Seven Conquests Page 4

  Diaz listened to silence for a minute before he said: “Well, I’ve sometimes thought the same. I suppose you mean we spacemen are the goats these days?”

  “Exactly. War fought out here does not menace the planet. By our deaths we keep Earth alive.”

  Rostock sighed. His mouth drooped. “Magic works, you know,” he said, “works on the emotions of the people who practice it. If a primitive witch doctor told a storm to go away, the storm did not hear, but the tribe did and took heart. The ancient analogy to us, though, is the sacrificial king in the early agricultural societies; a god in mortal form, who was regularly slain so that the fields might bear fruit. This was not mere superstition. You must realize that. It worked—on the people. The rite was essential to the operation of their culture, to their sanity and hence to their survival.

  “Today the machine age has developed its own sacrificial kings. We are the chosen of the race, the best it can offer. None gainsays us. We may have what we choose, pleasure, luxury, women, adulation—only not the simple pleasures of wife and child and hope, for we must die that the people may live.”

  Again silence, until: “Do you seriously mean that’s why the war goes on?” Diaz breathed.

  Rostock nodded.

  “But nobody…I mean, people wouldn’t—”

  “They do not reason these things out, of course. Traditions develop blindly. The ancient peasant did not elaborate logical reasons why the king must die. He merely knew this was so, and left the syllogism for modern anthropologists to expound. I did not see the process going on today until I had had the chance to…to become more perceptive than I had been,” Rostock said humbly.

  Diaz couldn’t endure sitting any longer. He jumped to his feet. “Assuming you’re right,” he snapped, “and you may be, what of it? What can be done?”

  “Much,” Rostock said. Calm descended on his face like a mask. “I am not being mystical about this, either. The sacrificial king has reappeared as the end product of a long chain of cause and effect. There is no reason inherent in natural law why this must be. Richardson was right in his basic hope, that when war becomes understood, as a phenomenon, it can be eliminated. This would naturally involve restructuring the entire terrestrial culture—gradually, subtly. Remember—” His hand shot out, seized Diaz’s shoulder and gripped painfully hard. “There is a new element in history today. Us. The kings. We are not like those who spend their lives under Earth’s sky. In some ways we are more, in other ways less, but always we are different. You and I are more akin to each other than to our planet-dwelling countrymen. Are we not?

  “In the time and loneliness granted me, I have used all my new powers to think about this. Not only think; this is so much more than cold reason. I have tried to feel. To love what is, as the Buddhists say. I believe a nucleus of spacemen like us, slowly and secretly gathered, wishing the good of everyone on Earth and the harm of none, gifted with powers and insights they cannot really imagine at home—I believe we may accomplish something. If not us, then our sons. Men ought not to kill each other, when the stars are waiting.”

  He let go, turned away and looked at the deck. “Of course,” be mumbled, “I, in my peculiar situation, must first destroy a number of your brothers.”

  They had given Diaz a whole pack of cigarettes, an enormous treasure out here, before they locked him into his cubicle for the duration of the second engagement. He lay in harness, hearing clang and shout and engine roar through the vibrating bulkheads, stared at blackness, and smoked until his tongue was foul. Sometimes the Ho accelerated, mostly it ran free and he floated. Once a tremor went through the entire hull, a near miss by a shaped charge. Doubtless gamma rays, ignoring the magnetic force screens, sleeted through the men and knocked another several months off their life expectancies. Not that that mattered; spacemen rarely lived long enough to worry about degenerative diseases. Diaz hardly noticed.

  Rostock’s not lying. Why should he? What could he gain? He may he a nut, of course. But he doesn’t act like a nut either. He wants me to study his statistics and equations, satisfy myself that he’s right. And he must be damn sure 1 will be convinced, to tell me what he has.

  How many are there like him? Few, I’m sure. The man-machine symbiosis is obviously new, or we d’ve had some inkling ourselves. This is the first field trial of the system. I wonder if the others have reached the same conclusions as Rostock. No, he said he doubts that; their minds impressed him as being more deeply channeled than his. He’s a lucky accident.

  Lucky? Now how can I tell? I’m only a man. I’ve never experienced an IQ of a thousand, or whatever the figure may be. A god’s purposes aren’t necessarily what a man would elect.

  An eventual end to war? Well, other institutions had been ended, at least in the Western countries: judicial torture, chattel slavery, human sacrifice—no, wait, according to Rostock human sacrifice had been revived.

  “But is our casualty rate high enough to fit your equations?” Diaz had argued. “Space forces aren’t as big as old-time armies. No country could afford that.”

  “Other elements than death must be taken into account,” Rostock answered. “The enormous expense is one factor. Taxpaying is a form of symbolic self-mutilation. It also tends to direct civilian resentments and aggressions against their own governments, thus taking some pressure off international relations.

  “Chiefly, though, there is the matter of emotional intensity. A spaceman does not simply die, he usually dies horribly; and that moment is the culmination of a long period under grisly conditions. His groundling brothers, administrative and service personnel, suffer vicariously: ‘sweat it out/ as your idiom so well expresses the feeling. His kinfolk, friends, women, are likewise racked. When Adonis dies—or Osiris, Tammuz, Baldur, Christ, Tlaloc, whichever of his hundred names you choose—the people must in some degree share his agony. That is part of the sacrifice.”

  Diaz had never thought about it in quite that way. Like most Corpsmen, he had held the average civilian in thinly disguised contempt. But…from time to time, he remembered, he’d been glad his mother died before he enlisted. And why did his sister hit the bottle so hard? Then there had been Lois, she of the fire-colored hair and violet eyes, who wept as if she would never stop weeping when he left for duty. He’d promised to get in touch with her on his return, but of course he knew better.

  Which did not erase memories of men whose breath and blood came exploding from burst helmets; who shuddered and vomited and defecated in the last stages of radiation sickness; who stared without immediate comprehension at a red spurt which a second ago had been an arm or a leg; who went insane and must be gassed because psychoneurosis is catching on a six months’ orbit beyond Saturn; who—Yeah, Carl had been lucky.

  You could talk as much as you wished about Corps brotherhood, honor, tradition, and gallantry. It remained sentimental guff…No, that was unjust. The Corps had saved the people, their lives and liberties. There could be no higher achievement—for the Corps. But knighthood had once been a noble thing, too; then, lingering after its day, it became a yoke and eventually a farce. The warrior virtues were not ends in themselves. If the warrior could be made obsolete…

  Could he? How much could one man, even powered by a machine, hope to do? How much could he even hope to understand?

  The moment came upon Diaz. He lay as if blinded by shellburst radiance.

  As consciousness returned, he knew first, irrelevantly, what it meant to get religion.

  “By God,” he told the universe, “were going to try!”

  The battle would resume shortly. At any moment, in fact, some scoutship leading the American force might fire a missile. But when Diaz told his guard he wanted to speak with General Rostock, he was taken there within minutes.

  The door closed behind him. The living room lay empty, altogether still except for the machine .throb, which was not loud since the Ho was running free. Because acceleration might be needful on short notice, there was no spin. Diaz hung weightle
ss as fog. And the Monet flung into his eyes all Earth’s sunlight and summer forests.

  “Rostock?” he called uncertainly.

  “Come,” said a voice, almost too low to hear. Diaz gave a shove with his foot and flew toward the office.

  He stopped himself by grasping the doorjamb. A semicircular room lay before him, the entire side taken up by controls and meters. Lights blinked, needles wavered on dials, buttons and switches and knobs reached across black paneling. But none of that was important. Only the man at the desk mattered, who free-sat with wires running from his head to the wall.

  Rostock seemed to have lost weight. Or was that an illusion? The skin was drawn taut across his high cheekbones and gone a dead, glistening white. His nostrils were flared and the colorless lips held tense. Diaz looked into his eyes, once, and away again. He could not meet them. He could not even think about them. He drew a shaken breath and waited.

  “You made your decision quickly,” Rostock whispered. “I had not awaited you until after the engagement.”

  “I…I didn’t think you would see me till then.”

  “This is more important.” Diaz felt as if he were being probed with knives. He could not altogether believe it was his imagination. He stared desperately at paneled instruments. Their nonhumanness was like a comforting hand. They must be for the benefit of maintenance techs, he thought in a distant part of himself. The brain doesn’t need them. “You are convinced,” Rostock said in frank surprise.

  “Yes,” Diaz answered.

  “I. had not expected that. I hoped for little more than your reluctant agreement to study my work.” Rostock regarded him for a still century. “You were ripe for a new faith,” he decided. “I had not taken you for the type. But then, the mind can only use what data are given it, and I have hitherto had small opportunity to meet Americans. Never since I became what I am. You have another psyche from ours.”

  “I need to understand your findings, sir,” Diaz said. “Right now I can only believe. That isn’t enough, is it?”

  Slowly, Rostock’s mouth drew into a smile of quite human warmth. “Correct. But given the faith, intellectual comprehension should be swift.”

  “I…I shouldn’t be taking your time…now, sir,” Diaz stammered. “How should I begin? Should I take some books back with me?”

  “No.” Acceptance had been reached; Rostock spoke resonantly, a master to his trusted servant. “I need your help here. Strap into yonder harness. Our first necessity is to survive the battle upon us. You realize that this means sacrificing many of your comrades. I know how that will hurt you. Afterward we shall spend our lives repaying our people…both our peoples. But today I shall ask you questions about your fleet. Any information is valuable, especially details of construction and armament which our intelligence has not been able to learn.”

  Dona mia. Diaz let go the door, covered his face and fell free, endlessly. Help me.

  “It is not betrayal,” said the superman. “It is the ultimate loyalty you can offer.”

  Diaz made himself look at the cabin again. He shoved against the bulkhead and stopped by the harness near the desk.

  “You cannot lie to me,” said Rostock. “Do not deny the pain I am giving you.” Diaz glimpsed his fists clamping together. “Each time I look at you, I share what you feel.”

  Diaz clung to his harness. There went an explosion through him.

  NO, BY GOD!

  Rostock screamed.

  “Don’t,” Diaz sobbed. “I don’t want—” But wave after wave ripped outward. Rostock flopped about in his harness and shrieked. The scene came back, ramming home like a bayonet.

  * * *

  “We like to put an extra string on our bow.” the psych officer said. Lunar sunlight, scarcely softened by the dome, blazed off his bronze eagles, wings and beaks. “You know that your right ulna will be replaced with a metal section which contains a nerve-triggered nuclear cartridge. But that may not be all, gentlemen.”

  He bridged his fingers. The young men seated on the other side of his desk stirred uneasily. “In this country,” the psych officer said, “we don’t believe humans should be turned into puppets. Therefore you will have voluntary control of your bombs; no posthypnosis, Pavlov reflex, or any such insult. However, those of you who are willing will receive a rather special extra treatment, and that fact will be buried from the consciousness of every one of you.

  “Our reasoning is that if and when the Unasians learn about the prisoner weapon, they’ll remove the cartridge by surgery but leave the prosthetic bone in place. And they will, we hope, not examine it in microscopic detail. Therefore they won’t know that it holds an oscillator, integrated with the crystal structure. Nor will you; because what you don’t know, you can’t babble under anesthesia.

  “The opportunity may come, if you are captured and lose your bomb, to inflict damage by this reserve means. You may find yourself near a crucial electronic device, for example a spaceship’s autopilot. At short range, the oscillator will do an excellent job of bollixing it. Which will at least discomfit the enemy, and may give you a chance to escape.

  “The posthypnotic command will be such that you’ll remember about this oscillator when conditions seem right for using it. Not before. Of course, the human mind is a damned queer thing; it twists and turns and bites its own tail. In order to make an opportunity to strike this blow, your subconscious may lead you down strange paths—may even have you seriously contemplating treason, if treason seems the only way of getting access to what you can wreck. Don’t let that bother you afterward, gentlemen. Your superiors will know what happened.

  “Nevertheless, the experience may be painful. And posthypnosis is, at best, humiliating to a free man. So this aspect of the program is strictly volunteer. Does anybody want to go for broke?”

  The door flung open. The guards burst in. Diaz was already behind the desk, next to Rostock. He yanked out the general’s sidearm and fired at the soldiers. Free-fall recoil sent him back against the computer panel. He braced himself, fired again, and used his left elbow to smash the nearest meter face.

  Rostock clawed at the wires in his head. For a moment Diaz guessed what it must be like to have random oscillations in your brain, amplified by an electronic engine that was part of you. He laid the pistol to the screaming mans temple and fired once more.

  Now to get out! He shoved hard, arrowing past the sentries, who rolled through the air in a crimson galaxy of blood globules. Confusion boiled in the corridor beyond. Someone snatched at him. He knocked the fellow aside and dove along a tube way. Somewhere hereabouts should be a scooter locker—there, and nobody around!

  He didn’t have time to get on a spacesuit, even if a Unasian one would have fitted, but he slipped an air dome over the scooter. That, with the heater unit and oxy reclaim, would serve. He didn’t want to get off anywhere enroute; not before he’d steered the machine through an American hatch.

  With luck, he’d do that. Their command computer gone, the enemy were going to get smeared. American ships would close in as the slaughter progressed. Eventually one should come within range of the scooter’s little radio.

  He set the minilock controls, mounted the saddle, dogged the air dome, and waited for ejection. It came none too soon. Three soldiers had just appeared down the passageway. Diaz applied full thrust and jetted away from the Ho. Its blackness was soon lost among the star clouds.

  Battle commenced. The first Unasian ship to be destroyed must have been less than fifty miles distant. Luckily, Diaz was facing the other way when the missile exploded.

  Every new capability that man gains is, sooner rather than later, turned against his fellow man. The use is often indirect, sometimes very subtle indeed; but it is not the less significant for that, nor necessarily less dangerous.

  Wildcat

  It was raining again, hot and heavy out of a hidden sky, and the air stank with swamp. Herries could just see the tall derricks a mile away, under a floodlight glare, and hear the
ir engines mutter. Farther away, a bull brontosaur cried and thunder went through the night.

  Herries’ boots resounded hollowly on the dock. Beneath the slicker, his clothes lay sweat-soggy, the rain spilled off his hat and down his collar. He swore in a tired voice and stepped onto his gangplank.

  Light from the shack on the barge glimmered off drenched wood. He saw the snaky neck just in time, as it reared over the gangplank rail and struck at him. He sprang back, grabbing for the Magnum carbine slung over one shoulder. The plesiosaur hissed monstrously and flipper-slapped the water. It was like a cannon going off.

  Herries threw the gun to his shoulder and fired.

  The long sleek form took the bullet—somewhere—and screamed. The raw noise hurt the man’s eardrums.

  Feet thudded over the wharf. Two guards reached Herries and began to shoot into the dark water. The door of the shack opened and a figure stood black against its yellow oblong, a tommy gun stammering idiotically in its hands.

  “Cut it out!” bawled Herries. “That’s enough! Hold your fire!”

  Silence fell. For a moment only the ponderous rainfall had voice. Then the brontosaur bellowed again, remotely, and there were seethings and croak-ings in the water.

  “He got away,” said Herries. “Or more likely his pals are now stripping him clean. Blood smell.” A dull anger lifted in him. He turned and grabbed the lapel of the nearest guard. “How often do I have to tell you characters, every gangway has to have a man near it with grenades?”