Seven Conquests Page 8

  He waited. There was time enough for his rebellion. Too much time, really. A man stood in rain, fog about his feet and a reptile smell in his nose, and he remembered anemones in springtime, strewn under trees still cold and leafless, with here and there a little snow between the roots. Or he remembered drinking beer in a New England country inn one fall day, when the door stood open to red sumac and yellow beech and a far blue wandering sky. Or he remembered a man snatched under black Jurassic quagmires, a man stepped into red ruin, a man sitting in a jeep and bleeding brains down onto the picture of the girl he had planned to marry. And then he started wondering what the point of it all was, and decided that it was either without any point whatsoever or else had the purpose of obliterating anemones and quiet country inns, and he was forced to dissent somehow.

  When Thornton’s wet footsteps were lost in the dark, Herries unlocked the shed door and went through. It was smotheringly hot inside. Sweat sprang forth under his raincoat as he closed the door again and turned on his flashlight. Rain tapped loudly on the roof. The crates loomed over him, box upon box, many of them large enough to hold a dinosaur. It had taken a lot of power to ship that tonnage into the past. No wonder taxes were high. And what might the stuff be? A herd of tanks, possibly…some knocked-down bombers…Lord knew what concept the men who lived in offices, insulated from the sky, would come up with. And Symonds had implied it was a mere beginning; more shipments would come when this had been stored out of the way, and more, and more.

  Herries found a workbench and helped himself to tools. He would have to be careful; no sense in going to jail. He laid the flashlight on a handy barrel and stooped down by one of the crates. It was of strong wood, securely screwed together. But while that would make it harder to dismantle, it could be reassembled without leaving a trace. Maybe. Of course, it might be booby trapped. No telling how far the religion of secrecy could lead the office men.

  Oh, well, if I’m blown up I haven’t lost much. Herries peeled off his slicker. His shirt clung to his body. He squatted and began to work.

  It went slowly. After taking off several boards, he saw a regular manufacturers crate, open-slatted. Something within was wrapped in burlap. A single curved metal surface projected slightly. What the devil? Herries got a crowbar and pried one slat loose. The nails shrieked. He stooped rigid for a while, listening, but heard only the rain, grown more noisy. He reached in and fumbled with the padding…God, it was hot!

  Only when he had freed the entire blade did he recognize what it was. And then his mind would not quite function; he gaped a long while before the word registered.

  A plowshare.

  “But they don’t know what to do with the farm surpluses at home,” he said aloud, inanely.

  Like a stranger’s, his hands began to repair what he had torn apart. He couldn’t understand it. Nothing seemed altogether real any more. Of course, he thought in a dim way, theoretically anything might be in the other boxes, but he suspected more plows, tractors, discs, combines…why not bags of seeds…? What were they planning to do?

  “Ah.”

  Herries whirled. The flashlight beam caught him like a spear.

  He grabbed blindly for his rifle. A dry little voice behind the blaze said: “I would not recommend violence.” Herries let the rifle fall. It thudded.

  Symonds closed the shed door behind him and stepped forward in his mincing fashion, another shadow among bobbing misshapen shadows. He had simply flung on shirt and pants, but bands of night across them suggested necktie, vest, and coat.

  “You see,” he explained without passion, “all the guards were instructed sub rosa to notify me of anything unusual, even when it did not seem to warrant action on their part.” He gestured at the crate. “Please continue reassembling it.”

  Herries crouched down again. Hollowness filled him; his sole wonder was how best to die. For if he were sent back to the twentieth century, surely, surely they would lock him up and lose the key, and the sunlessness of death was better than that. It was strange, he thought, how his fingers used the tools with untrembling skill.

  Symonds stood behind him and held his light on the work. At last he asked primly, “Why did you break in like this?”

  I could kill him, thought Herries. He’s unarmed. I could wring his scrawny neck between these two hands, and take a gun, and go into the swamp to live a few days…But it might be easier just to turn the rifle on myself…

  He sought words with care, for he must decide what to do, though it seemed remote and scarcely important. “That’s not an easy question to answer,” he said.

  “The significant ones never are.”

  Astonished, Herries jerked a glance upward and back. (And was the more surprised that he could still know surprise.) But the little man’s face was in darkness. Herries saw a blank glitter off the glasses.

  He said, “Lets put it this way. There are limits even to the right of self-defense. If a killer attacked me, I can fight back with anything I’ve got. But I wouldn’t be justified in grabbing some passing child for a shield.”

  “So you wished to make sure that nothing you would consider illegitimate was in those boxes?” asked Symonds academically.

  “I don’t know. What is illegitimate, these days? I was…I was disgusted. I liked Greenstein, and he died because Washington had decided we couldn’t have bombs or atomic shells. I didn’t know how much more I could consent to. I had to find out.”

  “I see.” The clerk nodded. “For your information, it is agricultural equipment. Later shipments will include industrial and scientific material, a large reserve of canned food, and as much of the world’s culture as it proves possible to microfilm.”

  Herries stopped working, turned around and rose. His knees would not hold him. He leaned against the crate and it was a minute before he could get out: “Why?”

  Symonds did not respond at once. He reached forth a precise hand and took up the flashlight Herries had left on the barrel. Then he sat down there himself, with the two glowing tubes in his lap. The light from below ridged his face in shadows, and his glasses made blind circles. He said, as if ticking off the points of an agenda:

  “You would have been informed of the facts in due course, when the next five hundred people arrive. Now you have brought on yourself the burden of knowing what you would otherwise have been ignorant of for months yet. I think it may safely be assumed that you will keep the secret and not be broken by it. At least, the assumption is necessary.”

  Herries heard his own breath harsh in his throat. “Who are these people?”

  The papery half-seen countenance did not look at him, but into the pit-like reaches of the shed. “You have committed a common error,” said Symonds, as if to a student. “You have assumed that because men are constrained by circumstances to act in certain ways, they must be evil or stupid. I assure you, Senator Wien and the few others responsible for this are neither. They must keep the truth even from those officials within the project whose reaction would be rage or panic instead of a sober attempt at salvage. Nor do they have unlimited powers. Therefore, rather than indulge in tantrums about the existing situation, they use it. The very compartmentalization of effort and knowledge enforced by Security helps conceal their purposes and mislead those who must be given some information.”

  Symonds paused. A slight frown crossed his forehead, and he tapped an impatient fingernail on a flashlight casing. “Do not misunderstand,” he went on. “Senator Wien and his associates have not forgotten their oaths of office, nor are they trying to play God. Their primary effort goes, as it must, to a straightforward dealing with the problems of the twentieth century. It is not they who are withholding the one significant datum—a datum which, incidentally, any informed person could reason out for himself if he cared to. It is properly constituted authority, using powers legally granted to stamp certain reports top secret. Of course, the senator has used his considerable influence to bring about the present eventuality, but that is normal politics
.”

  Herries growled: “Get to the point, damn you! What are you talking about?”

  Symonds shook his thin gray head. “You are afraid to know, are you not?” he asked quietly.

  “I—” Herries turned about, faced the crate and heat it with his fist. The parched voice in the night continued to punish him:

  “You know that a time-projector can go into the future about a hundred years at a jump, but can only go pastward in jumps of approximately one hundred megayears. We all realize there is a way to explore certain sections of the historical past, in spite of this handicap, by making enough century hops forward before the one long hop backward. But can you tell me how to predict the historical future? Say, a century hence? Come, come, you are an intelligent man. Answer me.”

  “Yeah,” said Herries. “I get the idea. Leave me alone.”

  “Team A, a group of well-equipped volunteers, went into the twenty-first century,” pursued Symonds. “They recorded what they observed and placed the data in a chemically inert box within a large block of reinforced concrete erected at an agreed-on location: one which a previous expedition to circa one hundred million A.D. had confirmed would remain stable. I presume they also mixed radioactive materials on long half-life into the concrete, to aid in finding the site. Of course, the bracketing of time jumps is such that they cannot now get back to the twentieth century. But Team B went a full hundred-megayear jump into the future, excavated the data, and returned home.”

  Herries squared his body and faced back to the other man. He was drained, so weary that it was all he could do to keep on his feet. “What did they find?” he asked. There was no tone in his voice or in him.

  “Actually, several expeditions have been made to the year one hundred million,” said Symonds.

  “Energy requirements for a visit to two hundred million—A.D. or B.C.—were considered prohibitive. In one hundred million, life is re-evolving on Earth. However, as yet the plants have not liberated sufficient oxygen for the atmosphere to be breathable. You see, oxygen reacts with exposed rock, so that if no biological processes exist to replace it continuously—But you have a better technical education than I.”

  “Okay,” said Herries, flat and hard. “Earth was sterile for a long time in the future. Including the twenty-first century?”

  “Yes. The radioactivity had died down enough so that Team A reported no danger to itself, but some of the longer-lived isotopes were still measurably present. By making differential measurements of abundance, Team A was able to estimate rather closely when the bombs had gone off.”

  “And?”

  “Approximately one year from the twentieth-century base date we are presently using.”

  “One year…from now.” Herries stared upward. Blackness met him. He heard the Jurassic rain on the iron roof, like drums.

  “Possibly less,” Symonds told him. “There is a factor of uncertainty. This project must be completed well within the safety margin before the war comes.”

  “The war comes,” Herries repeated. “Does it have to come? Fixed time line or not, does it have to come? Couldn’t the enemy leaders be shown the facts…couldn’t our side, even, capitulate—”

  “Every effort is being made,” said Symonds like a machine. “Quite apart from the theory of rigid time, it seems unlikely that they will succeed. The situation is too unstable. One man, losing his head and pressing the wrong button, can write the end; and there are so many buttons. The very revelation of the truth, to a few chosen leaders or to the world public, would ‘make some of them panicky. Who can tell what a man in panic will do? That is what I meant when I said that Senator Wien and his co-workers have not forgotten their oaths of office. They have no thought of taking refuge, they know they are old men. To the end, they will try to save the twentieth century. But they do not expect it; so they are also trying to save the human race.”

  Herries pushed up from the crate he had been leaning against. “Those five hundred whore coming,” he whispered. “Women?”

  “Yes. If time remains to rescue a few more, after the ones you are preparing for have gone through, it will be done. But there will be at least a thousand young, healthy adults here, in the Jurassic. You face a difficult time, when the truth must be told them; you can see why the secret must be kept until then. It is quite possible that someone here will lose his head. That is why no heavy weapons have been sent: a single deranged person must not be able to destroy everyone. But you will recover. You must.”

  Herries jerked the door open and stared out into the roaring darkness. “No traces of us…in the future,” he said, hearing his voice high and hurt like a child’s.

  “How much trace do you expect would remain after geological eras?” answered Symonds. He was still the reproving schoolmaster; but he sat on the barrel and faced the great moving shadows in a corner. “It is assumed that you will remain here for several generations, until your numbers and resources have been expanded sufficiently. The Team A I spoke of will join you a century hence. It is also, I might add, composed of young men and women in equal numbers. But this planet in this age is not a good home. We trust that your descendants will perfect the spaceships we know to be possible, and take possession of the stars instead.”

  Herries leaned in the doorway, sagging with tiredness and the monstrous duty to survive. A gust of wind threw rain into his eyes. He heard dragons calling in the night.

  “And you?” he said, for no good reason.

  “I shall convey any final messages you may wish to send home,” said the dried-out voice.

  Neat little footsteps clicked across the floor until the cleric paused beside the engineer. Silence followed, except for the rain.

  “Surely I will deserve to go home,” said Symonds.

  And the breath whistled inward between teeth which had snapped together. He raised his hands, claw-fingered, and screamed aloud: “You can let me go home then!”

  He began running toward the supervisors’ barge. The sound of him was soon lost. Herries stood for a time yet in the door.

  In many respects, revolution is a separate phenomenon from regular military conflicts—until it brings on the latter in the form of civil war.

  Cold Victory

  It was the old argument, Historical Necessity versus the Man of Destiny. When I heard them talking, three together, my heart twisted within me and I knew that once more I must lay down the burden of which I can never be rid.

  This was in the Battle Rock House, which is a quiet tavern on the edge of Syrtis Town. I come there whenever I am on Mars. It is friendly and unpretentious: shabby, comfortable loungers scattered about under the massive sandwood rafters, honest liquor and competent chess and the talk of one’s peers.

  As I entered, a final shaft of thin hard sunlight stabbed in through the window, dazzling me, and then night fell like a thunderclap over the ocherous land and the fluoros snapped on. I got a mug of porter and strolled across to the table about which the three people sat.

  The stiff little bald man was obviously from the 85 college; he wore his academics even here, but Martians are like that. “No, no,” he was saying. “These movements are too great for any one man to change them appreciably. Humanism, for example, was not the political engine of Carnarvon; rather, he was the puppet of Humanism, and danced as the blind brainless puppeteer made him.”

  “I’m not so sure,” answered the man in gray, undress uniform of the Order of Planetary Engineers. “If he and his cohorts had been less doctrinaire, the government of Earth might still be Humanist.”

  “But being bom of a time of trouble, Humanism was inevitably fanatical,” said the professor.

  The big, kilted Venusian woman shifted impatiently. She was packing a gun and her helmet was on the floor beside her. Lucifer Clan, I saw from the tartan. “If there are folk around at a crisis time with enough force, they’ll shape the way things turn out,” she declared. “Otherwise things will drift.” I rolled up a lounger and set my mug on the table. Co
nversational kibitzing is accepted in the Battle Rock. “Pardon me, gentles,” I said. “Maybe I can contribute.”

  “By all means. Captain,” said the Martian, his eyes flickering over my Solar Guard uniform and insignia. “Permit me: I am Professor Freylinghausen—Engineer Buwono; Freelady Neilsen-Singh.”

  “Captain Crane.” I lifted my mug in a formal toast. “Mars, Luna, Venus, and Earth in my case…highly representative, are we not? Between us, we should be able to reach a conclusion.”

  “To a discussion in a vacuum!” snorted the amazon.

  “Not quite,” said the engineer. “What did you wish to suggest, Captain?”

  I got out my pipe and began stuffing it. “There’s a case from recent history—the anti-Humanist counterrevolution, in fact—in which I had a part myself.

  Offhand, at least, it seems a perfect example of sheer accident determining the whole future of the human race. It makes me think we must be more the pawns of chance than of law.”

  “Well, Captain,” said Freylinghausen testily, “let us hear your story and then pass judgment.”

  “I’ll have to fill you in on some background.” I lit my pipe and took a comforting drag. I needed comfort just then. It was not to settle an argument that I was telling this, but to reopen an old hurt which would never let itself be forgotten. “This happened during the final attack on the Humanists—”

  “A perfect case of inevitability, sir,” interrupted Freylinghausen. “May I explain? Thank you. Forgive me if I Repeat obvious facts. Their arrangement and interpretation are perhaps not so obvious.

  “Psychotechnic government had failed to solve the problems of Earth’s adjustment to living on a high technological level. Conditions worsened until all too many people were ready to try desperation measures. The Humanist revolution was the desperation measure that succeeded in being tried. A typical reaction movement, offering a return to a less intellectualized existence; the savior with the time machine, as Toynbee once phrased it. So naturally its leader, Carnarvon, got to be dictator of the planet.