Seven Conquests Page 6

  “Did I pass?” asked Greenstein, a bit too lightly.

  “Sure. So far. You may wish you hadn’t. The burning issue today is not whether to tolerate ‘privileged neutralism/ or whatever the latest catchword is up there. It’s: Did I get the armament I’ve been asking for?”

  The transceiving station bulked ahead. It was a long corrugated-iron shed, but dwarfed by the tanks that gleamed behind it. Every one of those was filled, Herries knew. Today they would pump their crude oil into the future. Or rather, if you wanted to be exact, their small temporal unit would establish a contact and the gigantic main projector in the twentieth century would then “suck” the liquid toward itself. And in return the compound would get food, tools, weapons, supplies, and mail. Herries prayed for at least one howitzer…and no VIP’s. That senator a few months ago!

  For a moment, contemplating the naked ugliness of tanks and pumps and shed, Herries had a vision of this one place stretching through time. It would be abandoned some day, when the wells were exhausted, and rain and jungle would rapidly eat the last thin traces of man. Later would come the sea, and then it would be dry land again, a cold prairie scoured by glacial wind6, and then it would grow warm and…on and on, a waste of years until the time projector was invented and the great machine stood on this spot. And afterward? Harries didn’t like to think what might be here after that.

  Symonds was already present. He popped rabbitlike out of the building, a coded manifest in one hand, a pencil behind his ear. “Good morning, Mr. Herries,” he said. His tone gave its usual impression of stiff self-importance.

  “Morning. All set in there?” Herries went into see for himself. A spatter of rain began to fall, noisy on the metal roof. The technicians were at their posts and reported clear. Outside, one by one, the rest of the men were drifting up. This was mail day, and little work would be done for the remainder of it.

  Herries laid the sack of letters to the future inside the shed in its proper spot. His chronometer said one minute to go. “Stand by!” At the precise time, there was a dim whistle in the air and an obscure pulsing glow. Meters came to life. The pumps began to throb, driving crude oil through a pipe that faced open-ended into the shed. Nothing emerged that Herries could see. Good. Everything in order. The other end of the pipe was a hundred million years in the future. The mail sack vanished with a small puff, as air rushed in where it had waited. Herries went back outside.

  “Ah…excuse me.”

  He turned around, with a jerkiness that told him his nerves were half unraveled. “Yes?” he snapped.

  “May I see you a moment?” asked Symonds. “Alone?” And the pale eyes behind the glasses said it was not a request but an order.

  Herries nodded curtly, swore at the men for hanging around idle when the return shipment wasn’t due for hours, and led the way to a porch tacked onto one side of the transceiving station. There were some camp stools beneath it. Symonds hitched up his khakis as if they were a business suit and sat primly down, his hands flat on his knees.

  “A special shipment is due today,” he said. “I was not permitted to discuss it until the last moment.”

  Herries curled his mouth. “Go tell Security that the Kremlin won’t be built for a hundred million years. Maybe they haven’t heard.”

  “What no one knew, no one could put into a letter home.”

  “The mail is censored anyway. Our friends and relatives think we’re working somewhere in Asia.” Herries spat into the mud and said: “And in another year the first lot of recruits are due home. Plan to shoot them as they emerge, so they can’t possibly talk in their sleep?”

  Symonds seemed too humorless even to recognize sarcasm. He pursed his lips and declared: “Some secrets need be kept for a few months only; but within that period, they must be kept.”

  “Okay, okay. Let’s hear what’s coming today.”

  “I am not allowed to tell you that. But about half the total tonnage will be crates marked top secret. These are to remain in the shed, guarded night and day by armed men.” Symonds pulled a slip of paper from his jacket. “These men will be assigned to that duty, each one taking eight hours a week.” Herries glanced at the names. He did not know everyone here by sight, though he came close, but he recognized several of these. “Brave, discreet, and charter subscribers to National Review,” he murmured. “Teacher’s pets. All right. Though I’ll have to curtail exploration correspondingly—either that, or else cut down on escorts and sacrifice a few extra lives.”

  “I think not. Let me continue. You will get these orders in the mail today, but I will prepare you for them now. A special house must be built for the crates, as rapidly as possible, and they must be moved there immediately upon its completion. I have the specifications in my office safe; essentially, it must be air-conditioned, burglarproof, and strong enough to withstand all natural hazards.”

  “Whoa, there!” Herries stepped forward. “That’s going to take reinforced concrete and—”

  “Materials will be made available,” said Symonds. He did not look at the other man but stared straight ahead of him, across the rain-smoky compound to the jungle. He had no expression on his pinched face, and the reflection of light off his glasses gave him a strangely blind look.

  “But—Judas priest!” Herries threw his cigarette to the ground; it was swallowed in mud and running water. He felt the heat enfold him like a blanket. “There’s the labor too, the machinery, and—How the devil am I expected to expand this operation if-”

  “Expansion will be temporarily halted,” cut in Symonds. “You will simply maintain current operations with skeleton crews. The majority of the labor force is to be reassigned to construction.”

  “What?”

  “The compound fence must be extended and reinforced. A number of new storehouses are to be erected to hold certain supplies which will presently be sent to us. Bunkhouse barges for an additional five hundred are required. This, of course, entails more sickbay, recreational, mess, laundry, and other facilities.”

  Herries stood dumbly, staring at him. Pale lightning flickered in the sky.

  The worst of it was, Symonds didn’t even bother to be arrogant. He spoke like a schoolmaster.

  “Oh, no!” whispered Herries after a long while. “They’re not going to try to establish that Jurassic military base after all!”

  “The purpose is classified.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Classified. Arise, ye duly cleared citizens of democracy, and cast your ballot on issues whose nature is classified, that your leaders whose names and duties are classified may—Great. Hopping. Balls. Of. Muck.” Herries swallowed. Vaguely, through his pulse, he felt his fingers tighten into fists.

  “I’m going up,” he said. “I’m going to protest personally in Washington.”

  “That is not permitted,” Symonds said in a dry, clipped tone. “Read your contract. You are under martial law. Of course,” and his tone was neither softer nor harder, “you may file a written recommendation.”

  Herries stood for a while. Out beyond the fence stood a bulldozer, wrecked and abandoned. The vines had almost buried it and a few scuttering little marsupials lived there. Perhaps they were his own remote ancestors. He could take a .22 and go potshooting at them some day.

  “I’m not permitted to know anything,” he said at last. “But is curiosity allowed? An extra five hundred men aren’t much. I suppose, given a few airplanes and so on, a thousand of us could plant atomic bombs where enemy cities will be. Or could we? Can’t locate them without astronomical studies first, and it’s always clouded here. So it would be practical to boobytrap only with mass action weapons. A few husky cobalt bombs, say. But there are missiles available to deliver those in the twentieth century. So…what is the purpose?”

  “You will learn the facts in due course,” answered Symonds. “At present, the government has certain military necessities.”

  “Haw!” said Herries. He folded his arms and leaned against the roofpost. It sagged a bit…shodd
y work, shoddy world, shoddy destiny. “Military horses’ necks! I’d like to get one of those prawn-eyed brass hats down here, just for a week, to run his precious security check on a lovesick brontosaur. But I’ll probably get another visit from Senator Lardhead, the one who took up two days of my time walking around asking about the possibilities of farming. Farming!”

  “Senator Wien is from an agricultural state. Naturally he would be interested-”

  “-in making sure that nobody here starts raising food and shipping it back home to bring grocery prices down to where people can afford an occasional steak. Sure. I’ll bet it cost us a thousand man-hours to make his soil tests and tell him, yes, given the proper machinery this land could be farmed. Of course, maybe I do him an injustice. Senator Wien is also on the Military Affairs Committee, isn’t he? He may have visited us in that capacity, and soon we’ll get a directive to start our own little victory gardens.”

  “Your language is close to being subversive,” declared Symonds out of prune-wrinkled lips. “Senator Wien is a famous statesman.”

  For a moment the legislator’s face rose in Herries’ memory; it had been the oldest and most weary face he had ever known. Something had burned out in the man who fought a decade for honorable peace; the knowledge that there was no peace and could be none became a kind of death, and Senator Wien dropped out of his Free World Union organization to arm his land for Ragnarok. Briefly, his anger fading, Herries pitied Senator Wien. And the President, and the Chief of Staff, and the Secretary of State, for their work must be like a nightmare where you strangled your mother and could not stop your hands. It was easier to fight dinosaurs.

  He even pitied Symonds, until he asked if his request for an atomic weapon had finally been okayed, and Symonds replied, “Certainly not.” Then he spat at the clerk’s feet and walked out into the rain.

  After the shipment and guards were seen to, Herries dismissed his men. There was an uneasy buzz among them at the abnormality of what had arrived; but today was mail day, after all, and they did not ponder it long. He would not make the announcement about the new orders until tomorrow. He got the magazines and newspapers to which he subscribed (no one up there “now” cared enough to write to him, though his parents had existed in a section of space-time that ended only a year before he took this job) and wandered off to the boss’ barge to read a little.

  The twentieth century looked still uglier than it had last month. The nations felt their pride and saw no way of retreat. The Middle Eastern war was taking a decisive turn which none of the great powers could afford. Herries wondered if he might not be cut off in the Jurassic. A single explosion could destroy the main projector. Five hundred womanless men in a world of reptiles—He’d take the future, cobalt bomb and all.

  After lunch there fell a quiet, Sunday kind of atmosphere. Men lay on their bunks reading their letters over and over. Herries made his rounds, machines and kitchen and sickbay, inspecting.

  “I guess we’ll discharge O’Connor tomorrow,” said Dr. Yamaguchi. “He can do light work with that Stader on his arm. Next time tell him to duck when a power shovel comes down.”

  “What kind of sick calls have you been getting?” asked the chief.

  Yamaguchi shrugged. “Usual things, veiy minor. I’d never have thought this swamp country could be so healthful. I guess disease germs that can live on placental mammals haven’t evolved yet.”

  Father Gonzales, one of the camp’s three chaplains, buttonholed Herries as he came out. “Can you spare me a minute?” he said.

  “Sure, padre. What is it?”

  “About organizing some baseball teams. We need more recreation. This is not a good place for men to live.”

  “Sawbones was just telling me-”

  “I know. No flu, no malaria, oh, yes. But man is more than a body.”

  “Sometimes I wonder.” said Herries. “I’ve seen the latest headlines. The dinosaurs have more sense than we do.”

  “We have the capacity to do nearly all things,” said Father Gonzales. “At present, I mean in the twentieth century, we seem to do evil very well. We can do as much good, given the chance.”

  “Who’s denying us the chance?” asked Herries. “Just ourselves, H. Sapiens. Therefore I wonder if we really are able to do good.”

  “Don’t confuse sinfulness with damnation,” said the priest. “We have perhaps been unfortunate in our successes. And yet even our most menacing accomplishments have a kind of sublimity. The time projector, for example. If the minds able to shape such a thing in metal were only turned toward human problems, what could we not hope to do?”

  “But that’s my point,” said Herries. “We don’t do the high things. We do what’s trivial and evil so consistently that I wonder if it isn’t in our nature. Even this time travel business…more and more I’m coming to think there’s something fundamentally unhealthy about it. As if it’s an invention that only an ingrown mind would have made first.”

  “First?”

  Herries looked up into the steaming sky. A foul wind met his face. “There are stars above those clouds,” he said, “and most stars must have planets. I’ve not been told how the time projector works, but elementary differential calculus will show that travel into the past is equivalent to attaining, momentarily, an infinite velocity. In other words, the basic natural law that the projector uses is one that somehow goes beyond relativity theory. If a time projector is possible, so is a spaceship that can reach the stars in a matter of days, maybe of minutes or seconds. If we were sane, padre, we wouldn’t have been so anxious for a little organic grease and the little military advantage involved that the first thing we did was to back into the dead past after it. No, we’d have invented that spaceship first, and gone out to the stars where there’s room to be free and to grow. The time projector would have come afterward, as a scientific research tool.”

  He stopped, embarrassed at himself and trying awkwardly to grin. “Excuse me. Sermons are more your province than mine.”

  “It was interesting,” said Father Gonzales. “But you brood too much. So do a number of men. Even if they have no close ties at home—it was wise to pick them for that—they are all of above-average intelligence, and aware of what the future is becoming. I’d like to shake them out of their depression.

  If we could get some more sports equipment…_”

  “Sure. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Of course,” said the priest, “the problem is basically philosophical. Don’t laugh. You too were indulging in philosophy, and doubtless you think of yourself as an ordinary, unimaginative man. Your wildcatters may not have heard of Aristotle, but they are also thinking men in their way. My personal belief is that this heresy of a fixed, rigid time line lies at the root of their growing sorrowfulness, whether they know it or not.”

  “Heresy?” The engineer lifted thick sandy brows. “It’s been proved. It’s the basis of the .theory which showed how to build a projector; that much I do know. How could we be here, if the Mesozoic were not just as real as the Cenozoic? But if all time is coexistent, then all time must be fixed—unalterable—because every instant is the unchanging past of some other instant.”

  “Perhaps so, from God’s viewpoint,” said Father Gonzales. “But we are mortal men. And we have free will. The fixed-time concept need not, logically, produce fatalism. Remember, Herries, man’s will is an important reason why twentieth-century civilization is approaching suicide. If we think we know our future is unchangeable, if our every action is foreordained, if we are doomed already, what’s the use of trying? Why go through the pain of thought, of seeking an answer and struggling to make others accept it? But if we really believed in ourselves, we would look for a solution, and find one.”

  “Maybe,” said Herries uncomfortably. “Well, give me a list of the equipment you want, and I’ll put in an order for it the next time the mail goes out.”

  As he walked off, he wondered if the mail would ever go out again.

  Pas
sing the rec hall, he noticed a small crowd before it and veered to see what was happening. He could not let men gather to trade doubts and terrors, or the entire operation was threatened. In plain English, he told himself with a growing bitter honesty, I can’t permit them to think.

  But the sounds which met him, under the subtly alien rustle of forest leaves and the distant bawl of a thunder lizard, was only a guitar. Chords danced forth beneath expert fingers, and a young voice lilted:

  .…I traveled this wide world over,

  A hundred miles or more,

  But a saddle on a milk cow,

  I never seen before!…

  Looking over shoulders, Herries made out Green-stein, sprawled on a bench and singing. He heard chuckles from the listeners. Well deserved: the kid was good. Herries wished he could relax and simply enjoy the performance. Instead, he must note that they were finding it pleasant, and that swamp and war were alike forgotten for a valuable few minutes.

  The song ended. Greenstein stood up and stretched. “Hi, Boss,” he said.

  Hard, wind-beaten faces turned to Herries and a mumble of greeting went around the circle. He was well enough liked, he knew, insofar as a chief can be liked. But this is not much. A leader can inspire trust, loyalty, what have you, but he cannot be humanly liked, or he is no leader.

  “That was good,” said Herries. “I didn’t know you played.”

  “I didn’t bring this whangbox with me, since I had no idea where I was going till I got there,” answered Greenstein. “Wrote home for it and it arrived today.”

  A heavy-muscled crewcut man said, “You ought to be on the entertainment committee.” Herries recognized Worth, one of the professional patriots who would be standing guard on Symonds’ crates; but not a bad sort, really, after you learned to ignore his rather tedious opinions.

  Greenstein said an indelicate word. “I’m sick of committees,” he went on. “We’ve gotten so much into the habit of being herded around—everybody in the twentieth century has—that we can’t even have a little fun without first setting up a committee.”