet) and in the morning, found that his letter had been somehow stolen. Hastings had a good reputation as a letter writer, and men in the company were always stealing his correspondence, trying to get useful phrases. Hastings did not care about this particularly, except that lately he had begun to feel that he had only a limited number of things to say and they were diminishing rapidly. This theft, then, intensified his gloom, and he almost decided to seek another interview with the Captain but then he said: The hell with it. We’ll give the new man a chance. That is the least we can do. Looking sadly at the enemy tents, Hastings again decided that he was in a highly abnormal situation. Headquarters (wrote Hastings some time later on the back of a letter from an old acquaintance), I am forced to take this most serious and irregular action because of the prejudicial conduct of the recently installed Commanding Officer concerning my re-request for convalescent status. As you may or may not know, I originally placed this request several months ago and rewrote it last week because of the failure of the Commanding Officer to pay any heed, whatsoever. This Commanding Officer has subjected me to an exposure of terrifying inadequacy without precedent in a Captain of this Army and has imperiled my entire image of your institution. He has never confronted me con-coming either request but has relayed statements through the First Sergeant (who is a war veteran with great sympathy for my position) that I am behaving irresponsibly. Headquarters, I ask you, is it irresponsible of me to request a convalescent leave? I have been fighting this war for a considerable period of time now, exposing myself over and over again to the same dreary set of experiences while around me the company ebbs and flows and the reinforcements creep in darkly. The reinforcements tell me again and again that they do not think that there is any sense to this engagement, and I am compelled to agree with them. This entire action has acquired the aspect of nightmare, I am sorry to say, and although I am not an unstable man, I have found myself becoming, not neurasthenic as previously noted, but truly psychotic. This is terrible ritual, gentlemen, terrible sacrifice, really deadly convolution of the soul. Also, they are stealing my correspondence. I have not been able actually to mail a letter for months, even to tell my fiancée that I have terminated our engagement. Gentlemen, I like my fiancée and what is more important, after two years of distance, I now wish to make an arrangement to spare her of me. What more significant proof can I provide of insanity? Hoping that you will give this request the most serious consideration and hoping that you will review the folder of the Commanding Officer here very thoroughly indeed, I am sending this letter out by and through devious and covert means. Yours truly, Hastings, serial number posted. When he was finished, Hastings took the letter to the officer’s section and gave it to the First Sergeant, who was cleaning some bits of litter from the top of his desk. He gazed dully at the First Sergeant and asked if it could be submitted through special channels, around the Captain. The First Sergeant gave him a look of wonderment and said that the letter could not possibly pass: it was not written in code as all direct communications to headquarters were compelled to be. Furthermore, the First Sergeant said, he had received exciting news from headquarters: there were plans to start a newspaper which would be distributed by airline to the company; this newspaper would tell them how they were progressing in their battle. The First Sergeant said that headquarters considered it a major breakthrough in morale policy. And, in addition to all of this the First Sergeant whispered, there was one other piece of news which had come through from headquarters which he was not authorized to disclose but which the Captain would make the subject of an address to the troops on this day. The First Sergeant said that this would probably be a revelation even to Hastings, a real surprise from headquarters. Hastings, still thinking about the newspaper, asked if it would contain anything except statistics, and the First Sergeant said there would probably be some editorials written by military experts. Hastings said that he wanted to awaken the Captain. The First Sergeant said that this was impossible because the Captain was already awake; he was drafting his speech, and he was too excited to deal with Hastings now. The First Sergeant added that he agreed that this was a shame. Hastings said that he was at the end of his rope. The Sergeant said that things were getting better: he recommended that Hastings learn headquarters code if he was serious about the message and then resubmit it, and he handed him a hook. Hastings saw that the book was really a folder containing sheets of typewriter paper, and he asked the First Sergeant what this was. The First Sergeant explained that this was a copy of his short novel detailing his experiences as a veteran of four wars and eight limited actions. Hastings asked what the hell this had to do with learning code or with sending his message, and the First Sergeant said that he was astonished; he said that Hastings was the only man in the company so far to be offered his novel, and he added that everything in it contained the final answer, if it was only studied. The First Sergeant then said that the convalescent leave business was Hastings’ problem, anyway; he had never cracked the code completely himself, and he doubted if it were possible to solve it. When he came back to his tent, still carrying the First Sergeant’s novel in one hand, Hastings decided that he had reached a moment of major crisis. There were obviously no points of reference to this in his life; he was definitely on his own. All of the company were getting up one by one, discussing the push to the cliffs which they were going to make later in the day. Some of the reinforcements insisted that to achieve the cliffs would be to attain a major objective, but older members of the company gently explained that the battle was probably endless. When they heard this, the reinforcements sat tearfully and had to be persuaded to strike their tents. The First Sergeant came out after a while and called a formation, saying that the Captain was going to address them. When they heard this, the company, even Hastings, became very excited because the Captain had never talked to any of them before; he had always been at the end of the marches, saying that he had to be acclimatized. Now, apparently, he had completed his assessment of the situation, and everybody was very anxious to find out what he had learned. Also they were curious, some of them, about his rear end and figured that at one time or another they would probably be able to get a glimpse of it now. Standing in the ranks, Hastings fondled the First Sergeant’s novel and his letter and made a decision: he would present both of them to the Captain just as soon as he had finished talking. He would wait until the end of the Captain’s speech that was, only if the speech was very interesting: if the Captain had nothing to say or only detailed how he intended to further familiarize himself, he would go up to him in the middle and simply hand him the letter. At least, he would have the man’s attention. This would be a new element in the situation, right away. Preceded by the First Sergeant, the Captain came from his tent and, walking carefully, came in front of the company. No one could see his buttocks because all of them were facing in the same direction. The Captain stood there, nodding, for several minutes, making some notes in pen on fresh paper, beaming at the motion. Hastings found this frightening. He had never before noticed how small the Captain’s face was; at this distance it was seen to be covered with a hideous stubble superimposed over the features of a very young boy. In spite of all this evidence, he had not been convinced, apparently, because he wore a wedding ring. The Captain backed carefully against a tree and leaned against it, smiling at the company. “Some of you”, he said, “have brought it to the attention of my First Sergeant that you are unhappy.” “More than unhappiness. I know that you are vitally concerned. You’re concerned because you see no point in what you’re doing. You’re concerned because you can’t see how what you are doing affects anything or anybody else. You’re worried about this. This is serious. It is a real problem.” “It’s a legitimate matter of concern, all right. When a group of men such as yourselves cannot feel dignity in the work they do, cannot feel that what they do is important to a much larger number of people, they break down. They become nervous. They begin to function in a cold sweat, and sometimes they do not function at all. I have noticed this about one or two of you. But even those I do not condemn. In fact, I have all kinds of sympathy for men in this predicament; it is not pleasant. I know what it can be like. But now and for all of you, this part of your life is over.” The company cheered thinly. Hastings folded his letter and put it away. “The situation, in fact,” said the Captain, is now entirely changed; more than you would have ever thought possible. General war has been declared. The enemy, who have become increasingly provocative in recent weeks, bombed one of our ports of installation last week, reducing it to a pulp. How about that? As a result of this action, the president of the country has declared that a general and total state of war now exists between the countries of the enemy and ourselves. At this moment, troops all over the globe are actively pouring in and out of our military installations; their weapons at the ready! “Now, what does this mean? I’ll tell you what it means. Gentlemen, you are the first. But, you are only the beginning. What you have gone through will be absorbed, will be a spearhead. And when we go out today, we go into these fields with the entire Army, with the country behind us. You are some lucky bunch of fellows. I congratulate you individually.” After the Captain had finished, he stood against the tree, apparently waiting for the company to disperse, so that he could return to his tent without anyone having seen his rear end. Hastings, weeping, drifted behind him, stood in a clearing, destroyed his letter. The trunk covered the Captain’s behind from that angle, too. I do feel better, already, Hastings told himself, I feel better already. But when the Captain finally gave a cautious look in all directions and started backing slowly from the tree, Hastings took his bayonet and threw it at him, cleaving the left buttock of the Captain, bringing forth a bright scream. I still feel lousy,” Hastings said. The Captain had never liked Hastings. Hastings walked in the middle of formations, telling everyone as they went over the mine fields that they were absolutely harmless, a fraud. No one would have taken any precautions going over the minefield, if it had not been for the Captain running behind them. Some of the men picked up stones and threw them at each other; some men said the war would never end. When things got utterly out of hand, the Captain would have to shout at the troops, at distances of hundreds of yards he found himself bellowing and, even then, the company would not listen. All of this traced back to Hastings. He was destroying the morale of the company. The Captain suspected that, beneath all of this, Hastings was trying to sink the progress of the limited war. In addition to saying that the minefield was just as safe as a playground, this Hastings was a letter writer. He wrote letters to everyone; now he had written a request to headquarters (which was peculiar enough already; the messages coming from headquarters now were enough to confuse anyone, let alone a Captain just trying to get acclimated), giving his situation and asking for convalescent leave; he cited obscure regulations. The Captain knew, of course, that if he forwarded this material to headquarters, two or three field grade officers would come out in a jeep, capture Hastings and place him in a hospital for mental cases, and the Captain wanted to spare Hastings this. He was governed, then, by common, if causeless, feelings of mercy but nevertheless, there was Hastings, insisting that his form go through. The Captain did not know what to do with him. In the first place, he had only been with this company for six weeks and he was having all he could do to get acclimated to the situation; in the second place, he badly missed his wife and the cottage they had had in officers’ quarters on a small post in the Southern tier. Furthermore, the Captain found himself wondering at odd moments in the night whether the war effort would truly be successful. There seemed to be some very peculiar elements about it. The bombing was so highly irregular, and some of the pilots did not seem to be very interested; they dropped bombs on their own side and also flew out of pattern. In addition, some of the men in the company had become attached to a certain part of the terrain; they were maintaining now that the entire purpose of the war was to secure and live permanently within it. The Captain did not know what to do about this. Also, Hastings waited outside of his tent often, trying to find out what he was doing with the leave request, and the Captain found that his free rights of access and exit were being severely limited, above and beyond the Army code. The Captain had nothing against the war. It was all working out the way the preparation courses had taught. Certainly, it had its strange facets: the enemy also seemed to be attached to the forest part of the map and fought bitterly for the retention of certain cherished trees, but things like this were normal in stress situations anyway; after a while, all conflicts, all abstractions came down, in a group of limited men, to restricted areas. The Captain had been trained to see things in this fashion, and he had also been given a good deal of instruction in the intricacies of troop morale. So, he understood the war; he understood it very well. There was no doubt about that. However, the Academy had neglected to prepare him for Hastings. There was no one like Hastings at the Academy, even in a clean-up capacity. The Captain had taken to writing his young wife long letters on stationery he had borrowed from his First Sergeant (a war veteran of four major conflicts and eight limited actions), telling her all about the situations, adding that it was very odd and strained but that he hoped to have matters cleaned up by the end of the year, that is, if he was ever unleashed. Other than this, he did not write her about the war at all but instead wrote at length about certain recollections he had of their courtship, entirely new insights. In the relaxation of the war, he found that he was able to gather astonishing perceptions into the very quality of his life, and he told wife the reasons for his action at given times, asked if she understood. We will get to the bottom of this, he often reminded her, if only you will cooperate. His wife’s letters in return were sometimes argumentative, sometimes disturbed; she told him that he was wasting his energy in the forgotten wastes, and that all of his strength was now needed to become acclimated to a new situation. When he read these letters, the Captain found that, unreasonably, he wanted to cry, but his bunk was too near to that of his First Sergeant, and he was ashamed. None of the officers wanted to be caught crying by the First Sergeant, a combat veteran. Meanwhile, the Captain found that his communications with headquarters were being blocked for days at a time, and also that his messages, when they did come, were increasingly peculiar. Sometimes, the Captain succumbed briefly to the feeling that headquarters did not truly understand the situation, hut he put such thoughts away quickly. Thinking them or putting them away; it made no difference, he was almost always depressed. Continue on as you have done, worry not, headquarters would tell him three days later in response to a routine inquiry. Or, we are preparing new strategy here and ask you to hold line while formulating. Such things were highly disturbing; there was simply no doubt about it. One morning near Christmas, the Captain went through a near-disaster, a partial catastrophe. The First Sergeant came into his tent and told him that Hastings was thinking of submitting a letter to headquarters directly on the subject of his convalescent leave. The Captain said that he could not believe that even Hastings would be crazy enough to do something like that, and the First Sergeant said that this might well be true but, nevertheless, Hastings had brought in some kind of a letter that morning and asked to have it forwarded. The Captain asked the First Sergeant if he could see the letter, and the First Sergeant said that he had told Hastings to go away with it but that Hastings had promised to come back later. The Captain put on some old fatigues and went out into the forest in real grief; he looked at Hastings’ tent, which was of a peculiar, grayish shade, and he sighed. Hastings was sitting outside the tent on his knees with his back to the Captain, scribbling something in the dirt with a stick. The Captain decided that he was ill; be did not want to have anything whatever to do with Hastings. Instead, he went back to his tent intending to sleep some more, but when he got there, the First Sergeant was waiting for him with astonishing news. He told the Captain that somehow a message had gotten through on Hastings because some Corporal was up from headquarters saying he had orders to put Hastings away in the asylum. When the Captain heard this, he felt himself possessed by absolute fury, and he told the First Sergeant that he was running this company and he refused to take treatment like this from anyone. The First Sergeant said that he absolutely agreed with the Captain and he would go out to deal with the Corporal, but the Captain said that, for once, he was going to handle the situation the way it should be. He told the First Sergeant to leave him alone, and then he went over to a clearing where the Corporal sat in a jeep and told him that Hastings had been killed a few hours ago in an abortive attack and was being buried. The Corporal said that that was a rotten shame because everyone in headquarters had heard the story and was really anxious to find out what kind of lunatic this Hastings was. The Captain said that he could tell him stories but he would not and ordered the Corporal to return to his unit. After the Corporal had explained that he was in an administrative capacity and therefore not at all vulnerable to the Captain’s orders, he got in the jeep and said that he would go back to his unit and report what had happened. He asked the Captain if Hastings had had any special characteristics which should be noted in a condolence letter. The Captain said that Hastings had always been kind of an individualist and forceful in his own way; also he was highly motivated, if somewhat unrealistic. The Corporal said that this would be useful and he drove away. For almost an hour, the Captain found himself unable to move from the spot, but after a while, he was able to remember the motions of walking, and he stumbled back to his tent and began a long letter to his wife. I gave an order today in a very different capacity, he began it, but he decided that this was no good and instead started, I have become fully acclimated to the situation here at last and feel that I am at the beginning of my best possibilities: do you remember how ambitious I used to be? After he wrote this, he found that he had absolutely nothing else to write and, thinking of his wife’s breasts, put the paper away and went for a long walk. Much later, he decided that what had happened had been for the good; it was only a question now of killing Hastings, and then he could begin to take control. The First Sergeant had nothing to do with things, anymore. He slept a twisted sleep, crawling with strange shapes, and in the morning, the First Sergeant awakened him, saying that headquarters had just sent in a communiqué declaring that a total-win policy was now in effect; war had been declared. When the Captain heard this, he became quite excited and began to feel better about many things; he asked the First Sergeant if he thought that it meant that the company was now unleashed, and the First Sergeant said that he was positive that that was what had happened. The Captain said that this would definitely take care of Hastings; they could work him out of the way very easily now, and he added that he had studied the morale problem of troops; now he was going to be able to put it into effect. Troops, he said, were willing to get involved in anything, but if they felt they were being used to no good purpose, they tended to get childish and stubborn. The Captain felt so good about this that he invited the First Sergeant to forget things and look at one of his wife’s recent letters, but the First Sergeant said that he felt he knew the Captain’s wife already and, besides, he had to make preparations for the war; he had real responsibilities. The First Sergeant explained that this would be his fifth war, but since each one was like a new beginning, he felt as if he had never been in combat before and he wanted to make some notes. The Captain said that this was fine, and then, right on the instant, he decided to make a speech to the company. He requisitioned two sheets of bond paper from the First Sergeant and sat down to draft it, but he found himself so filled with happy thoughts of Hastings’ impending assassination that he was unable to keep still, and so he decided to speak extemporaneously. He knew that he could deal with the company in the right way. When he was quite sure that he was in the proper mood to make the speech, he ordered the First Sergeant to call a formation, and when the First Sergeant came back to tell him that all of the men were assembled, he walked out slowly behind the First Sergeant, knowing how good a picture he was making. He stood near a tree for shelter and smiled at all of the men, especially Hastings, but Hastings, looking at something in his hands, did not see the smile and that, the Captain decided, was Hastings’ loss. It was one more indication, this way of thinking, of how well he had finally become acclimated. Everything, after all, was only a matter of time. “You men,” the Captain said, “are plenty upset because you see no purpose in this whole operation. In fact, it seems absolutely purposeless to you, a conclusion with which I am in utter sympathy. It is no fun when emptiness replaces meaning; when despair replaces motive. I know all about this; I have shared it with you over and over. “Today, we mount another attack and many wonder: what is the point? it’s all the same; it always was. We’ve been back and forth so many times, what the hell’s the difference, now? “In line with this, I want to tell you something now, something that will, I am convinced, change the entire picture in your minds and hearts. Something is different; things have changed. We are now in a state of war with the enemy. Our ports of installation were bombed last night; in return, our president has declared that we are now in a position of total war. How about that? “Before we have finished our mission now, ten thousand, a million men will have shared our losses, our glories, our commitments, our hopes. And yet, because these began with us, essentially we are the creators of the war. “Are we fortunate? I do not know. Such is our responsibility. Such is our honor.” After the Captain had finished, he stood near the tree for a long while, marveling at his speech. There was no question but that it had gotten right through to the middle of the situation; it left no room for any doubt of any kind. Surely he had, just as he had promised, become fully acclimated and now, now there was no stopping him at all. And it took care of that Hastings; it took care of him but good. The next step for Hastings was darkness. Therefore, the Captain was enormously surprised when he saw Hastings, grinning hysterically, come toward him, a bayonet shining in his hand. It just showed you, if you didn’t know it well already, that there was just no predicting anything with enlisted men. Before the Captain could move, Hastings raised his arm and threw the instrument at the Captain. “What are you doing?” the Captain screamed. “I’m your Commanding Officer in the midst of a war!” “I still say I’m not crazy!” Hastings screamed. “We’re in the middle of a war!” the Captain said, dying. But Hastings, apparently quite mad now, would not listen. The First Sergeant had never liked Hastings or the Captain. Both of them were crazy; there was no doubt about it. Hastings, a Private, told everyone in the company that the minefields were a sham, quite safe, really, and the Captain insisted that they were ready to fire. When the company walked over the mine fields, Hastings cursed to the troops that they were a bunch of cowards, and the Captain, his stupid ass waving, fell to the end of the formation and screamed at them to keep going. The two of them were wrecking the company, making the entire situation (which had had such potential, such really nice things in it) impossible. The war was peculiar, there was no question about this, but there were ways to get around it and get a job done. But the two of them, Hastings and the Captain, were lousing things up. The First Sergeant found himself so furious with their business that after a while he could not even keep his communiqués straight: all the headquarters messages were getting screwed up in the decode because he was too upset to do it right and no one would leave him alone. There was no sense to most of the messages; they all seemed to say the same thing anyway, and the First Sergeant knew that headquarters were a pack of morons; he had decided this three days after he had taken over his job and began getting their idiotic messages. Meanwhile, the new Captain would not leave him alone; all that he wanted to talk about was Hastings. It was Hastings, the Captain said loudly to the First Sergeant, who was fouling everything up. He asked the ‘First Sergeant if there might be any procedures to get Hastings to keep quiet, because everything that had gone wrong was all his fault. Over and over again, the Captain asked the First Sergeant to figure out a way to get rid of Hastings without giving him convalescent leave. All of this was bad enough for the First Sergeant but then, on top of all of this, there was Hastings himself hanging around all the time, trying to find out things about the Captain, asking if the man had yet initialed his request. All in all, it was just ridiculous, what they were doing to him. When the First Sergeant decided to do what he did, he had every excuse in the world for it. They were a pack of lunatics. They were out of control. They deserved no mercy. One morning, for instance, around Thanksgiving, the Captain woke the First Sergeant to say that he had figured out the entire situation: Hastings was insane. He was investing, said the Captain, terrible dependency in an effort to become a child again and his functioning was entirely unsound. The Captain asked the First Sergeant if he felt that this was reasonable and whether or not he thought that Hastings belonged in some kind of institution. The First Sergeant, who had been up very late trying to organize some confusing communiqués from headquarters in relation to the Thanksgiving supper, said that he was not sure but that he would think some about it, and if the Captain wanted him to, he would even check into Army regulations. He added that Hastings might have combat fatigue, something that he had seen in a lot of men through the course of four wars and eight limited actions; some men were simply weaker than others. The point here was that the First Sergeant was trying to be as decent to both the Captain and Hastings as any man could be, but there were limits. Later that day, Hastings found him sitting behind a tree and told him that he had figured the whole thing: the Captain was obviously mad. He suggested that the First Sergeant help him prepare a report to headquarters listing all of the peculiar actions of the Captain and asked for some clean paper to do this. Hastings added that he thought that most of the Captain’s problem could be traced back to his shame over his rear end. The rear end made the Captain look feminine, said Hastings, and the Captain was reacting to this in a very normal, if unfortunate, fashion. The First Sergeant said that he didn’t know enough about modern psychiatry to give an opinion on that one way or the other. Hastings asked the First Sergeant to simply consider it, and the First Sergeant said that he would do that. After a while, Hastings left, saying that the First Sergeant had hurt him. In all of this, then, it could be seen that the First Sergeant had acted entirely correctly, in entire justice. He was in a difficult position but he was doing the best he could. No claims could be made against him that he was not doing his job. But, in spite of all the times the First Sergeant repeated this to himself, he found that, finally, he was getting good and fed up with the whole thing. There were, he decided, natural limits to all circumstances and Hastings, headquarters, the Captain and the war were passing theirs; after a point simply no part of it was his responsibility, any more. This, the First Sergeant told the officers who knew enough to listen, was his fourth war and eighth limited action, not counting various other difficulties he had encountered during his many years in the Army. Actually, this was not entirely true, but the First Sergeant had taken to feeling that it was, which was almost better. The truth of the situation, which the First Sergeant kept to himself except for occasional letters to his wife was that he had worked in a division motor pool for fifteen years before he had been reassigned to the company, and that reassignment had been something of a fluke, hinging on the fact that the company had, before the days of the limited war, been established as a conveyance unit, and the First Sergeant had absent-mindedly been assigned as a mechanic. That things had worked out this way was probably the fault of headquarters; at least, the First Sergeant did not question them on that score. Early in the career of the First Sergeant, he had accidentally shot a General while in rifle training. The General, fortunately, had only lost an ear which, he had laughingly told the First Sergeant at the court-martial, he could spare because he never heard that much that was worth hearing, anyway. The General, however, claimed that the First Sergeant had had no right to shoot at him when he was in the process of troop-inspection, even if the shots had only been fired from excitement, as was the claim of the First Sergeant’s defense. The General said that he felt the best rehabilitative action for the First Sergeant, under all the principles of modern social action, would he to be shot himself, although not in the ear. When the First Sergeant heard this, he stood up in court and said that for the first time in his life, he was ashamed that he had chosen to enlist in the Army. When the head of the court, a Major, heard this, he asked the First Sergeant to stay calm and state, just off the record, what he wanted to do with his life. When the First Sergeant said that all he wanted to do was to make an honorable career and a First Sergeant (at this time he had been considerably less, a Private in fact), the Major advised the General that the First Sergeant would probably have to be treated differently from the run of the mill soldier, and the General said that he found the First Sergeant’s testimony very moving. It was agreed to fine the First Sergeant one month’s salary every month for the next five years and send him to automobile training in the far North. The General said that he could think of some places right off the top of his head where the First Sergeant might do well, but he reminded him that he would have to remember to cut down very sharply now on all of his expenses as he would be living on somewhat of a limited budget. The First Sergeant learned to live frugally (even now, he was still forgetting to pick up his pay when headquarters delivered it; he was always astonished) and repaired vehicles for fourteen years, but inwardly, he was furious. Because of his duties in the motor pool he lost out on several wars and limited actions, and, also, his wife (whom he had married before he enlisted) was ashamed that he had not been killed as had the husbands of many of her friends. As a result of this, he and his wife eventually had an informal separation, and the First Sergeant (who was by then a First Sergeant) took to telling people just being sent into the motor pool that he personally found this work a great relief after fighting one war and three limited actions. They seemed to believe him, which was fine, but the First Sergeant still had the feeling that he was being deprived of the largest segment of his possibilities. He moved into a barracks with a platoon of younger troops and taught them all the war songs he knew. In September of his next to last year in the Army, the First Sergeant fell into enormous luck. He often felt that it had all worked out something like a combat movie. A jeep for whose repair he had been responsible exploded while parked in front of a whorehouse, severely injuring a Lieutenant Colonel and his aide-de-camp who were waiting, they later testified, for the area to be invaded by civilian police. They had received advance warning and had decided to be on the premises for the protection of enlisted men. As a result of the investigation which followed, the aide-de-camp was reduced to the rank of Corporal and sent to give hygienic lectures to troops in the far lines of combat. The Lieutenant Colonel was promoted to Colonel, and the First Sergeant was sent to the stockade for six weeks. When he was released, he was given back all of his stripes and told by a civilian board of review that he was going to be sent into troop transport. The head of the board said that this would extend his experience considerably, and told him that he would be on the site of, although not actually engaged in, a limited action war. Standing in front of the six men, his hastily re-sewn stripes trembling, the First Sergeant had been unable to comprehend his stunning fortune. It seemed entirely out of control. Later, getting instructions from an officer, he found that he would take over the duties of a conveyance First Sergeant in an important action being conducted secretly on a distant coast. As soon as he could talk, the First Sergeant asked if he could have three days convalescent leave, and the officer said that regulations would cover this; he was entitled to it because of the contributions he had made. The First Sergeant borrowed a jeep and drove several hundred miles from post to a dark town in which his separated wife worked as a waitress. He found her sitting alone in the balcony of a movie house, watching a combat film and crying absently. At first, he wanted nothing at all to do with him, but after he told her what had happened to him, she touched him softly and said that she could not believe it had worked out. They went to a hotel together, because her landlady did not believe in her boarders being with other people, and talked for a long time; and for the first time, the First Sergeant said that he was frightened at what was happening as well as grateful. He had been away for so long that he did not know if he could trust himself. His wife said that finally, after fifteen years, she felt proud, and she told him that she knew he would do well. Later on he remembered that. But he never remembered answering her that only distress can make a man. They went to bed together and it was almost good; they almost held together until the very end, but then everything began to come to pieces. The First Sergeant said that he would probably not be able to write her letters because he was going to an area of high security, and she said that this was perfectly all right with her as long as the allotment checks were not interrupted. When he heard this, the Sergeant began to shake with an old pain and he told her that the jeep had blown up because he had deliberately failed to replace a bad fuel connection. She told him that if this were so, he deserved anything that happened to him. He told her that nothing he had ever done had been his fault, and she said that he disgusted her. After that, both of them got dressed, feeling terrible, and the First Sergeant drove the jeep at a grotesque speed toward the post. In the middle of the trip he found that he could not drive for a while, and he got out and vomited, the empty road raising dust in his eyes, the lights of occasional cars pinning him helplessly against dry foliage. When the First Sergeant came to the company, they were just at the true beginning of the limited war, and he was able to get hold of matters almost immediately. The first thing that he learned was that his predecessor had been given a transfer for reasons of emotional incompetence and had been sent back to the country as the head of a motor pool. The second thing he found out was that his job was completely non-combatant, involving him only in the communications detail. When the First Sergeant discovered that his duties involved only decoding, assortment and relay of communiqués from division headquarters to the company and back again, he felt at first, a feeling of enormous betrayal, almost as if he bad been in the Army all his life to discover that there was absolutely no reason for it at all. The Captain of this company communicated with headquarters from one hundred to one hundred and fifty times a day; he tried to keep himself posted on everything including the latest procedure for morale-retention. Other officers also had messages, and in the meanwhile, enlisted personnel were constantly handing him money, begging him to send back a hello to relatives through headquarters. The First Sergeant found this repulsive but the worst of it was to trudge at the rear of formations while in combat, loaded with ten to fifteen pieces of radio equipment and carrying enormous stacks of paper which he was expected to hand to the officers at any time that they felt in need of writing. In addition, his pockets were stuffed with headquarters communiqués which the Captain extracted from time to time. It was a humiliating situation; it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. When they were not in battle, the First Sergeant was choked with cross-communiqués; it became impossible for him to conceive of a life lacking them: he sweated, breathed and slept surrounded by sheets of paper. He took to writing his wife short letters, telling her in substance that everything she had said was absolutely right. In what free time he bad, he requisitioned a stopwatch and tried to figure out his discharge date in terms of minutes, seconds and fifths of seconds. Then, at the beginning of the first summer, the First Sergeant had his second and final stroke of luck, and it looked for a long while as if everything bad worked out for the best after all. He stopped writing letters to his wife almost immediately after the Captain was called back to headquarters and a new, a younger Captain was assigned to the command. This new Captain was not at all interested in communications; be told the First Sergeant the first day he was in that before he got involved in a flow of messages, he had first to become acclimated to the situation. That was perfectly all right with the First Sergeant; immediately he saw the change working through in other things; it was magical. Messages from headquarters seemed to diminish; there were days when they could be numbered in the tens, and the First Sergeant found that he had more time to himself; he started to write a short novel about his combat experiences in four wars and eight limited actions. Also, his role in combat had shifted drastically. Perhaps because of the new Captain’s familiarization policy, he was permitted to carry a rifle with him, and now and then, he even took a cautious shot, being careful to point the instrument in the air, so that there would be no danger of hitting anyone on his own side. Once, quite accidentally, he hit one of the enemy’s trees (they were attacking the forest that day) and destroyed a shrub; it was one of the most truly important moments of his life. Meanwhile, the new Captain said that he would contact headquarters eight times a day and that would be that. The First Sergeant moved into one of the most wholly satisfactory periods of his life. His wife’s letters stopped abruptly after she said she had been promoted to the position of hostess, and he quietly cut his allotment to her by three dollars a month; no one seemed to know the difference. He went to bed early and found that he slept the night through, but often he was up at four o’clock because starting each new day was such a pleasure. Then, just as the First Sergeant had come to the amazed conviction that he was not by any means an accursed man, Hastings came acutely to his consciousness. Hastings, who was some kind of Private, had put in for convalescent leave months before, during the bad time of the First Sergeant’s life, but the old Captain had handled the situation very well. Now, the new Captain said that he had to be acclimated to the situation, and so it was the First Sergeant’s responsibility to deal with Hastings, to tell him that the Captain could not be distracted at this time. For a while, Hastings listened to this quietly and went, but suddenly, for no apparent reason, he submitted another request for leave. From that moment the difficult peace of the First Sergeant was at an end. Hastings insisted that this message had to reach the Captain, and the First Sergeant told him that it would be forwarded, but the Captain refused to take it because he said that he was in an adjustment stage. So, the First Sergeant kept the request in his desk, but then Hastings began coming into the tent every day to ask what action the Captain had finally taken. The First Sergeant knew right away that Hastings was crazy because he had a wild look in his eye, and he also said that the Captain was a coward for not facing him. In addition to that, Hastings began to look up the First Sergeant at odd times of the day to say that the Captain was functioning in a very unusual way; something would have to be done. When the First Sergeant finally decided that he had had enough of this, he went to the Captain and told him what was going on and asked him if he would, at least, look at this crazy Hastings’ request, but the Captain said that it would take him at least several months to be acculturated to the degree where he would be able to occupy a judgmental role; in the meantime, he could not be disturbed by strange requests. Then, the Captain leaned over his desk and said that, just between them, he felt that Hastings was crazy: he was not functioning like an adult in a situation made for men. When he heard this, the First Sergeant laughed wildly and relayed this message to Hastings, hoping that it would satisfy him and that now the man would finally leave him alone, but Hastings said that all of this just proved his point: the Captain was insane. Hastings asked the First Sergeant if he would help him to get the Captain put away. All of this was going on then; the Captain saying one thing and Hastings another, both of them insane; and in addition to this, the limited war was still going on; it was going on as if it would never stop which, of course, it would not. The First Sergeant would have written his wife again if he had not completely forgotten her address and previously thrown away all of her letters. Hastings and the Captain were on top of him all the time now, and neither of them had the faintest idea of what they were doing. Only a man who had been through four wars and eight limited actions could comprehend how serious the war effort was. Three days a week the company had a forest to capture; three days a week they had the cliffs to worry about, and on Mondays they had all of the responsibility of reconnoitering and planning strategy, and all of this devolved on the First Sergeant; nevertheless, neither of them would leave him alone. The First Sergeant had more duties than any man could handle: he supervised the officers’ tents and kept up the morale of the troops: he advised the officers of the lessons of his experience, and he had to help some of the men over difficult personal problems; no one, not even a combat veteran such as himself, could handle it. He slept poorly now, threw up most of his meals, found his eyesight wavering so that he could not handle his rifle in combat, and he decided that he was, at last, falling apart under the strain. If he had not had all of his obligations, he would have given up then. They were that ungrateful, the whole lot of them. Hastings, the Captain; the Captain, Hastings: they were both lunatics, and on top of that, there was the matter of the tents and the communications. One night, the First Sergeant had his penultimate inspiration. In an agony of wild cunning, he decided that there was only one way to handle things. And what was better, he knew that he was right. No one could have approached his level of functioning. He got up at three o’clock in the morning and crept through the forest to the communications tent and carefully, methodically, lovingly, he tore down the equipment, so that it could not possibly transmit, and then he furiously reconstructed it so that it looked perfect again. Then, he sat up until reveille, scribbling out headquarters communiqués, and he marked DELIVERED in ink on all of the company’s messages to headquarters. After breakfast, he gave these messages to the Captain, and the Captain took them and said that they were typical headquarters crap; they were the same as ever. The Captain said then that sometimes, just occasionally, you understand, he thought that Hastings might have a point, after all. The First Sergeant permitted himself to realize that he had stumbled on to an extremely large concept; it was unique. Nothing that day bothered him at all. The next morning, he got up early again and crept through the cliffs to the communications tent and wrote out three headquarters messages advising the Captain to put his First Sergeant on the point. When the Captain read these, he looked astonished and said that this had been his idea entirely; the First Sergeant led the column that day, firing his rifle gleefully at small birds overhead. He succumbed to a feeling of enormous power and, to test it, wrote out no messages at all for the next two days, meanwhile keeping the company’s messages in a DELIVERED status. The Captain said that this was a pleasure, the bastards should only shut up all the time like this. On the third day, the First Sergeant wrote out a message ordering that company casualties be made heavier to prove interest in the war effort; two men were surreptitiously shot that day in combat by the Junior-Grade Lieutenants. By then, the First Sergeant had already decided that, without question, he had surpassed any of the efforts of western civilization throughout five hundred generations of modern thought. Headquarters seemed to take no notice. Their supply trucks came as always; enlisted men looked around and cursed with the troops and then went back. They did not even ask to see the First Sergeant because he had let it be known that he was too busy to be bothered. The First Sergeant got into schedule, taking naps in the afternoon so that he could refer daily stacks of headquarters messages m the early morning. One morning, he found that he felt so exceptionally well that he repaired the equipment, transmitted Hastings’ request for convalescent leave without a tremor, affixed the Captain’s code countersignature, and then destroyed the radio for good. It seemed the least that he could do in return for his good luck. This proved to be the First Sergeant’s last error. A day later, a Corporal came from headquarters to see the Captain, and later the Captain came looking for the First Sergeant, his white face stricken with confusion. He asked who the hell had allowed that Hastings to sneak into the tent and to get hold of the equipment? The First Sergeant said that he did not know anything about it, but it was perfectly plausible that this could happen; he had other duties and he had to leave the radio, sometime or other. The Captain said that this was fine because headquarters had now ordered Hastings’ recall and had arranged for him to be put in a hospital. The Corporal had come up to say something about a psychiatric discharge. The First Sergeant said that he would handle this, and he started to go to the Corporal to say that Hastings had just died, but the Captain followed and said that this was not necessary because he himself had had Hastings’ future decided; he would take care of things now. The Captain said that Hastings was not going to get out of any damned company of his any way at all; he would make things so hot for that lunatic now that it would not be funny for anyone at all. The Captain said that he was in control of the situation and there was no doubt about that whatsoever. The Sergeant left the Captain’s presence and went outside to cry for half an hour, but when he came back, he found the space empty, and he knew exactly what he was going to do. He stayed away from the Captain until nightfall and, as soon as it was safe, dictated a total war communiqué. In the morning, breathing heavily, he delivered it to the Captain. The Captain read it over twice and drooled. He said that this was the best thing that had ever happened to anyone in the entire unfortunate history of the Army. He said that he would go out immediately and make a speech to his troops. The First Sergeant said that he guessed that this would be all right with him; if he inspired them, it could count for something in combat. The First Sergeant did not even try to listen to the mad Captain’s idiotic speech. He only stood behind and waited for it to finish. When Hastings came over after it was done and cut the Captain’s rear end harmlessly with a bayonet, the First Sergeant laughed like hell. But later, when he went to the broken equipment, wondering if he could ever set it up again, he was not so sure that it was funny. He wondered if he might not have done, instead, the most terrible thing of his entire life. Much later and under different circumstances, he recollected that he had not. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This collection contains four assassination stories, a total not exceeded by any science-fiction writer other than the redoubtable J. C. Ballard who is not, however, an American and therefore does not count. We Americans are experts on assassination, perhaps the only people in the history of God who not only do it, but can turn a profitable mini-passion on it every two years or so. It stands to reason that an American science-fiction writer should, sooner or later, try to do a serious body of work on the subject, although, of course, there is little future in it. Death To The Keeper is chronologically the first and the best of them. It even brings in the question of copulation, no small fringe benefit when you are dealing with murder and murderers. DEATH TO THE KEEPER PIPER: The disastrous consequences of George Stone’s live (?) appearance on the INVESTIGATIONS show of October 31 are, of course, very much on my mind at the present time. I can find little excuse or explanation for the catastrophic events which have followed so rapidly upon its heels: the gatherings which the press so helpfully informs us are “riots,” the general upheavals in the national “consciousness” and that climactic, if ill-planned, assault upon the person of our Head of State last week. No American more than I, William Piper, deplores these events; no American is more repelled by their implications. It was truly said that we are a land of barbaric impulses; our ancestors were savages and our means consequently dramatic, that is to say, theatrical. But at the point at which I, William Piper, become implicated in these events, implicated to the degree that responsibility is placed upon my shoulders, at the point at which I am held responsible for these disasters simply because I permitted the renowned and retired actor George Stone, for private and sentimental reasons, to utilize the format of our INVESTIGATIONS show to act out a dramatic rite which was the product of his sheer lunacy; it is at that point, as I say, that I must disclaim. I disclaim totally. How was I to know? In the first place, I had not seen or dealt with George Stone for the past 14 years and, following his reputation as it curved and ascended through the media, thought him merely to be a talented actor, superbly talented that is to say, whose appearance on our show would function to divert our audience and to educate them well, that joint outcome to which INVESTIGATIONS, from the beginning, was dedicated. In the second place, although I was aware that Stone had gone into a “retirement” somewhere around the time of the assassination, I did not connect the two, nor did I realize that Stone had gone completely insane. If I had, I certainly would have never had him on my production, and you can be sure of that. Piper is not an anarchist. Piper does not believe in sedition. While INVESTIGATIONS, product of my mind and spirit, came into being out of my deepest belief that the Republic had no answers because it was no longer asking questions, the program was always handled in a constructive spirit; and it was not our purpose to bring about that mindless disintegration which, more and more, I see in - the web of our country during these troubled days. That is why I feel the network had no right to cancel our presentation summarily, and without even giving us a chance to defend ourselves in the arena of the public spirit. And the recent remarks of our own President, when he chose to say during a live press conference, which no doubt was witnessed by some seventy millions, that the present national calamity could be ascribed wholly to the irresponsibilities of “self-seeking entrepreneurs who permit the media to be used for any purposes which will sell them sufficient packages of cigarettes,” were wholly unfortunate and, to a lesser man, would have been provocative. Not only is Piper no self-seeker, Piper has nothing whatever to do with the sale of cigarettes. We sold spot times to the network; what they did with their commercials was their business. I have not smoked for 17 years, and had no knowledge or concern with what products the network had discussed during our two-minute breaks, being far too busy setting my guests at ease, and preparing to voyage even deeper into the arena of the human heart. “Self-seeking entrepreneurs” indeed! The very moment the announcement of the thwarted attempt to enter the White House and kill our beloved President was flashed upon the networks, I prepared a statement urging the nation to be calm, and repeating the facts of Stone’s insanity. It was I, William Piper, who in the wake of the hurried and inaccurate reports as to the size and true intentions of the invading forces, called a press conference and there offered my services to the Administration in whatever capacity they would have me. Is this the performance of a seditionist? But there has been no peace. Ever since Stone’s spectacular public plunge some seven weeks ago, ever since his convulsions and death (now, blame me; say that I gave him poison) it has been Piper, Piper, Piper. Had Stone lived, the accusation would have gone where it belonged: on his curved, slightly sloping shoulders, and he would have had much to answer, crazy or not. But because of his unfortunate demise, everything explodes upon the “entrepreneur” who happened to be merely helpless witness to convulsion. Is this fair? But it is not the purpose of this introduction to be self-pitying or declamatory. Piper spits at such gestures; Piper transcends them. It is only, as it were, to set the stage for the revelations which follow; such revelations speaking for themselves and which publication will fully and finally rid Piper of this incipient curse. Thanks to the production skill and merchandising genius of Standard Books, Incorporated, I have been assured that this small publication will receive the widest distribution imaginable, being fully covered for foreign rights in all countries of the Western world (that is about all that one can expect) and with a fair chance of subsidiary, that is stage and motion picture rights, being taken up as well. The dissemination of this volume will serve, once and for all, to perish all doubts of Piper’s patriotism and, as well, will free him, I am sure of that threatened business for sedition which is now working itself laboriously (but successfully) through the network of the appellate division. They don’t have any kind of case; my lawyer assures me they have no case at all. Let me explain the background of this. In the aftermath of that INVESTIGATIONS segment during which George Stone, once a renowned actor, attempted to reenact the assassination of our martyred President and ended by dying before the cameras; in the aftermath of that it was necessary, of course, for his environs to be searched, his personal effects placed under government security, and the whole history of his psychosis, needless to say, to be traced. Because the performance occurred on those very premises where Stone had spent the last years of his tragic life, and due to my own heroic efforts to have these premises secured, government and military authorities were able to make a total inventory at once. Billboards were seized, posters, newspapers, political works, magazines, personal paraphernalia of all kinds, stray bits of food secreted within hidden places of the wall, and so on. Also found was the journal which follows. This journal, kept by the actor during the week immediately preceding his appearance on the INVESTIGATIONS program proves, beyond the shadow of any man’s doubt, that the actor was completely insane, that his appearance was plotted with the cunning of the insane for the sole purpose of assaulting the precarious balance of the Republic, and that William Piper and INVESTIGATIONS were, from the start, little more than the instruments through which George Stone plotted insurrection. Why then, you ask, was this journal not immediately released to the public, thereby relieving all innocent parties of responsibility and halting, before they began, so many of these dread events? There is no answer to that. Our Government refuses to speak. Indeed it has not, to this day, acknowledged the existence of such a journal, stating over and again through its mouthpieces that the actor “left no effects.” The Government is monolithic; the Government is imponderable. Nevertheless, and due to these most recent events, the Government, mother of us all, must be protected from itself. A carbon copy of this journal, hidden in the flush box of Stone’s ancient toilet, was found by employees of INVESTIGATIONS during a post-mortem examination of the premises three weeks ago, and immediately placed into Piper’s hands. Piper, in turn, hastens to release it to the widest possible audience. Let me make this clear again: this journal will prove without shadow of doubt that Stone was insane and perpetrated a massive hoax through the persona of the late President, and that all of us were ignorant and gloomy pawns he moved through the patterns of his destiny. There is no way to sufficiently emphasize that point. It will recur. The hasty publication of this journal, with foregoing textual matter by William Piper, has led to disgraceful rumors within and without the publishing field that said journal is spurious, is not the work of George Stone, and was prepared by the staff of William Piper solely to relieve himself of present dangers. Having the courage of my format, I will come to grips with this mendacity forthrightly by acknowledging its existence and by saying that it is scurrilous. How could this journal possibly be spurious? It was found above Stone’s own toilet seat. Besides, it exhibits, in every fashion, the well-known and peculiar style of this actor; its idiosyncrasies are his, its convolutions are the creation of no other man. Its authenticity has been certified to by no less than Wanda Miller who, as we all know, lived with the actor during those last terrible years, and was privy to his innermost thought. If she says it is the work of Stone, how can we possibly deny? I therefore present, with no further comment, the journal of George Stone. Present difficulties notwithstanding, and with all sympathy for the embattled Administration, I must point out that this should bring, once and for all, an end to this business. How could I possibly have •had anything to do with Stone’s performance? I was merely the focus, the camera, the static Eye. The vision, the hatred, the pointlessness of all of it was Stone’s own, as is the creation of all madmen. “Re-enact and purge national guilt by becoming the form of the martyred President and being killed again!” Yes, indeed! Is such nonsense the product of a sane mind? And now let it speak for itself. STONE: Yes, here it is: I have it right here. I wrote it down somewhere and I knew it was in this room. Well, I found the little son of a gun. Right under the newspapers on the floor. I must remember to be more organized. Wanda won’t like it if I don’t get organized. She’s warned me— rightly—many times about this. Live and learn, I say; live and learn. I WILL NOT SCATTER MY SHEETS. Anyway, I’ve got it. The whole memory, just as I transcribed it yesterday. Or the day before. July 11, 1959. It is July 11, 1959, in Denver and Stone is acting Lear again. He—that is, I—am acting him half on history and half on intention, trapped in all the spaces of time, the partitions of hell. Space is fluid around me, shifting as it does defined only by rows, by heads, by dim walls, by my own tears and tread. Sight darts crosswise. I act Lear as only I, George Stone, the flower of his generation, can, while the cast stands respectfully in the wings like relatives at a baptism, while lights twitch and hands wink. For I, George Stone, am Lear. It is the Gloucester scene and old Earl, my familiar and my destiny, stands behind, playing mutely while I rant. He is fat, he is bald, he is in fact old Alan Jacobs himself, familiar as God, as empty as death . . . but no matter; I am alone. I extract the words carefully, reaching inside to make sure that what they mean is still there; the burning, the burning. “... I know thee well; thy name is Gloucester; I shall preach to thee, so listen...” And the burning leaps, the burning leaps. “...When we are born, we cry that we are come To this great stage of fools.., this a good block; It were a madness to shoe a troop of horse With felt; so when I steal upon these sons-in-law, Then, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill kill!” Do you hear me, Jacobs? “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill!” I wheel upon the bastard; I take old Earl by the shoulders, and I move to vault him on the sea. He trembles in my grasp, and I feel his false surfaces shake; he gasps and groans but no matter for I am beyond his objection: I drag him to the sheer, clear cliff and topple him over, send him shrieking ten stories searching for the ground until he hits with a thud and in an explosion of sawdust, his brains spill free and then, cotton as they are, turn green in the fading light. So much for Lear. Sa, sa, sa, sa. For I can kill; I can kill and now, against that wooden sky I scream murder so that they can hear; so that all of them can hear. No more of this magic, I say; no more of these imprecations against the nailed skull: in Lear, no one kills; no one ever kills, but let us have no more magicians. Attendants come. They have detected something in the wings, something they were not supposed to see. Ah, here they are: eight of them in a row, carrying a jacket of mail for my arms, my legs. They are coming for the old King; greet the world. I flee. From stage center to left I go, nimble as light, stuffed like a porpoise. The spot cannot pin me; oh, boy, I transcend vision itself. Sa, sa, sa, sa. Stone is acting Lear again. In Denver, in the vault of the unborn, in all the Denvers of the skull, in the sun of the city itself while the Keeper walks straight through those who love him. Perpetual Lear; perpetual Stone. He had such plans, he did, that no one knew what they were. But they would be the terror of the earth. On the other hand, does this make much sense? All of this is fine for me, fine for Wanda: we know what’s going on here, and that Jacobs business in Denver was just terrible (did I kill him?) prefiguring, as it did, so much which followed. But I am no impressionist; not me, not George Stone. Got to get the material in shape circumspectly; from one thing to the next, all in its place and at last to end with something meaningful. So let me structure the materials as I structured a role; let me resist that impulse which is simply to implode my own skull; sprinkle this stinking cellar with thoughts and curses. Where is Piper? He promised to be here three days ago. The profligate louse; you can trust him for nothing but this time I have the goods and he’ll be here. My reputation. That alone makes it worth it. STONE RETURNS TO PUBLIC LIFE ENACTING HIS OWN CREATION BEFORE YOUR EYES. Yes, that should do it. He loves that. But why isn’t he here yet? Oh, Wanda, Wanda; I’ll grasp a proper grasp to show you what I think of you! We need an organized journal. Part one, part two, but first, by all means a prospectus. Begin with the beginning: THE BEGINNING So. It began like this: it was, for me, as if the worst of blood ran free in heaven because the worst said they had risen to confront and destroy the best; that they wouldn’t take it any more; don’t need none of this crap. It was a shattering, because no body politic can exist forever in two parts. Oh, I had it figured out so elegantly. I had it made. For me it was like this: it was benefit Friday for the Queens chapter of one league or another; the curtain was scheduled to rise at two, and at one I was comfortably settled in full costume, fully prepared with nothing to do for an hour but sit and get in some serious time on the gin which I had thoughtfully stocked at the beginning of the run. I sat there for a while, drinking like that, and listening to the radio, and after a while the Announcement came through. I shut off the radio and went down the hall, looking for the stage manager. Oh yes, he had heard it too; he had a television set in his office, and now they had broken into all kinds of programs with the Word. Yes, he believed that it was true; someone like the Keeper was bound to get it one of these days, and besides, every man elected in the even number years ending with 0 since 1860 had died in office. He had known the Keeper wouldn’t make it from the start. And it looked how he was right, not that it gave him any pleasure and not, thank God, that he had any idea what was really going on. I left the stage manager. Back in my own room, whisk close the door, listen some more and came the Second Announcement. The Keeper was dead. I corked the gin and put it away, put my feet up and began to think the thoughts I have mentioned above, the best and worst and coming together and all of that. They certainly made me feel better, because my legs got numb right away, and I was convinced that if anyone was part of the best, I was. Didn’t the notices say so? Everybody knows Stone. After a while, the stage manager came into my room, and said that he had decided to call off the performance. Would I make the announcement? “After all, it’s your play,” he said. “Nobody else should do it. They’ll feel better if they hear it from you.” “Why not just pipe it in and let them go home? Much easier. “Can’t do that. Equity rules, you know. Anytime there’s a major change in a performance, a member of the cast has to announce it, from the stage.” “This isn’t a change, it’s a cancellation.” “Fight it out with Equity. There’s no precedent. You do it.” “Can’t say I want to.” “Who does?” So I did it. Can one explain the barbarity of that occasion? The theatre was virtually filled, then, and the news did not seem to have come to the audience; they were all sitting there in a spray of contentment, waiting for the curtain to rise on the eminent George Stone in MISERY LOVES COMPANY (doesn’t it?), and there I came as the house lights darkened, to stand before the curtain with the servile tilt of the jester. They quieted, and a spot came on me. “Ladies and gentlemen,” the jester said, “I have an announcement. I am most entirely sorry to say that this performance will be canceled.” That seemed to sit fairly well: a few stirrings but nothing drastic. The jester, pleased with his success, decided, however, that they deserved in the bargain to understand the cancellation (not being caused by the jester’s health), and so he hastened to serve them: “As you might know,” he said, “our Keeper has been shot in the Southlands, and it appears that he was killed instantly. While we await official notification, it seems certain in the interim that he is no longer with us. Our new Keeper is already at the helm, of course, and will serve us well.” There was a faint murmur, and the lights began to tremble upward again; the jester looked out into the full eye of the house and noted that they were confronting him. They were confronting him. “A most terrible tragedy,” he said helpfully, “and I am sure that all of you could be induced to join in a moment of prayer for the departed Keeper.” Not a good ploy. There were no bent heads, no shared mutterings during which the jester could make graceful exit. Instead, they continued to look at him. And look. And the jester had an insight then, in that moment when all of the barriers were down and that ancient and most terrible relation between actor and audience had been established, killers and prey . . . the jester realized that they were staring at him as if he were the assassin. If he wasn’t, why had he interrupted their revels with such news? What had he done? How long had it taken him and how, then, had he been able to return to this stage so quickly? Well, he had given the news, hadn’t he? He, the perpetrator, had made it known. So, then— It was a difficult period for the jester, and it lasted several seconds until, by sheer heroic will, he compelled himself to take his handsome, if slightly gnarled, frame off the stage and into the wings. He hardly wanted to do so, of course; what he wanted to do—that is, what I wanted to do, what I wanted to say—was to confront them in return and have it out, lay it on the line. Excuse me, I wanted to say: excuse me, ladies and gents, but I cannot be held responsible for drastic acts committed by lunatics In a distant place. I am, after all, only an actor, an occupation never noted for its ability to perpetrate with originality. That is what I might have said . . . but, to be sure, I said nothing at all. The moment passed, the confrontation went under the surface to muddle with other things. They rose, and as I watched them—having decided that it would, after all, be a mistake to leave the stage—they left. And, oh god, I hated them, then. I hated their greedy need for a perpetrator as I hated my own tormented and quivering mind; I despised them and shuddered at how close these had come to evicting some final ghosts. But they were right. They were right, you see; it was as simple as that, and as deadly. Oh, it took me a long, long time to apprehend that knowledge which they had so easily and effortlessly assimilated. I was the killer. The killer of their Keeper. You can imagine the effect that it had upon me; it was simply catastrophic. I was appalled. It was appalling. It shocked me to the core of my innocent actor’s being. What happens? I asked myself in the empty theatre, uncapping my bottle of gin; what is going on, here? We must define some limits and stay within. Easier methods by far to dispose of a Keeper; quiet strangulation or death by pater; poison in the tonic and leeches in the bed. This was going too far, I said. I sat before the media and wept for the whole three days, and shortly thereafter I left MISERY LOVES COMPANY. I left the play, found myself a proper slut to bed and plan with; and a fortnight after that I came to my present quarters, this reeking, stinking abandoned theatre, once a whorehouse, before that a slaughtering mart. A rich, a muddled history: this building is descending into the very earth of the lower East Side of Manhattan; in two hundred years it will peep shyly through a crown of mud. But that has nothing to do with me. I lie here content with my notes, with my intentions, and with Wanda; always Wanda. Together, then, we work out my condition, my final plan and the plan becomes fruition through the corpus and instrumentation of William Piper. Ah, Wanda, Wanda; I’ll make my skull a packing case for your scents, for my waters. I’ll toss you a touch to make the alter jump. My condition. All of it, my condition. For the Keeper’s death, too, was an abstraction, and it did what nothing else could have done; sped me gaily to the edge of purpose; found me a proper slut and a proper tune. And now, to be sure, a proper destiny. For the secret shorn bare is this: it made everything come together. Without it I was nothing, a child trapped in dim child’s games; but with it, ah with it, I moved to new plateaus, new insights on the instant. No one ever killed a King but helped the Fool. Focused so, with edge and purpose at last, I feel within me wandering, the droning forebears of a massive fate. So endeth THE BEGINNING. We move forward jauntily now, a fixed smile on our anxious face; the old, worn features turned blissful and unknowing, toward the sun. So, before the act be done, before Piper and his technicians come to unroll the final implements of purpose, chronologize a little; we explain ourselves. Writing this late at night as I must, I can make little order; the entries flickering in time and space would be the ravings of a madman were I not so sane. Barriers must be smashed in any event; fact and fantasy must be melded together. As the Keeper knew. Wow, did he know! But one last terror remains in these rooms, then, and that must be this: that when it is all over and when police come for my belongings, find this and turn it upon a fulfilled, grateful world, these notes may be taken as clinical offering; may, indeed, be found by Piper and his troops themselves and disseminated as “culture.” Oh, I know your tricks, Piper; I know the corridors of your cravening soul and you will try, you will, to reduce these to pure case notes, more symptomology. But if this be so, be forewarned, Piper: I will not be a document, I will not be a footnote. Not me, George Stone; I will purge the national guilt by being the Keeper and plunging, at last, the knife into myself; take that, you bastard, and I’ll free you all. So, chronologize a little. My name is George Stone. I am an actor. I am the greatest actor of my time. Read the notices. Look at my Equity card. It checks out. I know more than that. Thirteen seasons ago, when I was young and full of promise, I acted in repertory theatre on the black and arid coast of Maine . . . a cluster of barely reconverted buildings on some poisoned farmland, a parking lot filled with smashed birds and the scent of oil; those dismal sea winds coming uninvited into all the spaces of the theatre. From this, I learned everything I know about the human condition. How could I not? Life, you see, is a repertory theatre; each of us playing different roles on different nights, but behind the costume, always the same bland, puzzled face. Oh, we wear our masks of so many hues night after night that the face is never seen: tonight a clown and last night a tragic hero and tomorrow perhaps the amiable businessman of a heavy comedy of manners, and next week off to another barn. But underneath the same sadness, the unalterability: the same, the same, the same. And so I know: I know what you wore Thursday and what the stage manager plans for you Monday night; I know while you pace the stage this Saturday, all activity, pipe clenched firmly in your masculine jaws, that crumpled in your dressing room lies the faggot’s horror. I know you. The power of metaphor is the power to kill. You deceive me not for I know all of your possibilities. Enough, enough. As always, I move from perception to abstraction, from the hard moment to the soft hour. Oh, I must stick to the subject, I must stay in the temple, the temple of the Keeper. Last night, I became 38. It was a poor enough birthday for the old monarch. Wanda brought me a cake, Wanda cut a slice and I ate it, Wanda blew out the candles, Wanda gave me congratulations. She too ate some, let me give her a pat and then, reaching, we tumbled to the slats and made our complex version of love; the bloat-king’s fingers tangling through her hair. It was not a bad birthday, but it was hardly a good one. Here it is: I got it down just the way it happened. Word by word. Wanda and I had a talk, after my party, and several matters were discussed freely and frankly: STONE: Wanda? Seriously, now. What do you think of me? WANDA: How’s that? STONE: Do you think this idea of mine is crazed, Wanda? A little mad? This matters to me, you being my world and all, you know. Is this a sane conceptualization; my re-enactment? WANDA: I don’t get it. STONE: You go out of doors, Wanda; these days I never do. You have perspective. You know things. The national guilt is really bad, isn’t it? They really need a purge, right? You haven’t mislead me into— WANDA: What do I have to do after all this time to prove to you that I’ll never betray you? STONE: I know; I know. But seclusion under such pressure must lead to difficulties. I am so frightened— WANDA: You’ll simply have to trust me. STONE: I do; I do. But I’m not a machine. I tell you, I am not merely an actor, I suffer. WANDA: Of course you do. STONE: You could hardly imagine the reach of my passion were you not living with me. Consider what I have taken upon myself. The burden of a nation. The lost Keeper. All of that. WANDA: Sure. STONE: I’m no martyr; my uses are concentrated into the fact of my humanity. You do believe in the reality of my quest, don’t you? (Anxiously) You share, don’t you? WANDA: Always, George. Anything at all. You really should rest now. You’re being overanxious again. Everything will be just fine when Piper comes, you can be sure of that. STONE: (Cunningly) What’s in it for you? WANDA: Huh? STONE: Surely there’s something in it for you, isn’t there? A fat contract. Notoriety. A contract for your memoirs. Even if national guilt weren’t so terrible, you’d say it wouldn’t you? WANDA: I don’t know how you can say that of me, George. STONE: Oh, it’s easy; I’ve lived in the world a long— WANDA: I’m really insulted that you think so of me. In fact, I think I’m going to bed. Good night. STONE: Wanda— WANDA: You’ll feel better in the morning, George. (Exits) STONE: She’s as guilty as the rest of them. My little closet drama. Wanda is suspect as well, of course, but happily enough, I do not care; a fine and grotesque mutuality, this: conceived for purposes as limited as they are relevant. And, as always for the jester, things voyage to a conclusion now. Nothing is eternal—not even Wanda’s delights—and this will end after all. We have outlived our possibilities, she and I. Perhaps my intentions were misguided. But I needed someone . . . an assistant, we shall say. I shall always need someone so terribly. Piper. Wanda is coming in now. Later: time for metaphysical notation. For I am sick, sick of metaphor; Wanda fed me and combed my poor, tumbling hair and pressed my hands to tell me that Piper was coming tomorrow, tomorrow with equipment and technicians. The broadcast will be tomorrow night. There is no time, then, for constructions; we must go to the heart of the issue. For I will tomorrow kill the Keeper, and the last that can be asked is that you know who I am. Curse you Piper, but I have my notes. “He finds the whole concept fascinating, George,” she said to me. “Particularly this feeling that the national guilt must be purged. He agrees with you there.” I bet he does. Fortunately, Wanda has been intermediary from the first—I will have nothing to do with minor relationships, and everything is worked through her, my bland familiar—and the rich implications of Piper’s agreement, viz., national guilt need never be explored. Only exploited. There is so little left to me. Twenty-four hours from now, then, where will I be, after Piper’s machines have wrung me through? I must do it now, now, I must make it clear; I must somehow trace the origin to the roots, past the trickling brown earth and the green stems into the gnarled, poisoned bases of life themselves, the liquid running thick in them, bubbling and choked like blood. I first learned that genocide existed in Europe when I was 10. My mother, a husky tart named Miriam—but we won’t get into that, not here, not ever—told me that I might as well face facts beyond the neighborhood: Jews were being killed in Europe by the millions while she hustled and I froze, and someday, if it and the Jews lasted long enough, I might find myself, some day, interceding for them. This news shook and grieved me for days; I wrote a long one-act play about an abstract, persecuted Jew; obscurely, I felt my mother responsible since, after all, she had broken the news. But not long after that, I met for the first time two of the participants in my mother’s vigorous scenario . . . a mixed pair of Schwartzes, who tenanted and barely ran a gloomy candy shop on a nearby corner, put up a sign in the window announcing that they were members of a refugee organization, displayed scars which, they stated, were caused by beatings administered by the milder bigots, and generally made concrete Miriam’s whispered injunction. I was not moved at all. I wasn’t moved; I didn’t give a damn. They were two raddled Jews; they raised prices in the store by a fifth, which was hardly justified by their curiously bland and self-indulgent tales of horror; even the exemplification was drab. The worst things had happened not to them but to people they had heard of. So one day, in a capitalistic outpouring of patriotism, I overturned the candy counter directly on Schwartz-pater’s thigh, and ran. And I took my business elsewhere. Was that the first inkling of my condition? Call the Keeper. Well, this then: once I took an acting course in a great university: I was 17 and wanted to understand why I was gripped by what ‘has always possessed me. (As my obituaries will remind you, I left the course and the university at the end of the fourth week, but that is not the point. Nor is Miriam’s reaction relevant.) The instructor warned us in an early lecture that the act of drama was but this: that it began in the particular and moved toward the general; originating as it did in the passion and moving later to the implications. We listened well; we took notes. Remember, he said, when a role is acted, don’t worry about what you mean; think about how you feel. Find an image and work from that. Leave the meaning to the professionals. Just feel, feel. Ah, yes. Is there some way I can inform the gentleman that my most stunning roles—moving through the decades of my greatness and culminating in the Lear of Denver, the greatest and least human of all Kings, they called me— emerged from the most intricate, the least applicable convolution? Is there? Does that inkle to my condition? I call the Keeper. And this too: I took a wife. The year was 1953. Her name was Simone Tarquin. She was a designer in that repertory on the coast of Maine. She was 22, she was accomplished, she was lovely, my darling, in the rocks and curling waters. How she rose to greet me— We met in July; I thought I loved her. She knew (she said) that she loved me in June, in all the springs of her life, and that was good enough for me; quickly, quickly, we chose to marry. I had had no time for women in those twenty-five Struggling Years; there was too much to do and too much to flee, and the conceit of having one of my own, at last, to play with for as long and lavishly as I chose was a pretty, pretty, pretty one. In the fall I had a contract at a university theatre; Simone would undertake graduate design on the other side of the country. So, our maddened lover’s plans went like this: she would telegram her resignation and join me in the Midwest to type or file in a reconverted barracks; in the night we would build and fondle until a summons came from the East, saying that our time was up; we had transcended suffering. We might even have a child during the struggling period, just to fill out the picture. That was the way it was; we had it figured out. Ah, God. I have not said that I was a virgin in those days; so I was, but she was not. Solemn confessions were traded during the premarital experience, and agreed to be of no consequence at all. But we decided to defer consummation; after all, there was no reason to further dishonor her (my thoughts). One Saturday, license in hand, we were married before the cast and crew; we said farewell to them and with noisy enthusiasm went straight to the nearest motel, a gloomy, shabby structure four miles from the barns themselves. We parked the car. We removed our luggage. We checked in. We entered our room. We placed down our luggage. We undressed. We had at one another. And, yes, I can block the scene; yes, I can dredge through the channels of memory for the perfect, frozen artifact; yes, it is there like a horrid relative, ready for resuscitation on all necessary occasions and sometimes unbidden between. Yes, yes, yes, it happened this way: SIMONE: Well, here we are. STONE: Yes. SIMONE: Naked, too. STONE: Indeed. SIMONE: So, come here. STONE: Yes. One second. SIMONE: What’s wrong with you, anyway? You look kind of funny. STONE: (Opening windows, inhaling deeply, fanning himself and knocking a fist against the wall) Kind of warm in here, wouldn’t you say? SIMONE: Silly. They have air conditioning. (She hugs herself.) STONE: Probably isn’t working. SIMONE: Anyway, there’s plenty of air now. Why don’t you come here? STONE: One minute. SIMONE: What’s wrong? You seem kind of cold all of a sudden. STONE: Nothing is wrong. Nothing. SIMONE: (Showing herself) Don’t you like me? STONE: What a question... SIMONE: (Some unprintable, if not untheatrical gestures) Well? STONE: Of course I like you. I love you. You look lovely. SIMONE: So then... STONE: So, I love you. SIMONE: Why are you lighting that cigarette? Stop it! STONE: Well, it’s already lit, so that’s that. Might as well finish it now. Be right with you. (He puffs grotesquely.) SIMONE: (After a pause) I don’t like this, George. What do you think I am, the blushing virgin? I told you, I’ve been around. I m no teenager and I know what’s going on. Now either get that miserable cigarette out or. STONE: (Trying to be cheerful) It’s almost done now. SIMONE: What’s wrong? STONE: Don’t be dramatic, Simone; I’m the actor here. Nothing’s wrong. I love you. I’m just a little warm—I meant to say cold—in here. SIMONE: Then come here. (More theatrical gestures) STONE: I’m coming. Coming now. (Disposes of cigarette) See? SIMONE: Closer. STONE: Like that? SIMONE: Not quite. More like this. And this. And this. At this point our curtain falls chastely for some moments or hours; the scene behind is as predictable as it is monolithic and dull but there are limits to this playwrights gift for metaphor, and one has been reached now. Of course, one could do this scene in mask and symbol, showing Simone gripping a large, earless rabbit, but such is too tasteless even for that commedia dell’arte the sensibility likes to play in the vault in that noon of dreams. No, no: better to let the curtain fall. After some period of time—’perhaps allowing audiences to think about matters and even to do some experimentation of their own—it rises. SIMONE: (In a state of some agitation, twisting to her side of the bed, holding the sheets closely around her and looking wildly toward the corners of the room) What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong? STONE: Ah— SIMONE: Oh boy, do I see it now! STONE: Ah— SIMONE: It figured. Goddamn, did it figure! STONE: (Really speechless; this ingratiating and benevolent presence unable to make connection with his audience for one of the few times on record.) Ah—now, look Simone. Ah, Simone— SIMONE: Actors! You keep away from me! STONE: (He can respond to that.) You bet I will. SIMONE: Are you crazy? What’s inside there? STONE: I don’t know. Nothing’s inside, all right? Nothing. Is that what you want to hear? SIMONE: I want to hear nothing from you. STONE: You won’t! You won’t then! But the others will. Everybody will hear of me. I’ll fix them. (He is distraught.) SIMONE: Wow. Wow! STONE: Let’s get out of ‘here. SIMONE: I’ll buy that. I’ll just buy it, friend. That’s the ticket. STONE: Go—ah—go into the bathroom and dress. SIMONE: Turn your back. (He does so and she exits hurriedly stage left, gathering garments as she goes, exuding a faint mist, tossing various parts of her body.) And I want you ready to leave by the time I come out. STONE: I’ll be ready. SIMONE: Good; good for you. STONE: I’ll be ready; I’ll be ready. I’ll be so damned ready you never saw anything like it in your whole life, you bitch! The curtain falls. Or, it does not fall—for somewhere, right now, it is yet open, the actors staggering through the, banalities; in all of the rooms of the world, the mind, it goes on right now. You as well as the jester have lived through it all too many times; all have dreamed it’s horrid possibilities on wedding eves; speak to me not, then of divisions in lives. For as it ends, it yet goes on, leaving nothing more to play: I have no interpretations, nor shade, nor form to all of this, nor perspective against which to place it: it is done but it is undone, for at this moment it is going on, it goes on right now; it goes on… Does that abate my condition? Call; call the Keeper. Only this, only this must be said, which is: that I wanted all women that night but not this woman, that I wanted all flesh, but not that flesh, that I wanted the mystery but not the outcome, and in touching that flesh—in touching Simone’s breasts, those wonderful abstractions which had dazzled and goaded and seized me with groans as their clothed representation glided past me so many times—that when I touched them, I found those breasts tough, resilient, drooping bags empty of mystery and redundant of hope; they were flesh, mere flesh freed of that which entrapped it: say too that I found her arms of stone, her thighs of wood and her lips like clay, mere clay; and pressed against her, holding her like a tumbled doll, I knew that by wanting everything, I had taken nothing; by being possessed of the totality, I had lost the elements; by seeking God, I had lost my soul and that in the dream of all flesh, I had lost my flesh. And so, I too had had a dream: I dreamed that in the wanting of the fullness, I had lost the oneness, and that entering the cave of time, I had lost the lamp of self and that the light, all of the light, was one. Light, light, give him some light, give the old King some bulb of hell. But there was more, too: it took me a long time to see that there was something else as well, and in the years to come, I learned; I learned by dint of cunning to enter and haunt their channels; I learned with Wanda how to do it and I did it; I did it with luck and skill (by closing my eyes and making pretty pictures); and now, as I lie with Wanda again and again, I lie, afterward, shaken and empty beside her and wonder how it would have been with Simone. Because the secret was all in the pictures; once you knew how to make the pictures, everything else would fall into place. Suppose I had done it with her, then; suppose I had found the way and had taken Simone shuddering in our night: would I then have found a fullness in the oneness, instead of the Oneness outside this fullness? Would I? Would I? Where are you now, Simone? Where are you, my darling, absolved, annulled these many years and never to be seen again? I dream you then to be in a cave by the sea or in a paneled kitchen staring absently for the Time; perhaps you have become a dressmaker’s doll, but it does not matter; it does not matter for you are gone and gone. Gone, gone; lost, lost. It is done. Could you have saved me, Simone? Could you have rescued me through your flesh, through your wholeness from the noisome spaces of this tenement; the shape of my days, the flow of my disaster? Could I have held you, could I have found salvation in you? Could I? Could I? What could I have done? What there was to do I did not; what I did I should not have done. Is there anything ever done that would make any difference at all? Oh God, sometimes, dear, I think that I cannot bear it any longer; this filthy slut, this horrible life, these raving notes, this pointless re-enactment: oh, the twisted plans and the despair and the rage, I am so sick of it, I am so sick, listening to my tinny, tiny voice reverberating in the chambers of self; my own voice imploring, wheedling, ranting, going to periods of cunning, apologizing, searching, I cannot bear it anymore. Oh God, to live through it again with Piper; to implode with him in the reach of the Eye, and to be done with it, to be no more, no more, no more. Call the Keeper, I want the Keeper, give me the Keeper. Where is our Keeper? We have lost our Keeper. Death to the Keeper, death to the Keeper. Call the Keeper and give him death. Call the Keeper and give him dread. Let him know; let him know. Let him know love. Know love. Love, love, love. Death, death, death. Love, love, love. Death, death, death PIPER: That evening, on the INVESTIGATIONS format, George Stone, representing himself as the image of the fallen Keeper, re-enacted the assassination, thereby seeking to purge his country of “national guilt.” The dismal outcome, of course, made necessary the publication of his journal. I am so sure that his journal establishes beyond controversy the sole responsibility of the actor for the grievous events of today, and the complete victimization of Piper that I will say no more about it; no more; no more. Only one last irony remains: Stone felt that his act would purge us of “national guilt.” Purge us? One can only say, from this lamentable aftermath, that the precise opposite was accomplished. The attempt upon the person of the present President was disgraceful, and the ragged shouts of the fanatics, scurrilous as their leadership was damning, should convince us of the opposite. Certainly, there are things which should not be meddled with. Say I; says Piper: if there is poison on the shelf leave it there; leave it sit, fester, mold for the spaces of eternity; do not touch it for once touched, if the poison runs free, it becomes the communal blood and riots and danger and sedition trials and trouble with the press and loss of great sums of money and then they all go Out to get you just like they’ve been wanting to get you for thirty years but this time they have the chance and so the rotten stinking bastard sons of bitches never give you a moment’s peace but Piper doesn’t care because Piper has the truth and as long as man tells the truth he will be free—that’s what I say to them, the hell with them, the hell with all of you, just get off my back before I get you in real trouble, Piper knows, Piper thinks, Piper functions. Piper, Piper, Piper, Piper, Piper, Piper -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The schism in this field has never been clearer, of course: on the one side are the writers who are concerned with What We Will Do To (or With) Technology and on the other are those who write about What It Will Do To Us. Most of the so-called “serious” writers now fall into the latter category and although much of the work from this northern pole is inferior or semi-professional I don’t think there’s any question but that our hearts are in the right place and this story should show exactly where I line up. The terror of technology is that it is beyond our capacity to divine, let alone manipulate. A TRIPTYCH A SPECULATION: THE EARTH Miller floats slowly, revolving hand to heels, pulling up his T-shirt to show the outlines of his stomach. “Lice,” he says. Thomas tells him to stop this. I am working on the charts and therefore have no time to get between them, but I can sense their hatred. It is cold inside the capsule and soon enough Miller replaces his clothing and his suit, while Thomas checks out the equipment. INTIMATIONS FROM THE CENTER Miller says that if the retrorocket refuses to fire, he will spend the last week of his life telling everybody down on earth exactly what he thinks of them. “Remember,” he reminds us, “radio transmission will be unaffected. I intend to start at the beginning of my life and not stop until the present, and along the way I will make very clear that I. know what they have done to me. Right down to the last detail. I will give them a sense of communal guilt that will take them seventy years to outlive. I will personally tie up the project until the end of the century by destroying public opinion. I find being a potential sacrifice unpleasant, you see.” Thomas points out that all the tests indicate the rocket will fire perfectly; if not, this was something of which we were well aware before the flight and we had mid we could take the risks anyway. He reminds Miller as well that he is the commander and can bar this. To all of this Miller laughs. “We’ll have television too,” he says. “I’ll point out a few things to them on the way. A RETROSPECTION Control has reminded us to conscientiously avoid obscenities or double-entendres while on the network and to stay properly dressed and disciplined during the television interludes. It has been made clear to us that we must do nothing to offend the huge audience which comes along with us; furthermore, misbehavior can set the project back irreparably. Thomas has assented to this enthusiastically and has dedicated himself to enforcing tight discipline in the capsule, but Miller says that he is only waiting until the time when the retro-rockets fail, then he will do what is necessary. “We cannot live our lives as if the bottom two thirds of them do not exist,” he has said. “If we go out into space we carry the best and the worst of us all bound up together and we cannot behave otherwise.” I too find the instructions from control exceedingly irritating, but, of course, they have precedent; no one, to the best of our knowledge, has ever uttered a public curse while transmitting from space. There are rumors that during one of the first expeditions, one member of the crew, who will be referred to as X, was refused permission to join the others on radio transmission because he had previously threatened to wish his wife a happy birthday in a most graphic manner. Of course X said later that he had only been playing and that there had been no right to deny him greetings from space, but the commander on that voyage had not thought the chance worth taking. It is not that space is aseptic—I am cribbing from Miller here—but that the impression it makes upon all of us is that we should be on our best behavior. BEING ON MY BEST BEHAVIOR We defecate and urinate inside our spacesuits; plumbing would be impossible at this primitive stage of the project, and similarly the idea of placing receptacles around the craft was vetoed as a responsible level early in the project; the resulting mess would leave a very bad impression for the recovery crews, although we, of course, sealed inside our masks for the most part, would be oblivious to it. At those times that we took off our masks, the odor might remind us of our origins. Nevertheless, the rules on elimination are very strict, and we are careful to void just before the television transmissions so that there will be no possibility of an accident. AN IMPRESSION OF THE VASTNESS Looking out the windows, through the haze and the ice, we can glimpse the slow spin of the universe itself, working back against the frozen earth and moon which, from this angle, are stationary and pinned against what seems to be an enormous, toneless tent. Vague flickers of light seem to move in the distance, but the stars are no brighter than on a cloudy night on earth; perhaps we have a bad vantage point or perhaps the illusion of the brightness of stars is just that. Most of the time we try not to look out, although control, of course, is very interested in our impressions. Of particular interest are the comments Thomas makes on the appearance of the earth, its greenness, its homogeneous tranquility when seen from this enormous height. “It seems impossible to imagine war or strife; it seems impossible to imagine how the children of mankind cannot live together in peace and harmony faced with the awfulness of space,” Thomas says, and control asks him to repeat that; the transmission seems a bit unclear. THOMAS SPECULATES ON OUR DESTINY Away from the responsibility of the transmissions, not involved with challenging Miller, Thomas proves to be an entertaining relaxed man, full of the responsibility of being the commander but, at the same time, possessing that kind of humorous detachment which probably underlies his seniority. Surprisingly, I never got to know him very well at base; we are separated by ten years chronologically, and Thomas says that there is no way our generations can understand one another. Nevertheless, once the final flight plans were drawn and he came to understand that both Miller—whom he rather dislikes—and I would be accompanying him, he did everything within his power to establish a cordial relationship, including having Miller and myself over to dinner several times with his family, a dull, strapping group of people whose names, numbers and ages I have never been quite able to catch. Since Miller and I were not and never have been married or even keeping serious company, we were unable to reciprocate in that way. Now, in the capsule itself, Miller and Thomas rarely speak to one another, except during the broadcasts when a forced amiability must prevail; otherwise, they can get at one another only through me, Miller because he feels that by being his age I am an ally, Thomas because I have never made the kind of melodramatic threats which Miller has. Resultantly, Thomas must rely upon me for conversation, and since there is plenty of time for that—our tasks, despite all the publicity, are really minimal—I have gotten to know a good deal about him over the past few days; he believes that the importance of our mission is over-rated because it really has nothing to do with solving the problems back on earth, and yet, at the same time, he says he understands that the project is meeting needs for people which nothing on earth could allow. “This is why I don’t want any cursing on the broadcasts,” he says, “aside from anything which control would order. We have to make a fresh start; we can’t carry on and on this way, always and forever,” giving Miller a sidewise look. “X was a nice fellow but he thought the whole thing was a game, a power game, an adventure game; and that was why he got himself grounded, not only because of the dirty jokes. If it were up to people like X, we would inhabit all the places of the galaxy, and all of them would turn out like this one—the same poison, the same corruption. I don’t believe that we were born having to be this way; we just kind of evolved. There can be a counter-evolution in space. Miller, hearing all of this—there is no way he can avoid it—turns to ask if what Thomas really has on his mind is the banning of sex in space in addition to any scatological references. “You know that isn’t what I meant,” Thomas says angrily. “Well,” Miller replies, “the three of us can’t have sex together, not with those gadgets switching us into control anytime at all and without warning, so that means we have a flying start. Isn’t that right?”—and I have to make some remarks about course corrections in order to stave off the tension. ALL IS NOT ADVENTURE: WE SLEEP In the slow, turning night of the capsule, heavy and grasping under the load of seconal they have insisted we take, I can hear beyond Thomas’ slow, even breath at the watch the quicker, higher gasps coming over the radio; it is as if, lying in this entrapment, I were not alone but being surveyed by millions of eyes, all of the eyes frantic and burning, sunk in their lostness, trying to get a grip on me through the television receiver, trying to understand through the web of my sleep what separates my darkness in space from theirs on earth. It is an uncomfortable sensation to know what we are carrying on this voyage, and so I must spend the majority of my supposed sleep-time trying to count off the minutes and, for comfort, imagining that I am lying on a closely enclosed field surrounded by sheep. MILLER’S VISION OF THE FUTURE “As far as I can see, within fifty years, we’ll have such misery and congestion on earth as cannot be dreamt of now; such corruption and breakdown as to stagger the soul and then, spread out on the aseptic boards of the planets and their satellites, will be small colonies populated by people like Thomas, living in shells at a cost of one million dollars per square foot of gravity. And they’ll be in constant contact with the earth on a network of fourteen new television channels set up to receive each of the colonies; and in every barroom, in every living room throughout the nation will be a group of people sweltering in darkness, watching what is coming through on the sets and dreaming of a better end. And then there will be the riots, too; terrible riots when they’ll try to seize the project and get hold of the transmitter and kill the personnel, but they’ll always be stopped because the most real thing, the most important thing, will be what is going on in those colonies, and they’ll do everything to keep it coming in. “And the worst part of it is that they’ll live on Ganymede or Jupiter just the way regressed patients live in a clean mental hospital: plenty of paint and projects and no connection at all. So what’s beaming in will be worthless. That’s the thing I really can’t stand.” THE MOMENT OF CONNECTION After we settle into the orbit, Thomas reminds us that transmission will begin in fifteen minutes. We start the cameras clicking off their pictures of the moon, and Miller puts his helmet back on. I can see Thomas working on his suit with a rag he has appropriated from someplace; into the rag pours the grease and rust which the rays of space have pocketed on him. THE ATTEMPT TO BREAK FREE The retro-rockets fire immediately and we can feel the power drive us back against the seats; Thomas half rises from his chair and takes off his helmet. “See, I told you,” he says. “There was never any problem at all. The whole danger was concocted by control, just as a means of keeping their interest. Without danger, there’s no fun; you know that. Have to give them their bread and circuses.” But we can tell by the tone of his voice that Thomas too had questioned; if what he says is true, then it would have been even more logical for control to have arranged for us to stay there forever, a beacon and a monument, a symbol of the pride and death which intermingled are all we know of space. Miller too must understand this because he says nothing. “Well?” Thomas says to him, “are you sorry that you lost your opportunity. It would have been a great performance, a really great performance. And I wouldn’t have even tried to stop you; how’s that for a secret?” “I know you wouldn’t have,” Miller says, “and my secret is that I wouldn’t have done it, I would have been too scared. Only the really strong can do the things that they must die to do, and I am not that strong. But you are, Thomas. You would have done it. And that’s my secret.” I see then, in their laughter, that we have not been so far apart during this voyage after all; the distance was only a state of consciousness, not the terrible, drifting quarter of a million miles that we must yet go to return—to return to what? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- In 1961/2 and again in 1963/4 (I couldn’t get enough of it, you see) I was a social investigator for the NYC Dept. of Welfare, an interesting experience which in retrospect provided me with one good novel (Screen, Olympia Press, 1969) and this one good short story. I think that I would gladly exchange both of them not to have ever worked there and, therefore, not to know what I was really talking about in this story. HOW I TAKE THEIR MEASURE “. . . At the present rate, as I see it, by the year 2000 everybody is either going to be on welfare or administering it. I see no middle ground at all. Just consider the statistics . . .” Unit Supervisor NYC Dept. of Welfare January, 1964 I HAD TO CLIMB FIVE FLIGHTS to get to the fellow. It was hell, believe me. There’s nothing funny about these old-line tenements, particularly the carpeting they have on their stairs. It’s at least a century old and it’s slippery. Not to complain, however. Every job has its drawbacks. I knocked at his door several times and heard mumblings and complaints inside. The usual routine; they hate to get out of bed. After a while I turned the knocks into real bangs and added a few curses. There’s no sense in letting them feel they have the upper hand. It worked. The door opened about wide enough to accommodate head and shoulders. He was a small man, alert, bright eyes, a little younger looking than I would have figured from the application. “What you want?” he said. Sullen. Cautious. The usual business. I showed him my black book in one hand, the identifying card in the other. “Government. We’re here to investigate your application.” “I only filed yesterday. I thought it took a week.” “There’s a new procedure. We’re trying to catch up on our pending applications, move a little ahead.” That wasn’t strictly true; the truth was that his application had interested me the moment service had put it on my desk. Even on my caseload, he was something out of the ordinary. “All right, come in,” ‘he said and opened the door. I went in. The apartment was foul, absolutely foul. It is impossible to believe how these people live. Litter in every corner, newspapers, smudges of food on the walls. That kind of thing. Inexcusable. He saw me looking at it. “I’m demoralized,” he said. “Things generally get this way when the external disorder begins to correlate to the internal chaos.” Big shot. I nodded at that one, opened my book and very cautiously edged to the center of the room to take the interview. You never sit down where these people have sat. And you have to watch out all the time for rats and insects. That’s part of the training. “Want to ask you a few questions,” I said. “First—name, address and so on, all as verified on the application, right? John Steiner, 36 years old, this address.” “You have all that. They took it down yesterday.” “But we have to make sure it’s the same person,” I said. “Sometimes they send someone down for them, create a whole fictitious background. We’ve got to protect the public.” Before he could think about it I took out my thumbprint kit, opened it, took his wrist and pressed his thumb into the ink, then took the smudge on the paper inside and put the whole thing away. “Procedure,” I said. “It all fits,” he said. “Total depersonalization of the individual, that’s what it is. Don’t you have enough regard to tell me what you’re going to do first?” “Some of them protest,” I said. “They know they’ll get caught.” I opened to his interview record and compared the physical description with him; it dovetailed reasonably well. “Just a few questions now,” I said. “Mind if I sit down?” “You’re ill? You can’t stand. You need to rest?” “Nothing like that,” he said. “I just prefer to sit when I’m spoken to.” “If you’re sick enough we can probably get you in a fully reimbursed category. No difference to you but more money for us,” I said. “I’m not sick,” he said again. “Just depressed. Not that there’s much of a difference to you people.” The you rang out. One thing that can be counted on, always is this stolid hostility. If it were enjoyable, one would count it as a fringe benefit. I do. It makes a good definition of the relationship. There is no hatred without fear and respect, two qualities which I like to command. He sat in an old chair in the center of the room. Moth-eaten cloth, intimations of small life crawling up and through the upholstery and so on. He lit a cigarette for me and tossed the match out the window. “No,” I said. “No cigarettes.” “What do you mean?” “I don’t like smoke,” I said. “People don’t smoke in my presence. At least, not people making applications. Put it out.” “No.” “Throw it away,” I said. “I won’t. I like to smoke.” The whine was coming into his voice. “Fine,” I said. “I'm leaving. We’ll call it application withdrawn.” He looked at me for a moment. He could see that I meant it. After a time, he threw the cigarette out the window. “That’s better,” I said. “You really enjoy this, don’t you?” “Enjoy what?” “The power. The assertiveness of your job. It defines your role-situation, gives you a rationale for your—” “Enough,” I said. “I don’t need analyses. Now, we’ll call it quits in one second if you don’t can it.” Since he had lost the first battle, the second was no contest. His eyes dropped. “Occupational training?” I said. “Sociologist,” he said. Of course. “I went through all that yesterday in the intake section.” “I told you, I’m conducting my own investigation here. Intake and my unit are entirely different; as far as I’m concerned, you don’t even exist until you prove it to me. Why are you making an application now?” “Why do you think? I’m out of work.” “How did you support yourself prior to the application?” He looked at me, almost pleadingly. “I went through that,” he said. “I told you.” “The field investigator is the sole determinant of eligibility as he interprets the manual and regulations on public assistance. The intake unit passes on applications to the field investigator for exploration and judgment. You want more quotes?” “No,” he said. I guess that is when I beat him. He seemed to cave in on the seat, his eyes turning inward, almost oblivious of the small things that seemed to be moving on his wrists. He had been easier to bring around than most of them; it was surprising in view of ‘his credentials. But then again, everything considered, his credentials almost explained it. “I was on the Blauvelt Project,” he said, “for 15 years, ever since I took my undergraduate degree and became a fellow there. The Project just ended last week. So I have no means of support.” The Blauvelt was another one of those small government-created boondoggles; probably the major means of sustenance for the psychologists and sociologists. Even I had heard of it. They investigated genealogy, the expression of characteristics as revealed through heredity and so on. Most of it was concerned with going back through old records and making statistics, but Congress had finally decided last year that it was easier and cheaper to shove them all on assistance. That was Steiner’s little life in a nutshell. Useless. Wholly useless. “Have you made efforts to seek other employment?” That was the test-punch. There was only one answer. Even Steiner knew that. He managed to grin at me. “Are you kidding?” he said. “So now you want government assistance? Public assistance. Relief.” “Do you see any alternative?” be said. His voice moved up on the any a little. I had him sweating, there was no doubt about it. A perfectly routine investigation. “There must be jobs open to a man who’s been on the Blauvelt. How about unskilled labor?” “The pools are backed up 10 years with the waiting lists. You know that as well as I do.” I sure did. “Any relatives who might furnish support?” “My parents are dead. My sister has been on relief for 18 years. I don’t know where my ex-wife is.” “You were married?” “I put all that down yesterday.” “I told you, there are no yesterdays with me. When were you married?” “2015. 1 haven’t seen her since 2021. I think she emigrated.” “You mean, she left the country?” “That’s right. We didn’t get along.” “She didn’t like the Blauvelt?” He stared at me. “Who did? It was make-work. Anybody could see it. She couldn’t take it anymore. She said I should either kill myself or get out of the country. I didn’t do either. I thought the project was going to go on forever.” Well, I had thought so too until Congress had had their little convulsion last year. A lot of things that were going to go on forever weren’t. I felt like telling him that. But I said, “I guess that’s about it. We’ll keep you posted.” “You mean I’m eligible?” “I mean, I’ve completed the pending investigation. Now I have to go back and write it up—after I see a lot of other people—and make a decision. You’ll be notified.” “But listen,” he said, gesturing toward me, “don’t you understand? I have no money. I have no food. I got this place last week by telling the landlord that I’d be on assistance soon. I owe rent. I can’t even breathe.” “You’ll have to wait your turn.” “But I haven’t had a thing for three days—” “You have running water,” I said, pointing to the rusted tap in the corner suspended over a bucket. “That fills up the stomach pretty good. You’ll hold.” Then, because I really didn’t want to smash him down all the way, I added, “You see, there are a lot of people I’ve got to service. You have to wait your turn. The need is general.” That turned him off. “Yes,” he said, nodding, “the need is general.” “I’m lust trying to do a job, you understand. Nothing personal.” “You’ve got a job,” he said bitterly. “That’s something to say.” “You know how much I often think I’d like to collect and let the people like you do the work? It’s no picnic, believe me. The responsibility and the pressure. Not that anybody owes me any favors, you understand. But it’s a very tough racket. I work 10 hours a day.” “I bet you love it,” he said. “What was that?” “I said, I guess it’s very tough. I have sympathy for you.” “Much better,” I said. The interview was over and the fun was out of it. I had taken him, I supposed, to the best limits I could. I closed my book, put away the pencil, went to the door. “Any questions?” I asked. “None. Except when do I start getting some money.” “When I get to it,” I said. My last perception of him was a good one: staring stricken at the closing crack in the door. A hand moved idly to his face, and I snapped off the image before it went to his eyes. I went down the stairs three at a time. In the street, I tossed my field book and kit into the glove compartment of my car parked outside and went down the way to have a beer before I went on to see the other bastards. A place named Joe’s which I had often visited before was full of reliefers, and, of course, I had the bartender trained as well: he kept them coming and I kept my money away. One of the reliefers tried to talk to me and asked me if I could get him into the bureau, somehow: he was a full medical doctor and perhaps his services could be used. Just for the hell of it, I told him that we were full up on medical doctors at present but there was an interesting government project, something called Blauvelt, which was keeping lots of people occupied. I suggested that he pursue it, chase it hard. He must have seen what I was saying because he moved away and left me alone, and the drinking was so good and the respect in the place so thick that I forgot all about work for the rest of the day and got stoned and needed four reliefers to get me to my car. I gave them the address and one of them drove me home. He owed it to me. They all owed it to me. The hell with them. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There exists in our field a magazine, which (to conceal its identity) I will call Astounding, edited by a venerable, skillful man with whom many science-fiction writers disagree, mostly because he pays the highest rates in the field and won’t buy their material. I disagree no less vehemently than many but, nevertheless, attempted to write a story for this venerable, skillful editor of Astounding, contriving it in a straight down-the-pipe cold slant that would leave him breathless with haste to voucher. Instead, I received a form rejection slip (he sends the largest and most interesting slips in the field). Much later, when I sold it elsewhere, a respected friend said that it was the funniest parody of an Astounding story he had ever seen. Cum Sanctu Spiritu, or as we used to say in the Orange bar at Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, Kyrie Eleison. OATEN SOCIOTHERAPY: A process of cultural integration (See Structured Programming) 2. Popularized in the Antique Centuries; that process of assembling cultural data through the implantation of a participant-observer called a “Scout” who re-enacted cultural processes at a level of credulity. 3. Later, institutionalized as a means of vicarious entertainment, archaic. 4. in disrepute, disgusting, as, “You sociotherapist!” (pejorative) 5. A discredited science. OF THE GRABALZI: GLOSSARY Windt 114 R.P. To: Post From: Hellerman Contents: Top-secret, confidential, etc., etc. Friends: On a shrewd, sociotherapeutic scout’s guess, I would say that this planet’s population, perhaps for all future generations, are hopelessly psychotic. A few minutes ago I met their “Chief” for the first time in what they called an “initiation ceremony” before a huge bonfire, dancing natives, flinging beads, etc., etc. This “Chief” is an imposing (for them) creature of some four feet six with blue scales and eyes the shape and color of rubber bands, not that I want you to think my xenophobia is coming to the fore at all. Greetings, I said to him in the prescribed fashion, just as the Elders had instructed me. I do come in Wideness. May I be one of you? All of this was said in Approved Basic so that the suit’s pickup could get it, all of it was so gloomily transparent that even a paranoid would have fallen on his knees, relieved at last to find an uncontentious Familiar. The Codifier, just to be on the safe side, burbled all of this out in their hideous, glottal language, working on only a three-second lag, and I waited for the next event in the Ceremony which, the Elders had told me, was a handful of Chiefly grease in my face, followed by much dancing and their interesting indigenous wine made, they assure me, from the bowels of the Oaten themselves. Liar! the “Chief” said to me, so distinctly that even the Codifier blushed. You come in corruption. He rubbed his “fingers” in his scales and began to coat my face, not with what I had been assured was mild grease, but something which had the approximate texture and early effects of lye. Evil! he said. Pretender! Diseased! Filth! Despite the fact that the circle of natives confronted me with the most whimsical and inoffensive of aspects, I decided, frankly and immediately, that I was beyond my depth. Seizing the Codifier firmly by its straps, I bolted past the Chief, through the bonfire (it singed me slightly but perhaps I will achieve a small reputation for miracles) and into the fields where I was able to make the ship, panting only slightly and securing all the doors. Washing my face, I discovered that I had been painted, in fragments, pitch green (surely there is such a color) above the neck with a substance that seemed to create dimples. I am radioing, of course, for instructions. I have absolutely no objections to my position and the obligations it thrusts upon me. Nevertheless, I do not think that sociotherapy will work here. Perhaps all cultures at all levels force a kind of integration above the level of hostility (you see, I’ve studied the manual carefully). But the behavior this evening was peculiar; likewise the Oaten which are nervous, foul-smelling beasts which, although they are certainly the subordinate life on the planet, certainly do not occupy that position through merit but only, it seems to me, bad luck. “Chief” indeed! I think that he was an adolescent, put up to this. Frankly, I feel vaguely humiliated. To: Hellerman From: Walker Sam: Relax. Take it easy. In the first place, we’re circling you only 400 miles away and in the second place you are, as usual, panicking. I mean it, Sam, this is the last time. We’re going to have to find another Scout if this goes on. Granted that a touch of neurosis is essential to the job, you’re pushing things a bit far. The Grabalzi (and no more of your phonetic jokes, please) are not only the clear dominant species on the planet; they are a race whose cultural integration in the face of the most limited resources and terrible deprivation has been one of the small wonders of the Galaxy—or at least that fragment of it which practices sociotherapy. No race has ever had poorer luck, to our knowledge . . . congenital sterility, allergies to almost all bacteria on their planet, no metal, no opposing thumb . . . and yet this little people have one of the richest interior lives of any in the Time of Man. (Not to be sentimental.) Last night they were merely performing the Ritual of Test; one in which the Visitor is first primed for Exaltation, then exposed to shock and finally, restored at a level of Celebration; a three-part ceremony whose allegorical significance and parabular economy can only be considered remarkable, particularly since it works on at least 14 levels of Imagic intent, at least as far as we have disassembled their cultural traits. By your stupid and offensive behavior you not only proved yourself unable to work through the simplest acts of persistence and levels of action but stamped yourself to the Grabalzi perhaps perpetually, as an inferior and panicky being, permanently barred from that inner circle of knowledge which, to them, is synonymous with their existence. And to think that you did this after all the training and explanation we invested in you. Granted, Scouts are supposed to be stupid—it is impossible to get a decent Measurement unless they participate at the most credulous level—this is too much! Listen to me, Sam. There are millions invested here as well as countless light years of travel as well as the professional lives of half the crew here, the sexual problems of the other, simpler, half. If we are to salvage anything from your fiasco, it can be accomplished only if you return immediately to the Elders—according to our calculations they live 1.8 miles northwest of the cave of the Chief, no?—and explain that you were merely trying to point out a new moral to the Test Ritual and, feeling that you might have offended them, would like to participate now in a more conventional way. That at least gives us a chance to recapitulate the situation and possibly annihilate your own corruption. Permit the Elders to prepare and again take you to the Ritual and this time, Sam, stand still and keep your mouth shut! You think that this is fun? It’s a nasty job, preparing little documentaries for the pleasure of morons and the implications are frightening. But it’s a job and we have a responsibility. So do you. By the way, what in hell are Oaten? The Grabalzi are not only the dominant species on the planet, they are, to the best of all official knowledge, the only species. Is there something else down there? You better not louse this up, Sam, because we don’t have the time, let alone the money. The Grabalzi have reason to be dour, even black; not you, though, not you. To: Post From: Sam Contents: Top-Secret; Not to Be Divulged to a Living Soul; For Your Eyes Only; Watch Out For Spies; etc., etc. All right, I did it. I did just what you asked. What the hell is sociotherapy, anyway? I’m beginning to question everything except my own suffering. I don’t like those remarks about my brain, either. Despite the fact that I have told myself over and over again that these are the outcome of mere spite because I am the only man within 400 square light years doing anything useful, I must say that your remarks are pretty inflammatory, Walker, and too damned personal. Remember, I didn’t invent sociotherapy in the first place, much less try to make a science out of it. I’m just a working man. At any rate, immediately upon receiving your offensive message, I took myself to the dwellings of the Elders which, as you say, are exactly 1.8 miles from the cave of the Chief but due north, you idiots. I deliberately left the Codifier in the ship, inasmuch as I have established perfect visual communication with the Grabalzi and any dolt over the age of two years in any culture can tell exactly what they have on their minds simply by observing what they do. I made entrance to the Den of Elders and made clear with hand waving, shouts and reasonable gestures, my intention to once again go through the Ceremony and indicated that I forgave the Chief for his impatience during the previous ritual. All of this was through the ten layers of shielded asphalt that you call a spacesuit, so you should understand that I’m really working down here. I expected that the Elders would hear (or watch) me out and then table the entire matter for a day or so to reorganize matters but to my astonishment, and disgust, they indicated to me that the Ceremony was still in progress and were I to return to the ‘Chief,” things could pick up exactly where they were left off. Inasmuch as some three or four hours had elapsed I found this incredible but when the Elders led me to the site I found out that all was precisely true: the same circle of natives stood in the same paralysis, almost as if nothing at all had happened and, wonder of wonders, the ‘Chief” was in the circle, “fingers” locked into scales, gesturing at me. It was then, for the first time, that I began to feel distinct unease: having ascertained that 3/5 of the planet was insane, I was now beginning to see it as somewhat malevolent and personalized: they were out to get me. “Greetings again,” barked the chief in staggeringly fluent Galactic and began, once again, to lather me richly with his grease. Rather than being green, I found now, by hastily running my fingers over my cheekbones, that I was stark yellow and the stuff had a peculiar porosity. Nevertheless, and after the previous events, I was willing to be reasonable and stand my ground, which I did with much aplomb. “Greetings yourself,” I said rather stiffly. “Is it necessary for you to take such an approach to a friendly human?” “Necessary, Necessary!” the “Chief” said crisply, moving below my face now to work vigorously on the various coils of the suit which bunched tightly from the neck down. “This off too.” “Can’t do it,” I said, rather pleasantly, I thought. “It’s protection.” “Why not protection all over?” “The atmosphere is satisfactory. I can breathe your air. But they made it very clear to me that I must be dressed so as to appear to you as an alien, frightening being. Don’t ask me why. I’d as soon be naked, quite frankly. When does the dancing begin?” For some reason this enraged the “Chief”. “Alien being? Who is ‘alien being’?” “That’s what I am. It’s all part of the process. That stuff smells, you know?” “Oaten.” “What’s that?” “Oaten. You are Oaten. Oaten monster.” “Listen, Chief, I am not an Oaten or their monster. There isn’t an Oaten within a mile of here. They’re shy, patient animals that prefer their own company, being slaughtered only for the most necessary of reasons. I boned up on your whole culture. There is no need to act that way.” “That is it,” the “Chief” said. I trust you will understand that all this dialogue is a mere approximation, given so that you will get some picture of the situation, but hardly precise word-for-word. Frankly, I was shaken. “Get off this place.” “How’s that?” “I said get off.” “How? Where? You think I like your two-bit planet? Hey, you aren’t even supposed to know what a planet is yet, are you?” And at that, things, as they say, deteriorated rapidly. I found myself surrounded abruptly by a circle of approximately 75 natives; as thin and pale as they were, with decaying scales and pleading eyes and consumptive aspects, I found the situation distinctly menacing. Neither pondering nor concerned with alternative, I gave a mighty spring and pushed myself through the group and then, at a dead run, made the ship once again; a dull feeling of deja vu descending upon me as I ran and ran, gradually shedding myself of certain bottom garments to facilitate speed. Behind me were the Grabalzi mumbling what seemed to be distinct curses in Galactic and despite their perilous condition, most of them proved to be fast enough as runners to bring me to the ship within an inch of my life. I scrambled up the stairs, bolted through the open porthole and secured all hatches, putting out some protruding armaments to give them the right idea just in case they decided to rush the boundaries. So they sat down, still in a circle—what do they have with circles?—and lit fires and there they are right this minute, glaring at me through sick, weak, descending rubber eyes. Do I have permission to return to Post? I think we have reached diminishing returns, here. To: Sam From: Post Listen carefully, Sam. The situation is, perhaps, a little more grim than you think, although it is nothing to get nervous about. Let’s take things step by step. Stay calm, Sam, and you have nothing to worry about. Walker, by the way, has been shifted to other duties and hence I’m taking the mike. Don’t worry about who I am, it doesn’t make any difference. Walker will be soundly punished, Sam. Don’t think that he’ll get away with what he’s done. Now relax and try to follow this. It’s very difficult for a man of even average intelligence and although Walker was uncharitable, he was essentially correct in his evaluation of your gifts. Scouts aren’t supposed to be bright, Sam. At any rate, I have something very important to convey to you and you’ll have to try to grasp it right off or there will be a great deal of trouble. You are an Oaten. Those friendly, hardy beasts out there in the forests, Sam? They don’t exist. They’re projections of your subconscious mind, as warped by the Grabalzi. You are the Oaten and that is what they think of you. I told you that this wasn’t going to be easy, Sam. and you’ll have to concentrate now. We have found out a great deal about this planet in the last several hours, not the least important insight being that we have absolutely no business here. These are deft, tricky people, their poor health to the contrary, and we’ve been able to piece together a good deal from the information you’ve given us and the materials available here. I mean, they’re deft, dangerous people, Sam; perhaps we would be the same way if we were allergic to everything on Earth and had been forced to adapt, a culture in which 40 of our years was a rich lifespan and 17 hours sleep a day a dire necessity. Having little else to look forward to, these people have developed the concept of inner space. What I am trying to say, Sam, is that sociotherapy is severely contraindicated with this people and we have decided that their particular resources not only make them poor subjects for our methods but place you—you, Sam— in actual, terrible danger. If they can have you, in something less than half a day, posting the whole concept of Oaten, as well as a series of intercultural relationships, they are a menace. Some of us (although there is, admittedly, disagreement here) feel that the two “ceremonies” in which you engaged with the Grabalzi were not as benign as the malevolent Walker would have had you believe, Sam; rather than reenacting an abstract allegory or parable, they were structuring a fantasy of subjugation which would indeed leave you, as you so aptly put it “stark green” or “brilliant yellow.” The fantasy would, of course, work toward your flight and siege and the end might be in sight: there is some question as to whether or not the things you see outside are fires or merely what you take to be fires. As I say, there is much disagreement on this point, as well as the inherent nature of the Grabalzi, a people whose name and address we dug from obscure, secret files only through extortionary means. They were not in the “off-limits” sector of the bureaucracy for no reason. At any rate, Sam, listen and read this very carefully. Lift off now. Push the button on the extreme left to activate your motors and then the EMERGENCY panel on the board, the one which has all the stripes on it and looks like a candy-cane. That will take you automatically on a trajectory bringing you to within some hundreds of miles of our own and from there, we can recover you. Do it now, Sam. Do it now. The button on the extreme left and then the EMERGENCY panel. You are in real danger, Sam. You better get going. To: You From: Sammy Contents: This is a Secret from Me to You. My friends are outside. They are colored blue. They are colored white. They are colored orange. They are all pretty colors. They are waiting for me to come out and play. My name is Sammy. I am a little boy. I am a little, little boy. I am going to open the door. See the pretty door. I am going to open the pretty, nasty door and go outside. I am going to play with my friends. I am pushing on the door. See Sammy push. He goes push, push! The door is opening wide. Now it is open. I see my friends. The friends see Sammy. See all the pretty friends. Here they come. My pretty friends are coming. See Sammy and his friends. See Sammy. See Sammy. See Sammy. See. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Assassination story #3. Written in 11/67, sold in 12/67 and rendered worthless as prescience by the events of 6/68 which dated it far before it saw print. Not only history, but also our future overtakes us; the horror is that nothing can be transmuted that will not pop up in the real soon enough, soon enough. THE ASCENSION THE IMPLOSION CAME FROM WITHIN, as always the point of it was that the wave had crested early in the middle of the term and was now heading down, down, down; even the Inner Circle itself had to admit now that things were on the downgrade and likely out of control else why the cessation of press conferences and the cancellation of all hut the requisite civil liberties? His face. His features, leaden as always but suffused with that warmth which had enabled him to carry all but two of the minor states looked stricken now when He came before the populace and His ‘hands fluttered above as well as behind the lectern; otherwise, everything was as before only more so. Denial was the route of first possibility, of course, but He knew, He knew everything (had He not ridden to power on the crest of Referendum?) and there were rumors in the City that He was snappish in private; given to longer and fouler jokes, generally afflicted with a malaise whose origins He attributed to the burdens of state but which could ‘have only one source and that source would have to be THE INCREASING FRAGMENTATION WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE CELLS OF THE NATION, THE GRADUAL WORKING DOWN TOWARD a point where communication itself would be reduced to jargon and catch-phrases (He was very aware of this, having coined some of the best) and the possibilities for dialogue would be entirely shattered; that was what it was all coming to and once that happened, all the signs would be clear. After the dissolution of Language (which happened often, every so often; it worked in convulsions, but there it was) would come the riots and the crowds moving about the streets at dawn, soon after that, there would be the Presentation of Demands and then there would be only one course, the Balcony itself, and He didn’t want it. That was the point; He didn’t want it at all; He was only 37 (they were getting younger and younger all the time) and He had plans, plans which He was only dimly able to focus; He had ideas, perceptions, too. Nevertheless there it was and THE MAN STOOD ON THE BURNING DECK AND SAID “how long can we hold it off? Six months? A year? The crucial thing is to buy time, we can turn the corner for sure if we can only hold it off for a little while.” “It won’t work,” one of His advisers said, “the forces are already out of control. They reach a point- where there’s nothing that you can do, where instead of cementing your purposes the media only tend to implode them and the very handles of the government turn against you and then—” “You say we’ve reached that point,” He said, lighting a cigar absently, feeling a trickle of sweat running down the space behind His left ear and moistening His collar, trying to get a careful look at this Adviser because it was very important that He keep a close, meaningful relation right through to the end; you had to touch the nerves of people. (He knew) “Yes, we’ve reached that point,” the Advisor said. “Every speech only makes things worse now, every public act gives the opposition a fresh focus. I wouldn’t think we had six months left; I would say it’s more like one. I’m sorry.” “I’m sorry too,” He said, and had His Adviser removed by the loyal forces stationed in and around the conference room and shot summarily in the basement, his corpse then being whisked to the highest levels of the building in the crematorium where it was fragmented and sifted like dust all over the city (there was no point in making martyrs). But He knew that it was merely a gesture; it was not the solution, the problem was not in the adviser but had to be IN HIMSELF, THE FRAGMENTED ID, THE VISION THAT HE HAD GRASPED WITHIN HIMSELF ON THAT LONG-FORGOTTEN NIGHT AND TRANSMUTED SLOWLY, PATIENTLY, THROUGH ALL THE DEVICES OF THE DAY UNTIL THE NIGHT-VISION HAD WORKED THROUGH ALL THE CORRIDORS OF TIME AND EVERYBODY KNEW THAT HE WAS WHAT HE SAID HE WAS; IT WORKED FINE UNTIL A CERTAIN POINT WHEN the opposition presented its demands very cordially in the East Wing that morning; their Deputy of Public Information keeping his appointment precisely at noon, surrounded by his photographers (there had to be witnesses) and the men of the Media who were in on a contingent basis, having made pool arrangements previously and having agreed not to break certain details of the story until all details were known. “We request you withdraw,” the Deputy said. “This a formal request?” He asked, once again scratching his left ear in that once well-beloved gesture which had recently become so noxious; summed up in the dead-center of the Referendum, the hateful, poisonous, corruption which had become the totality of His worth, posing gently on His toes, another beloved habit (being so youthful) which had now been turned, by the Opposition, into a certain manifestation of effeminacy which was so—so basically against the principles upon which the Republic was bulwarked. “No,” the Deputy said, “we thought it would be better to be informal, first. Want to get a good picture of me, standing next to Him, shaking hands? Will look good in the reels.” They took the picture. “This is not then a serving of notice,” He said, coming down on his heels and trying to save the Consensus (when it was all too late) by forming His hands into the suggestion of fists and brandishing them, smiling, at the cameras. But no bulbs flickered. “Merely a preliminary.” “That is right,” the Deputy said. “Hey, you’re a smaller looking person than I thought you were from the TV. Do you want me to go down the list of grievances?” “I thought you said it was informal,” He said, nodding slightly and trying to look pleasant, thinking, inanely of His perished Adviser whose silt, perhaps, had settled upon the shoulders of these very men in the room, so it wasn’t dandruff at all, merely another refraction of Himself, not that that would give him any damned comfort at all, you understand. “Doesn’t mean I can’t read the grievances. The War is very bad. And your sons have been carrying on, that business with the automobile was really too much. And we don’t like the way you look when you smile. Besides, there’s still injustice, poverty, to say nothing of suffering. And you eat too much, you said so yourself. That’s about it, then.” “I’m sorry,” He said, feeling a trickle of dismay working though him because, in front of all these people, the Demands had made the case, had proved the point, there was nothing to say: the car business had been ghastly with two people nearly killed because Martin had been drunk and the War was very bad, not going well at all as even His advisers told Him and there was still poverty and injustice in the land. It was true, it was all true, they had made their case and HE FELT SORROW WITHIN HIM FOR HE HAD NOT DONE WHAT HE SHOULD HAVE, WHAT HE DID HE SHOULD NOT HAVE DONE AND THE CAMERAS caught this as it passed across His face, lighting His tired features momentarily with a wisp of pain and the Deputy said, “What do you know? Well, in that case, we better go on the record, after all. You accept the charges?” “I don’t deny them,” He said, because He could not; He was old, old, and cremating advisers in the elevator shaft, it was a hell of a thing. “I simply can’t deny them.” “Then let’s get the media in,” the Deputy said, taking, Him fondly by the elbow, “and put all of this on the record, put the show on the road. You have a little body odor, too. It’s funny; you wouldn’t think it from a distance.” The Media came in and He accepted the charges and took the vow of Penance, dwelling somewhat excessively the soul of His lost Adviser who He said, had been not that that was any excuse at all. WHICH LED SHORTLY TO THAT MOMENT IN THE SUN, STANDING ON THE PARAPET, CLUTCHING THE ANCIENT BOOK OF VOWS IN HIS HAND, THE REST STANDING FROZEN BEHIND HIM AS HE LIFTED HIS HEAD SLOWLY, WAITING FOR THE CRACK, WAITING FOR THE thud of the distant rifle, the cameras trained closely on Him, three or four hundred thousand watching Him from below, and His hands moved over the cracked surfaces of the book and He muttered, it was my fault, it was my fault; if I had stayed with the polls and kept the Opposition close to mc, it would have gone the other way; I might have held out six months, nine months longer, but it’s too late, too late; I have failed; guess I wasn’t after all, the Messiah, although once I thought— They shot him. He fell back soundless into His wife’s arms, His dead lips reaching her eyes (making a fine picture for the late afternoons, as well as a permanent remembrance of our Sacred Dead). THEY INAUGURATED THE 47Th PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC THE NEXT AFTERNOON AT THREE, THE SUN WAS VERY WARM AND THE PRESIDENT WIPED HIS FOREHEAD SEVERAL TIMES: BEING WIRED FOR SOUND, HIS FAINT MOANS OF PROTEST IN THE HEAT WERE HEARD BUT HE STAYED TILL THE END AND MADE HIS SPEECH OF COMMITMENT WHICH WAS, IT WAS ALL AGREED, THE MOST POWERFUL HEARD IN MONTHS; HE SAID THAT HE SAW A VISION OF -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I like this story, not only because the basic image came in the midst of a 103 degree fever (induced mundanely enough by a facial razor cut) but because it, along with Death To The Keeper and Final War seems to be the most achieved literary short story I’ve ever done. THE MAJOR INCITEMENT TO RIOT THE MAJOR INCITEMENT TO RIOT was the death mask in the town square, suspended several hundred feet above the crowd but of such a dimension as to be visible in every feature to the least of those who stared. Every mole and welt, shadow and hollow of the face of the departed Chief Clerk had been faithfully reduced; his mouth quirked as if it at the beginning of an obscenity, gave firmness and character to the otherwise static representation. The breezes, coming in off angle, west and south, that is, caused the mask to flutter and occasionally some part of it would be tom from one of the poles on which it was suspended; when this happened, one of the men would have to scurry up on a ladder and affix it once again with tape. But the tape was non-binding, of course, so the mask was always in the process of tearing free from one or another of its moorings and moving out casually to the countryside. The band music, piped through loudspeakers in the bushes surrounding the scene gave an air of not irrelevant liveliness and festivity although some of the older townspeople were heard to mumble that the Chief Clerk did not look as they remembered him and that there was something about the whole performance, perhaps, which was not quite right. Warren Cleaver came to the square with his son, Roger, directly after a good breakfast. “We’ll be gone for a while,” he told his wife, Mary, and consoled her with a touch on the cheek, “the time has come to show Roger, here, what’s really going on in the outside world; show him the happenings in our Square.” And touched her a booming touch reminiscent of many nights until she released her grip on the boy and told him that he could go. Roger Cleaver was 14. Before adolescence he had been a happy, sunny child much given to collections but now that the first knowledge of puberty had touched his face, he seemed to have opened up into a complex kind of woe, seemed to be attuned to griefs and rages that were in no way a product of his fine upbringing. Since his discharge from the School, he had spent the majority of his time lying on the bed in his parents’ bedroom, reading magazines or staying with the lights turned off and the covers past his forehead. He was reluctant to leave the house and only did so on special errands for Mary at her urging; when he did there were often tears in his eyes and when he returned it was with an air of having suffered unspeakable things. Although Warren and Mary were both concerned about the boy they had decided not to send him for special training because, as Mary said, he was only going through some kind of a stage and there was the likelihood that once he met a nice girl and got laid a few times he would recover his formerly happy self. The two Cleavers, young and old, walked slowly to the Square, which was less than a quarter of a mile from their cottage and as they went, Warren told Roger some of the interesting facts behind the display: the history of the tradition, the explanation and what events had gone on at the previous showings. Roger listened quietly, showing little interest, but when they approached the site and the boy saw the death mask his face took on a rare expression of involvement. “That is something,” he said. “That really is. That’s one big mask.” “It took five men five weeks to construct,” Warren smiled, and introduced Roger to two business acquaintances who were standing on the fringe of the crowd. Approving remarks about Roger were made and they both wished him well. “He should enjoy it,” Warren said, “it’s the boy’s first time you know.” The acquaintances said that there was certainly no time like the present and after shaking Roger’s hand, left, moving further in to get a better view. It was at that moment, for reasons never satisfactorily explained— despite the complex investigations that began almost immediately after the events and continued for many years—that the riot itself began. Perhaps it was only a panicky member of the populace stumbling into one of the poles and causing the mask to flutter violently, tearing its connections with a sound like glass as it floated down. Perhaps the mask was not dislodged by accident but was aided in its descent by a cunning insurgent stationed near one of the poles. In any event it fell slowly, gracelessly, toward the people, its dimensions sufficient to promise entrapment for several hundred and as they realized this, the squealing and the running began. Warren was trampled to death by the first segment of the pelting crowd. Roger, however, managed to dodge that onrush and found cover under the podium which dignitaries had used during the launching ceremonies. It was for this reason that his life was spared. He stayed there for several hours while the night came down and the flames that bad been set to the crushed mask roared and cindered, but the flames broke against the fireproof net of the podium itself. When Roger came out, near midnight, the square was empty of people and filled only with ashes: ashes the color of fire, of loam, of the earth; ashes the complex colors of discovery, all of them darting and winding in the absent winds that had turned to come in from the east. THE MAJOR INCITEMENT TO RIOT was the assassination of the Chief Clerk. It happened at a large public ceremonial function between the main course and dessert when a fanatic stood from a rear table and hurled a bomb at the dais. Most of the guests of honor escaped with missing or expanded limbs but the Chief Clerk himself—he was, of course, at the very center—was killed instantaneously and severely wounded in the bargain, making restoration impossible. Only a mask could be constructed, the usual total prostheses being, it was agreed, impossible under the circumstances. The mask of the dead Chief hung, therefore, in state for several (lays; it was then transported to the town square and suspended hundreds of feet above the populace on several poles. Parades were conducted and troops were reviewed(l as a part of the ceremony and the usual contests and feasts were held under the mask on the eighth and ninth days of the display, all according to ritual. During the latter part of the second week of the display, however, one of the Opposition threw a bomb into the square while, at the same time, a trained army of snipers rained their deadly fire from surrounding rooftops and enclosed spaces. In the ensuing havoc, several hundred of the townspeople were killed, including many children, and the mask of the Chief Clerk was burned to unrecognizability by terrorists. This is the complete account of bow the occupation of the town began; other details have been invented or interpolated by spurious sources attempting to take some of the credit to themselves. The distinguishing mark of the knowledgeable historian in relation to the calamity is his paucity of information. In regard to this tragedy only an absence of data can be trusted. We do suspect, however, that the Opposition was merely looking for a convenient instrument for their long planned coup d' etat and the assassin of our Chief set in motion that unhappy chain of events. THE MAJOR INCITEMENT TO RIOT was the speech given by the unhappy Chief Clerk at the testimonial dinner held in his honor at the Town Banquet Hall; his last public appearance. Remarks made were highly inflammatory and could have had no outcome other than the culminative riots which superseded the mad, physical details of his passing. According to members of the press and personal, trusted sources who were there, the Chief arose after the conclusion of the serving to make the customary gratuitous offering of thanks - but turned instead to a vile denunciation only amateurishly garbed as reminiscence or geniality: “My dear friends,” he is reported to have said, “we gather upon this occasion to celebrate not only a unity of purpose but a furthering of vision and in that context we must ask not what can be done for our way of life but what our way of life can do for you; we must never suffer questioning but we must question without suffering; we must liberate the little framework we have so that we can keep pace with the years we have lived but all through this task we must remember that although we make our courses wholly out of our judgment, we must never forsake the judgment to make courses; I say to you that out of the fire and forge and testing of this time a new generation must come, one fired and forged and tested; we must not forge the fire but we must not fire the forge either; we must fire and forge together as we test and test, this being not a quality of insight but an insight of quality.” At this point the bombing began. Emptying of the hall was rapid, screams were plentiful, confusion was rampant. The Chief, hit squarely in the underside of his torso by the third of the grenades tossed crystallized, fell into the smashed crockery, littered with food particles. Enough of the face was left to permit construction of the mask. The death mask hung in the town square for the ritual three weeks, during which the counter-revolution began. Killings and other losses were light to moderate in view of the heavy importance of the action. The complete text of the Chief’s speech may be examined by permit at the Museum under security guard during hours as outlined in the brochure. THE MAJOR INCITEMENT TO RIOT was Roger Cleaver. He had been more and more unhappy during this, his most dramatic year. Some nights he had felt so guilty and lost that he had laid in bed for many hours, trembling. Days he could barely maintain the pretense of a relationship with his family, let alone peers. All the people he knew seemed to have no faces. When he heard the news of the Chiefs death over the television, Roger Cleaver felt guiltily happy and relieved because someone more important than he with more to look forward to had gotten himself, somehow, into a worse jam. He hated to feel that way but it confirmed what he had expected early in this dreadful year: that everything should get as bad as possible and stay that way for a long time so that his suffering would have real reasons. He had never known the Chief Clerk personally anyhow, although his father and mother had met him several times during the campaigns and occasionally little pamphlets and letters came from him to their house. When Roger went down to the square with his father to view the mask—which really wasn’t so hot when you came right down to it; it was kind of morbid—he wandered around and just looked things over for a while. But when he came to realize that there was nothing to the outing at all; that his father had simply taken him there because it was something to see and would then take him home, an explosion of terror rose within him at the pointlessness of it and he said to his old man, loud enough for everyone to hear: “I don’t even know why you took me here. It doesn’t make a bit of difference; this man, the one up there, didn’t have anything to do with me at all and it doesn’t make any difference what happened to him. Don’t you see that it didn’t make any difference to anybody? You just fool around when you say that something’s changed and it’s always the same no matter who gets killed.” People in the square turned distressed faces toward him and at that exact point—the Opposition having calculated doubt to the last one tenth of a degree—the bombing and the terror began. WHEN THE RIOT WAS OVER, HOWEVER, standing in the empty square, watching the fire and ash, Roger found that he didn’t feel so bad after all; much better, for instance, than he had felt yesterday. For one thing he had gotten rid of his father and for another, assuming that he had any ambitions that way, he had cleared the way for his progress toward being Chief himself. As a matter of fact, Roger thought, turning homeward to comfort his mother, that was a good idea; he could campaign for it: hadn’t he been the one who, in a certain sense, had been the leader of the Opposition? God damn, muttered Roger Cleaver, and thinking of the beauty and terror of the fires that had wrought and then destroyed the death mask, he felt the pity rise fully within him; the pity that would become an uncancellable debt that only he could fulfill when, a quarter of a century later, he acceded to the position toward which he had so long striven. But that and the story of the many great deeds he did in office are a different matter altogether and must be discussed separately. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Written in October of 1964 and rejected by Virginia Quarterly and Paris Review. Rewritten in April of 1967 and rejected by Esquire, Playboy, Kenyon Review, Atlantic, Harper’s, Analog, Galaxy, Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Published in Escapade because I found an understanding editor (we all lost our jobs there two months after I bought it, but for other reasons I trust). Obviously they’re trying to tell me something about this story which, nevertheless, seems admirable if rather murky. COP-OUT The time has come. George and I feel surges of power: intimations from distant hollows, a certain convulsive twitching of the psyche. The usual preliminaries; where we are located they call it “nervous energy.” It is, of course, time to begin again. Naturally, we are reluctant. Despite our background, our seniority, our periodic increments which have brought us to the highest level of Grade Nine there is always this dull resentment before we are hurled (literally hurled) into a new Process. Perhaps it is that the results are always so dismaying. But this is no matter. There is no point in being bitter and as Headquarters has pointed out to us time and again, our potential is limited, our prospects mixed and we are fortunate to be in hands which can make maximum use of our abilities. Enough. In this cycle we are living in a dim series of furnished rooms in what they call the “West 70’s,” high enough to smell a dismal sea, inspecting damaged pavements, easing curtains against their poignant and dying “surf.” It is unusually fetid in these rooms—which is not surprising, considering the amount of material we have conveyed there, to say nothing of the newspapers. There are newspapers all over, going back exactly twenty years. This is part of the security chock. They verify the expected; we will be “originals.” The growing realization that we will actually have to go though with it has, as usually, rendered George speechless over the past few “weeks”; I accept the matter more philosophically. Of course, it is a question of roles, as well. This cycle is George’s turn. “Well,” says George—that is, he does the equivalent of saying “well”; it is quite pointless to describe how we communicate when we are alone together which is most of the time. “We might as well get with it. They want us to get going. I can feel them. Some day—” “Don’t be bitter, George,” I say. “You have a tendency to procrastinate on these jobs. You know you do.” “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to exchange roles.” “Not a chance, George. Straight switching, you know that. Your turn.” “It’s just that I have a feeling—well, I don’t know how much conviction I’ve got left in me.” “In a place like this,” I say motioning, “who needs conviction?” George mumbles something, kicks a few newspapers. “Oh, let’s get it over with, then. It should be a simple job, anyway. They’re not sophisticated here at all.” “Quite,” I say encouragingly. “You should do very well, here.” George gives me a hurt look and I resist an impulse to apologize. After all, it is only the truth. Still, George will manage here. On this cycle, the difference in abilities is meaningless. Primitives. “Brooklyn Heights.” It is an appropriate enough place to begin our formal actions. Not that we have any choice, of course. The instructions always leave no margin for free will. We set up unobtrusively, slip into robes and commence. “Speak up, King,” I say. “I am not a King.” “Ah. Of course. You are a Prince.” “I am neither. I am in the hands of the Father.” “And who?” I say with flourishment, “would that be?” We have a small crowd. “God, of course.” Muffled gasps. No matter the cycle, this is a strong line. “Laugh if you must.” I do, indicating to the crowd that they may join me. Presently, we go to the wooden cross we have already set up in front of a sewer. As they gather our purpose, there are some giggles. George backs against the cross, confronts the sky rather dramatically. “it is finished; forgive them, they know not that my bones are drawn out like casting lots for help me to make the vestments.” Curtain. Routinely done, the first step, stultifying in its correctness and predictability. I show our permit—everything approved, everything in order—to the two patrolmen who have wandered over and I gently refuse the coins that a few have tossed. Our technique has been a little rusty—considering the usual transfer of roles—but it is a beginning of sorts. We push on. “Macy’s.” “Washington Heights.” “Borough Park.” “Rego Park.” We are playing to an audience of ten or twenty of their “adolescents” who watch us listlessly from two cars parked in the “snow.” I stop George in the middle of a line. “Time for the next level, George.” Still deep in his role—George, really, is resistibly stupid—he says, “I'll take the Mountain.” “I said, it’s time to move on. George. It’s time to make contact.” “What do you want from me?” George says vacantly, his robes shifting gently. “This is fine. Why can’t we leave it right here?” “It’s too slow, George,” I remind him gently. “It all takes too long.” I resist an impulse to kick him. Every other cycle, we go through this. Will he never learn? “We’ve got to do it from the top, George.” One of the hoodlums snuffles, honks his horn. “What you stopping the play for?” he asks. “How does it all come out? This is very interesting.” “I’ll take the steps,” I assure George. “Remember, it’s my responsibility.” “Fine” says George absently. “But let’s finish the play, right?” We finish the play and the hoodlum throws George a dollar. So, I meet Brandt in a bar, through contrived coincidence. In every cycle there is always a Brandt when he is needed, but this time is the easiest of all. I buy him a “Manhattan” and offer him some of our clippings. “Nah,” he says,. pushing them away. “Forget them. I know your reputation. Frankly, I’m very glad we ran into each other. I’ve had ideas for you men.” “I thought you would. We need exposure.” “Fortunately, you’ve found the right man. I have great access to media. Hell, I am media. Not that I feel guilty about it, of course. Would you like a pilot?” “Why not?” “I think that an act of yours would go over very good in these times. Of course, you’ll have to cooperate.” “Our pleasure.” “And no monkey business. You guys play for laughs and you’ll be run up the river.” “No laughs. Would we be in this for kicks?” “Dunno,” Brandt says, studying me. “There are a lot of nuts, nowadays. Nevertheless, I am tentatively sold. I want you on the carpet for a Wednesday run through—if you want it.” “We want it.” “You realize that this is commercialized. You can’t get into anything these days, if you don’t make certain concessions. After all, someone has got to carry that freight.” “I know. I’m very conscious of the situation here,” “So am I.” “And we need a large audience.” “So do I,” says Brandt “You guarantee your partner?” “All the way,” I say. And I present it to George just that way; as a finalized proposition. Glumly he agrees that I have done very well although, perhaps, I have been a bit on the impulsive side. “Heavens, was that quick,” is what he actually says. So, we show. First we go to costumery in the basement of a warehouse where I find the necessary equipment: maces, bludgeons, hammers and so on, along with some simple robes. George’s problems, of course, are not in that area. We go, per Brandt’s instructions, to an attendant who dresses us and then by limousine to the offices of the studio. Directed to an anteroom, we wait. George insists upon hearing everything so, of course, we do. In simpler things, it is best to cooperate with him. Someone flings a door open; we stand there on the sill. Brandt nudges us across and we lurch on, slapping ourselves. “Show me something.” “Give me a sample. Can they synthesize? Look, they’re in a block, already.” “Give them,” says Brandt, “a Resurrection.” “We don’t do the Resurrection,” George says. “I know you don’t do it. Did I ask you that? Give them a Resurrection.” I have said that George is not very bright. “We can do it,” I say to him. “What’s the difference?” “Go to it,” Brandt says. “Now.” George sighs. I pat him. Tables and chairs are cleared and we are directed to the center of the room. George shrugs (a simple Glass 9; understanding nothing, doing everything) and I indicate a tomb with my arm, clutch its vanished surfaces delicately, then go to a window and stare. As always, I try to find Headquarters in the “sky” but this, of course, is sheer sentimentality. “I have risen,” says George haltingly behind me. My turn. “Sure you have. You have risen.” “As I promised, so I rise. Did you not believe me?” “Bet your life I did.” “He rises” we say together. We walk past the table briskly (until George stumbles into a chair) and then though a door. Brandt claps his hands. “Like it?” he says. “They really play it straight.” “Dialogue is stereotyped.” “Yeah, and it seemed too fast somehow. Too quick. Where’s the technique? You could hardly get a hold of it and then it was gone. “But sincere,” Brandt says. “Very sincere. That’s how you get your immediacy.” “I say again, where’s the tie-in? What could you sell with it? Wine?” “Anything. You can package anything. Try it on sustaining; you’ll love it.” “Gentlemen,” a heavy man says, “do you really believe in this?” “Implicitly,” I tell him. “They sure do,” Brandt says cheerfully. “Where else would they find the gall?” There is a rising-to-feet. “I’ll slot them,” the heavy man says. “Regretfully, but what’s the alternative? At least they’re relevant.” “Are they ever,” says Brandt. “We’ll make it Sunday. A Sunday, yes. That’s a good night.” “That’s just the spot I had in mind.” “Of course we’ll need adpub. Heavy adpub.” “My pleasure.” “And some PR as well.” “Why not?” “And finally,” the heavy man says, “no carryings-on from the cast. You married men?” “No.” “Pity. Oh well. You go into a quiet hotel until the package is on or off.” “With pleasure,” says Brandt. “We’ll keep them far from the night. These boys are exemplary anyway, I point out.” This much is true. Some weeks in seclusion, then, the evening has arrived; freed permanently at last from George’s neuroses, George’s trepidation, George’s small, deadly hesitations, I am tucked with him again into the limousine. We travel gnomelike into tunnels and at last into the studio itself. Brandt is waiting for us, leads the way to a large dressing room with mirrors. “We’ve got an audience for you. Network figured it plays better with bottoms in the seats.” “Fine,” I say. “Just stay calm and do it right.” It is peculiar advice from Brandt. He is sweating. Surprisingly, he leaves us and closes the door. George sits. Heavily. “We’re in trouble,” he says. “Everything’s fine.” I say, “have we ever had luck like this in any cycle? Don’t I even get a bouquet, at least, for the fast action. This Brandt is one in a million.” “I don’t know; I don’t know. I tell you, there’s something wrong. I feel it.” “That means you’re really into the role, George.” “No, it’s something else. I can’t explain it. It’s never been like this before. There’s something—” “Get to the point.” “I just don’t like it. Of course, I’m only an employee.” “We’re both employees, George,” I say, patting him. “Believe me, if I had your opportunities this time around, I’d be a grateful man.” “Want the role? You can have it.” “Come, come. It’s too late now. Besides, a working arrangement is a working arrangement. You know that.” George says nothing, stares at the floor. I notice that there is a bottle of “alcohol” jammed into a corner of the dressing room mirror and I consider it, finally decide to pass it up. In a way, it is an insult. After a time, some technicians lead us to the stage. It is jammed with equipment: cameras, wires, men, etc. In dead center is an artificial garden; waxen fruits, a few speckles of grass. “It’s not big enough,” George murmurs. “That’s the medium,” says a technician. “Make an adjustment.” “They wouldn’t even let us rehearse, here.” “Don’t get sulky, George.” For the first time, I am furious with him. His conduct is really inexcusable. “Have it your way,” he says then. He draws his robes around him. Apparently, it is time now, for which I am grateful. Lights darken, and mild applause rises from spaces beyond. A voice in the ceiling gives our names and purpose and lights blink. More applause and then silence. A red light winks down on George. He raises his hand. “I see no bounty,” he says. “I see stone. –“ “Stone?” I say. “Yes, yes; the stones are gray, they shriek in their huddled spaces; I tell you that we have come to the end of our time.” “Madness,” I say. “But yet, I will reflower these blasted spaces; for the stones have accosted the heavens and they have said: no more, no more. They parch; they cry for water.” “Madness!” I scream. “You are mad,” George says. His face shifts in the light. “You are corrupt; you are tormented; ah, I say to you that you have reached the end of our possibility. And so I come—” There is a shout in the grayness. It is very matter-of-fact, for all its volume. “Crucify him,” it says. “Why?” I ask reasonably. “Crucify him!” The voice is piercing and this time it seems to be accompanied by others. “Put him right up there! I dare you!” It is Brandt’s voice, of course. I look sidewise at George. He is listening intently. I shrug: it is not, after all, such a complex alteration of the Program but only brings us to our goal somewhat more rapidly. “How about a crucifixion?” I whisper. “Why not? Go right ahead. Crucify me. Isn’t that what you wanted, anyway?” “I’ll be careful.” “Sure, sure. Be my guest. Go right ahead.” “How about that small tree?” “Suits me just fine.” “Well, then!” I shout, “go up there and perish.” “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of you, anymore.” There is more shouting in the distance and sprays of cheering. “Go to it!” Brandt calls. I back George against the tree and take some nails from my pocket. “Okay,” I say. “My pleasure,” George says. He spread-eagles awkwardly, against the plastic tree and waits. I put the nails in with a thumb underneath his wrists. “Put them in!” they are shouting. “All the way!” Confused, now, and slightly alarmed, I drive another nail, this time into George’s finger. He wriggles but males no sound. I go for his feet, shove them into the trunk until he can balance only by clamping the tree with his wrists. All the time, I am trying to male clear to him by whispering and signals that, after all, we are only expediting matters. But be hardly listens. In fact, he begins now to really struggle. “Now the flogging!” Brandt screams. “Now, now!” I turn to the sound and put my palms up. “There are limits,” I say. “Flog him, damn you!” “We have to draw the line somewhere.” “Oh, forgive them,” George says behind me. “They do not know—” “George,” I whisper, “maybe we should make a run for it.” All of a sudden, something has come over me; a fester, not of doom but of fraud. Almost as if— A man—not Brandt—vaults to the stage, looks past me and runs into our garden. “You’ve got to do it right,” he says. His eyes are very clear. “Better watch it,” I say. “Can’t fake it,” he says determinedly. He snatches a hammer from his pocket and begins to beat George, screaming. George screams back. Helplessly, I look for aid, but there seems to be none in sight. In fact, other people with weapons are leaping on the stage, vaulting from all directions. I turn to George who is lying, bleeding, on the floor. I shrug. “What can I do?” I say. I pause. “What can I do? I didn’t think it would end this way. Still, I’ve got a contract to protect. We’re property, George. I can’t risk myself, it wouldn’t be fair to Headquarters. The insurance—” And delicately but hastily I run to a wing. Now I hear curses and banging and I back away from the hands which are reaching toward me, dodge into our dressing room and slam the door. All the way down, I hear the screams. No one follows. After a time, I take the bottle from the mirror and begin to work on it seriously, careless of the consequence. George, after all, was a partner. Furthermore, I am wondering just what I am going to tell Headquarters. It is a thorough, embarrassing mess; there is no doubt about this. I am still trying to figure out exactly how I am going to explain this when Brandt comes in, his face streaked, and stands behind me very quietly. “Well,” I say, without bothering to turn. “This is all your fault. I hope you stand thoroughly prepared—” Brandt says nothing. I turn on him. “I hope you’re ashamed!” I say. Still, he says nothing. Instead, he extends his hands. “You don’t have to be so damned supercilious about it,” I say. Then, I lose control and break the rule of Headquarters. “Thanks to you, we’ve botched our first job! What are we going to say to them?” “Whatever you must,” murmurs Brandt. His hands suddenly grasp my neck. “You played right into it.” Almost detachedly, he begins to choke me. Struggling in his grip, I see everything. From the first. Why it was so easy. Why it came to this. “Damn you,” I gasp (breaking another Headquarters' two rule), “you’re from the Other Side.” “Precisely right,” agrees Brandt, and begins to strangle me seriously. “You didn’t think you’d get away with this forever, did you? We’ve ‘had quite enough of your disgusting, cheap little operation and we’re starting to take measures. Then, there is a horrible twisting, and everything goes away. When I wake up, I am in Headquarters, of course, and boy, are they ever mad! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I had just quit a job, for reasons falling outside any analysis of science-fiction, had been out of work a month with no prospects of finding another job, found myself unable to sell anything of any description, had my wife at work and was taking care of my then seven-month-old daughter when, in December of 1966. I wrote this story, in one hour, out of the blackest despair I have ever experienced. It became my first science-fiction sale and I am assured by people I respect that it is very funny. Which only goes to prove that editors are right: keep them in constant pain if you want them to do any decent work. WE’RE COMING THROUGH THE WINDOW Dear Mr. Pohl: Unfortunately I, William Coyne, cannot send you a manuscript for consideration due to reasons very much beyond my control which you will soon understand. All that I can do in the very limited time, and with the limited opportunities available, is to write things down as best I can in the form of this letter and hope that you will be patient and understanding enough to see the great story possibilities in my problem. Perhaps after you see how important and unusual the situation is here you will consent to write a story out of it yourself and keep 50% (fifty per cent) of the proceeds, which seems fair enough because you don’t have to think up any ideas. Or, if you find yourself too busy to write it, you might turn it over to one of your regular authors in which case he will do the same thing and I will allow him only 40% (forty per cent) of the sale price. But since this is a million-dollar idea as you will see, there should be plenty of money in it for everyone if you’ll only work fast. Last week I, William Coyne, invented a time machine. That is correct, I created from my own notes the first time machine. I, William Coyne, 29 years old, unemployed and presently living in very cramped quarters. I built it by myself in these three furnished rooms on the West Side of Manhattan, running back and forth between the hall sink and my bedroom because, like my own body, the mechanism is 85% undistilled water. The machine worked out very well, considering that I know next to nothing about electronics and the only science courses I have ever taken were for my high school equivalency diploma. I am not very advanced, as they say. Instead, I just kind of fiddle around and I guess I fiddled myself into the machine. It is a very simple device, Mr. Pohl, and a very successful one; the only trouble is that its range is extremely limited. At the present time it will take me back only four months into time or forward seventeen minutes, it is poorly calibrated and at no time can I leave the actual time field, which embraces only five square feet. It is an early model and it will have to be refined then on part of the proceeds from the story you will write about me. In spite of the problems though, it definitely works. Just last Tuesday I shot myself back three months in time, found the newspaper of that date lying on my desk and my own humble form, the form of William Goyne, tossing fitfully upon the bed. It was an eerie experience, meeting myself for the first time and it shook me up considerable. But when I came back to the present time, with the help of the machine, and before I could even look around, I was interrupted by the dashing appearance of my double who motioned me urgently and requested in a whisper that four minutes hence I would please go backward four minutes in time. Then he—me—vanished. It was very frightening, let me tell you, talking to myself, William Coyne in my own rooms. But I counted off the four minutes and used the machine to go backward; then I met my earlier self and told him—me, that is—to go back four minutes in four minutes. Like that. All right, Mr. Pohl, I know what you’re thinking right now. You’re saying that this is all old stuff for you and your writers (even though in my case, the case of William Coyne, it happens to be one hundred per cent (100%) absolute true fact) and that you’ve seen it a thousand (1,000) ways. I read science fiction, too, or I used to read it before I got into this mess. But stay with me, Mr. PohI. There are a couple of things I haven’t explained to you yet which will make clear why this situation is 100% sockaroo for a good man like yourself. You can imagine how I got the plans for the time machine, of course. That’s right, a few months ago I woke up in the morning to find all of them written out for me in my own handwriting on my dresser table (that was what I did when I shot myself back the first time). I just used them. So I guess I didn’t really invent it—or, that all of us invented it. But that is of little importance, Mr. Pohl, except to point out that I am not a creative genius and that is why I need help in my situation very, very fast. You see the trouble is this: I told you that the machine didn’t calibrate exactly and every time I go back to the present I don’t get to the exact present but instead a few seconds or minutes off in either direction. So now, every time I jump around, I always come back to meet myself, and if I jump back, and try to come in exactly on time, I just make more difficulties. The same thing happens every time I go back in time; I’m always meeting myself on the way. Well, what it comes down to is this: I’m always coming across myself now and the more I try to straighten things out, the worse it gets. As a matter of fact, Mr. PohI, I’m afraid to make any more jumps because the more I’ve tried to straighten out this situation, the worse it’s become. Well, the truth is that there are now about three hundred (300) of us in these rooms, Mr. PohI, all of us fooling around with these small time machines and none of us getting along very well. I mean, I’ve stopped trying to straighten myself out but most of the others haven’t yet. They have to learn the hard way and in the meantime there are just more and more of us. Right now there are about 310 (three hundred and ten) for instance, just in the few short minutes I’ve been able to borrow the typewriter from the other 53 of us who all are trying to write letters for help. As a matter of fact, we’re about to be evicted for overcrowding, Mr. Pohl, and in the bargain there’s just no food or space left here any more. And any time one of us goes out for food he seems never to come back with it . . not that it would do us any good because I had two cents in my pocket when this all began and we would need several thousand of us to get enough food to feed ten of us if you see what I mean. This is my situation, the situation of William Coyne. What can I (we) do? We need to make big money from the machine real fast, that’s the point, but we can’t get out of the field, so how are we going to make it? And then we just keep on meeting up with ourselves and having to explain things all over again and we’re all dead broke. Please, please: would you have one of your writers, if not yourself, write a story about me (about us) and send the money just as soon as you can? We’re all kind of desperate, here. Hopefully, WILLIAM COYNE William Goyne William coyne &... -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I thought that this was a simple, slick, polished gimmick short—a perfect example of the subgenre which H. L. Gold created for the early-50’s Galaxy, the only such I have ever attempted or brought off and was right pleased with until someone I know read it and said “it s a metaphor, it’s all about writers and agents.” And I reread it and he was right and I became most depressed because while there is nothing wrong with multi-level writing, you should usually be aware of it for your own sake. THE MARKET IN ALIENS THE FIRST THING I did when I brought the alien home from auction was to plop him right into the tub. No sense in taking chances, even though they had assured me as usual that he was strong enough to exist out of the aqueous environment for several days. These were the same boys who had learned, only after a lot of trial and error, that they needed an aqueous environment in the first place, of course. The one thing I couldn’t take would he an alien dying on me right off, and thanks to the liars and cheats who run these farces, there’s a lot of precedent. The next thing I did, after I established that he was going to lie there quietly, breathing slowly, turning the water their characteristic black, was to make a strong drink and call Intercontinental. I didn’t even want to try making conversation with him; I had gone through that with the earlier ones, and it always came down to the same frustration, hacked by whistling. Some day they’re going to establish communication with them, and when they do, I’ll be happy to talk. But until then, it’s absolutely pointless. Besides, there is absolutely nothing an alien could say that would interest me in the slightest, not at this stage of the game. I was lucky. I got Black, my contact, on only the fourth or fifth try at the switchboard—Inter is in administrative collapse like most everything these days—and after reminding him of all the favors I had done for him, I laid it right on the line. “I’ve got one in the bathtub,” I said. “A clean healthy male, in the pink of maturity, I'd say. All reflexes in order, highly responsive and probably as intelligent as hell; he’s piping a blue streak. I just got him this afternoon.” Black shrugged, a common business technique, and then cut off his viewscreen. “Don’t need it,” he said. “We’re already overstocked.” “You need this one. Prime of life and all that. Furthermore, I was able to get him reasonable, and I can pass that saving right on to you.” “Sorry,” Black said. “We just don’t need it right now. These things haven’t been moving as well as we had hoped in the last month. People are tired of them, and I think there’s a lot of guilt building up, too. What the hell, they may be intelligent with these space machines and all. Speaking personally, I think the bottom has fallen out of your craze.” “Never,” I said. “You’re talking about the whole appeal.” “You don’t understand psychology. Not to get involved, though, and just because I'm curious, what would you want for it?” “Five hundred.” “Five hundred what?” “Dollars,” I said. Black was my contact at Inter; I had sold him eight aliens at more or less fair prices. Nevertheless, all that sentiment aside, he could drop dead most of the time, as far as I’m concerned. “Oh. I thought you meant five hundred cents. At that level, we might have something to talk about, for taxidermic purposes anyway. But I can’t use it, Harry. We can’t move the stock we got. I tell you, the word is out on these things, now with the research. We don’t know what we’ve hooked into.” “Three hundred,” I said, cutting out my own viewscreen, letting Black drift in uncertainty for a few moments, a legitimate business technique. “For you. Just for the turnover. Hell, I got him at 275 so you can see that I’m practically crying.” “No, Harry. Speaking seriously, I probably could take him off your hands at 150, maybe 175 if he shapes up. We could sneak it through. But I couldn’t ask you to take a loss like that, could I? A friend is a friend. Try Franchise.” “I will if I have to. But I don’t like Franchise. I consider you my closest friend in this business, Black. Just to keep that relationship alive, I’ll let you have him at cost price. All right, say 250. Just to have the lines opened.” I had bought the alien for 100, and the auctioneer had been practically begging for that figure; Black was right about the bottom having fallen out. Nevertheless, I hated to concede a point. It was the first step to losing money, and I hadn’t lost a cent on the freaks yet. Not one. And not ever. Black sighed and put his viewscreen on again, gave me a good view of some cigarette-work. “200,” he said, “and you’ll have to deliver, and the beast better pass.” “225 and you make pickup. And he’ll pass. He was trying to sing me a lecture in there before.” Black showed me some smoke. “210 and I’ll make pickup.” “Done,” I said, and flipped on my own viewscreen, projected some sensitive profile-action. “How soon cab you be over?” “We’ll have a crew in about half an hour. You better get it sedated, Harry. Some of the crews are getting nervous about this whole business, now. I don’t want any of that whistling.” “Leave it to me.” “Don’t overdose him now.” “Don’t worry about a thing,” I said. “I treat them right. He’s in perfect shape and he’ll stay that way, and he’ll be quiet as the tomb on the way over. You’ll have the usual certificate for me, won’t you?” “Of course. You know how we do business. Personally, Harry, to loosen up a bit, I tell you that I don’t see much of a future in this business for either of us, not with these latest reports. But I agree that you always came across with fair merchandise, and if he’s a nice specimen, we might be able to turn him over to a lab, skip the zoo-route completely. I’ll do this for old time’s sake. but the lab pays only about 300, I want you to know, so who’s taking the loss here?” “Maybe the alien, is that what you’re trying to tell me?” I said, and switched off altogether. The hell with them. Unctuous bastard. If anybody was going to get crucified first, though, it was going to be the Blacks, not me. I was only performing a service for a public demand, and I could prove it. I went into the bathroom, feeling pretty disgusted with the whole conversation, and looked at the alien for a while. He was in a semi-doze, one of the usual comas, the eyes bright and fixated on me as he moved slowly on his back. His tentacles were twitching. No whistling, no gestures though. “Only a few minutes for you here and you’re gone, boy,” I said. I always try to communicate with them; I never said they weren’t intelligent. Deep inside me there is the belief that a bit of soul exists in everything. Hell, maybe they came to earth to cure us; how the hell do I know? When I see it, I’ll believe it, that’s all I know. I locked the bathroom door and went into the den and watched television for a time, waiting for the crew to come. As usual, Black’s boys were late. A bulletin came on saying that yet another of their ships had landed somewhere near Lake Michigan, the second in a week in that general area, and that the usual procedures were being followed. That relieved the depression a bit. It meant that if they were efficient there for a change, the auction would probably be ready to go by day after tomorrow. Detroit was a nice city; I hadn’t seen it for a while. So I called United and booked flight, taking coach; no sense overdoing pleasure with business. Some time after that, just before the crew finally came, one of those damned scientists came on in an interview with the usual recent crap about mass guilt and stellar communication, and I switched that right off. The profit on the sale, less the airline deposit, left me with fifty clear and what I did was to call Cinny and take her out. We went to the zoo where I showed her the two specimens which were mine. On my own level, I’m very sentimental about the freaks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another assassination story, most didactic in intent. It even possesses what K. M. O’Donnell so rarely provides—a clear Means of Operation. It is for this reason, perhaps, that I am not entirely satisfied with it. BY RIGHT OF SUCCESSION OH GOD, it was a glorious day; indeed it was, fine and glossy high in the skies above. Even the motorcade—mark you, the motorcade came by exactly on schedule this once, proving the perfection of it all. As it passed under him, he heard the distant shouts, cries, the pounding of the cycles and then the procession itself: marvelous. Carson could hardly contain himself, it was all working out so perfectly. When The Car passed, he leveled properly, savoring the rightness and tightness of the stock high in his hands, the rightness and tightness of the ritual which Congress had in it’s wisdom decreed . . and then he fired. Once Twice The true hit came on the second shot, just as predicted. Simple. There was nothing to the whole thing, once you had a little organization, the right attitude. The cheering started immediately. He worked his way down the Depository slowly, using the ladders, bowing gracefully at landings, remembering to keep his gaze straight, his hands busy. (Stay in the role, the instructors had reminded him.) At the fourth floor, he threw his hat into the crowd, at the third he chucked the rifle itself, watching it whirl, diminish, hit stones with a clatter. Someone cried Carson! and -he smiled. When he came to ground level, two men dressed as police were already waiting, ready to take him by the arms and guide him safely to the car. Behind the barriers, people leapt, threw flowers. It was splendid, all splendid. Thank you! he said to the crowds. It was all over, then. The only thing that had concerned him even a bit was being mauled or crushed as he understood a few had been; one had to pay the price of office of course, but not so gracelessly, so publicly. He eased into the cushions of the limousine easily, settled next to another policeman. In the front, an anonymous figure shifted gears. They moved rapidly then, doing eighty, perhaps ninety miles an hour between the barricades, toward the hospital. Carson felt fine, never better: no complaints, Lord, no complaints at all. Relaxed, content, joined utterly to himself for a change, all credit to the serenity of the operation. But, then (lie reminded himself), that was understood to be part of the emotional reaction after the shots were fired; everybody felt great then. The question was how he would feel during the Inquisition. Most of them ran into trouble—if they were going to get into trouble at all, that was—during those intense moments. However. The policeman beside him bore a faint but interesting resemblance to the man Carson had just shot. That was all part of the process of course: great realism, great immediacy, identity and so on. They were clever. The important thing was simply to remember that the policeman was a robot, that all of them were probably robots excepting always those that weren’t. The victim, for instance. Carson asked for a cigarette. The policeman said no. “Don’t believe in them,” he added. “Just get a bold of yourself.” That was to he expected, of course. Now and then you might find one programmed for amiability, he had gathered, but for the most part they weren’t, which was probably just as well in the long run. Still, he felt exhilarated; he wanted to talk. “How we doing?” he said. “What you mean?” “We on schedule?” “Five minutes ahead, maybe.” “Couldn’t that be a problem?” Carson asked, feeling the first flick of anxiety. Five minutes ahead this early could mean trouble. It meant one thing for sure; he should have stayed with the crowds a little longer, met the public head on, pressed the flesh so to speak. It couldn’t hurt when the bad times came. As they would. For that matter, perhaps he had shot too fast. Oh God, if he had missed— “Don’t mean a thing,” the policeman said. “Always work out that way. We make up for it in the hospital by just sticking you in the anteroom a few minutes longer. There's so much dead time we can always pick it up there. Forget it; you’re going good.” That was easy enough for the policeman to say; he would be quit of the game—dismantled, that is—in a matter of hours. Carson had to live with it, he reminded himself, had to qualify. “The crowd,” he said. “I should have talked to the crowd—” “No point to that. They always overreact; makes them shaky. Don’t worry about it; anything you do is applesauce from here on in. You placed the fire real good. I don’t have cigarettes. I don’t believe in them—” “I enjoyed doing it. I enjoyed shooting him. You know—” “This smoking’s a harmful, dangerous habit. Shortens life, tightens the lungs. You take a tip from me and find another habit. You got a lot of responsibility now, what with doing so well and all.” “I’m doing okay?” Carson said. “Really?” “Doing like almost all of them. The usual. No better or worse. How can you not flunk this, particularly when you say you liked shooting the guy? Trouble with all of you, you think you’re the center of things. Well you ain’t.” “Are you?” “No more talk now. We’ve talked enough. We’re not supposed to talk any more and so I won’t.” The policeman closed his eyes. “Don’t try to bolt, though; you do that and I’d have to make a move or something.” Carson settled for that, not that he had much of an alternative. Still, there were obvious limits to that kind of conversation. He pressed his spine into the cushions, feeling the sun refracting through the windows, whack into the panes of his face; the smell of turning autumn piped in through the air conditioner in the front. There was little communication these days for him, it had nothing to do with disobedient robots (who at best were only a symptom), but with the central things. Like, when you came right down to it. it was a pretty peculiar ritual. Past the exaltation now, he found himself thinking that there must have been a better way of qualification; even institutions could possess manners if not sense. He thought of bringing that up to the policeman just to see what he was programmed to respond in this situation, but before he could, they were at the emergency entrance of the hospital, doors flicking outward, shouts in the air. The policeman nudged him unpleasantly. “Out,” he said. “Couldn’t we pick up the five minutes by just sitting—” He felt metal against him. “Out,” the policeman said, and Carson moved. He stood balancing awkwardly on the cobblestones, moving toward the entrance. “Not that way, you ass,” the policeman said, slamming his back with a club. “The service entrance. You want to get knocked out right here?” Others came around them then: prostheses garbed to look like more policemen and pressed and obscurely shamed, Carson scuttled through side doors. They tossed him into a huge, high room and closed the door on him, tossing a package of cigarettes and matches through the high transom, and he heard keys turning. Then, for some time, he stood in the dimness, smoking and watching the sun turn gray, turn brown, merge into the myriad colors of night. Just like the nation. Outside, he could hear screams, scuffles, clatters, a cry. He supposed that the worst part was coming now and he wondered if he was ready for it. Although he had been completely oriented, they had not made him realize how rough, how really rough, it could be toward the end. But then it would have to be the materials, as they had told him, were central. That was the point. After a time a functionary came in; an obscure mechanical cross between priest, government clerical worker and footman; perhaps it was their technological mockery Well” it said, sighing and lighting a cigarette—this was a different kind of prostheses, obviously—”here we go again I guess. This must be it, right now.” “Already?” Carson said. Despite the anticipation, the attenuated despair which had crept upon him soon to be allayed, the shaking, the wonder, the responsibility . . . despite all of this he did not want it at finality. “Can’t we wait?” “Sorry,” the robot said, and something close to sympathy lit its clenched features. I am not a mere device. I suffer, the cunningly realistic filaments of the eyes seemed to be saying. “We have to move ahead. We’re actually running about ten minutes behind now, they picked up too much.” It shrugged, moved in on him. “Mr. Carson, I must announce, with sorrow but with solemnity that due to the tragic death, etc., I must advise that you are the-” “No,” Carson said. “Oh, no. Please wait.” “You will have to meet the widow now, of course. She’s outside, waiting for you; I’ll bring her in. Mr. Carson, you are—“ “Please,” he said. “Please.” But, it was too late. Oh, boy, was it ever too late. The robot said what it had to say then and the widow entered sneezing and all of them went to the airport together in a clutch and they threw him into the plane and inaugurated him. And so he woke up then; woke up screaming in his coffin, screaming at the million eyes taped inside the wood. The eyes that peered at him knew better than anything else what was going on and he watched his reflection floating in the tank, thinking—in that first return to consciousness— really now, there must be other ways to break in a public official these days; guilt is guilt, but this is too much, too much. But they were coming at him from all sides, now, the technicians were running, running, clapping him on the back, puffing out the tensors and the wires and the cords and the needles and he was unable to preserve that cold moment of clarity; instead, as they unplugged him and let him loose like a doll from the tank he only sighed and straightened. And filled then, filled with the stimulants they were pouring into him, he allowed them to take him out restored and with more than a shadow of the old bouncing, bobbing, glorious confidence, he burst free alone into a full run, went back to the White House, went hack to his office and decided that the price was almost worth the election, maybe, you never could be sure. At any rate, next week he would have finished six months in office and they would cut the treatments down to one a week. That was to hope for.