The Complete Short Stories- The 1950s - Volume One Read online

  The cream of the Galaxy took in his hesitation.

  He started to walk towards the dais upon which Mordregon and his colleagues waited. The effort of forcing his legs to go into action set a dew of perspiration on his forehead.

  ‘God help me!’ he whispered. But these were the gods of the galaxy; was there, over them, One with no material being and infinite power? Enough. Concentrate.

  Squaring his shoulders, Stevens walked between the massed shapes of the rulers of the Home Galaxy. Although it had been expressly stated before he left Earth that no powers, such as telepathy, which he did not possess, would be used against him, he could feel a weight of mental power all round him. Strange faces watched him, some just remotely human, strange robes stirred as he brushed past them. The diversity! he thought. The astounding, teeming womb of the universe!

  Pride suddenly gripped him. He found courage to stare back into the multitudinous eyes. They should be made to know the mettle of man. Whatever they were planning to do with him, he also had his own plans for them.

  Just as it seemed only fitting to him that man should walk in this hall, it seemed no less fitting that of all the millions on Earth, he, David Stevens, should be that man. With the egotism inherent in junior races, he felt sure he could pass their trial. What if he had been awed at first? A self-confident technological civilisation, proud of its exploration projects on Mercury and Neptune, is naturally somewhat abashed by the appearance of a culture spreading luxuriously over fifty hundred thousand planets.

  With a flourish, he bowed before Mordregon and the other Supreme Ultralords.

  ‘I offer greetings from my planet Earth of Sol,’ he said in a resonant voice.

  ‘You are welcome here, David Stevens of Earth,’ Mordregon replied graciously. A small object the size of a hen’s egg floated fifteen inches from his beak. All other members of the council, Stevens included, were attended by similar devices, automatic interpreters.

  Mordregon was mountainous. Below his beaked head, his body bulged like an upturned grand piano. A cascade of clicking black and white ivory rectangles clothed him. Each rectangle, Stevens noted, rotated perpetually on its longitudinal axis, fanning him, ventilating him, as if he burned continually of an inexorable disease (which was in fact the case).

  ‘I am happy to come here in peace,’ Stevens said. ‘And shall be still happier to know why I have been brought here. My journey has been long and partially unexplained.’

  At the word ‘peace’, Mordregon made a grimace like a smile, although his beak remained unsmiling.

  ‘Partially, perhaps; but partially is not entirely,’ Mordregon said. ‘The robot ship told you you would be collected to stand trial in the name of Earth. That seems to us quite sufficient information to work on.’

  The automatic translators gave an edge of irony to the Ultralord’s voice. The tone brought faint colour to Stevens’s cheeks. He was angry, and suddenly happy to let them see he was angry.

  ‘Then you have never been in my position,’ he said ‘Mine was an executive post at Port Ganymede. I never had anything to do with politics. I was down at the methane reagent post when your robot ship arrived and designated me in purely arbitrary fashion. I was simply told I would be collected for trial in three months – like a convict – like a bundle of dirty laundry!’ He looked hard at them, anxious to see their first reaction to his anger, wondering whether, he had gone too far. Ordinarily, Stevens was not a man who indulged his emotions. When he spoke, the hen’s egg before his mouth sucked up all sound, leaving the air dry and silent, so that he was unable to hear the translation going over; he thought, half-hopefully, that it might omit the outburst in traditional interpreter fashion. This hope was at once crushed.

  ‘Irritation means unbalance,’ said Deln Phi J. Bunswacki. It was the only sentence he spoke throughout the interview. On his shoulders, a mighty brain siphoned its thoughts beneath a transparent skull case; he wore what appeared to be a garishly cheap blue pin-stripe suit, but the stripes moved as symbiotic organisms plied up and down them ceaselessly, ingurgitating any microbes which might threaten the health of Deln Phi. J. Bunswacki. Slightly revolted, Stevens turned back to Mordregon.

  ‘You are playing with me,’ he said quietly. ‘Do I abuse your hospitality by asking you to get down to business?’

  That, he thought, was better. Yet what were they thinking? His manner is too unstable? He seems to be impervious to the idea of his own insignificance? This was going to be the whole of hell: to have to guess what they were thinking, knowing they knew he was guessing, not knowing how many levels above his own their IQ was.

  Acidic apprehension turned in Stevens’s stomach. His hand fluttered up to the lump below his right ear; he fingered it nervously, and only with an effort broke off the betraying gesture. To this vast concourse, he was insignificant: yet to Earth – to Earth he was their sole hope. Their sole hope! – And he could not keep himself from shaking.

  Mordregon was speaking again. What had he been saying?

  ‘… customary. Into this hall in the city of Grapfth on the planet Xaquibadd in the Periphery of the Dominion of the Sack are invited all new races, each as it is discovered.’

  Those big words don’t frighten me, Stevens told himself, because, to a great extent, they did. Suddenly he saw the solar system as a tiny sack, into which he longed to crawl and hide.

  ‘Is this place Grapfth the centre of your Empire?’ he asked.

  ‘No; as I said, it is in a peripheral region – for safety reasons, you understand,’ Mordregon explained.

  ‘Safety reasons? You mean you are afraid of me?’

  Mordregon raised a brow at Ped2 of the Sack. Ped2, under an acre of coloured, stereoscopic nylon, was animated cactus, more beautiful, more intricate than his clothing. Captive butterflies on germanium, degravitized chains turned among the blossoms on his head; they fluttered up and then re-alighted as Ped2 nodded and spoke briefly to the Earthman. ‘Every race has peculiar talents or abilities of its own,’ he explained. ‘It is partly to discover those abilities that you aliens are invited here. Unfortunately, your predecessor turned out to be a member of a race of self-propagating nuclear weapons left over from some ancient war or other. He talked quite intelligently, until one of us mentioned the key word “goodwill”, whereupon he exploded and blew this entire hall to bits.’

  Reminiscent chuckles sounded round him as he told the story.

  Stevens said angrily: ‘You expect me to believe that? Then how have you all survived?’

  ‘Oh, we are not really here,’ Ped2 said genially, interlocking a nest of spikes behind his great head. ‘You can’t expect us to make the long journey to Xaquibadd every time some petty little system – no offence of course – is discovered. You’re talking to three-dimensional images of us; even the hall’s only there – or here, if you prefer it (location is merely a philosophical quibble) in a sort of sub-molecular fashion.’

  Catching sight of the dazed look on the Earthman’s face, Ped2 could not resist driving home another point. (His was a childish race: theologians had died out among them only some four thousand years ago.)

  ‘We are not even talking to you in a sense you would understand, David Stevens of Earth,’ he said. ‘Having as yet no instantaneous communicator across light-year distances, we are letting a robot brain on Xaquibadd do the talking for us. We can check with it afterwards; if a mistake has been made, we can always get in touch with you.’

  It was said not without an easy menace, but Stevens received at least a part of it eagerly. They had as yet no instantaneous communicator! No sub-radio, that could leap light-years without time lag! Involuntarily, he again fingered the tiny lump beneath the lobe of his right ear, and then thrust his hand deep into his pocket. So Earth had a chance of bargaining with these colossi after all! His confidence soared.

  To Ped2, Mordregon was saying: ‘You must not mock our invited guest.’

  ‘I have heard that word “invited” from you before,’ St
evens said. ‘This has all seemed to me personally more like a summons. Your robot, without further explanation, simply told me it would be back for me in three months, giving me time to prepare for trial.’

  ‘That was reasonable, surely?’ Mordregon said. ‘It could have interviewed you then, unprepared.’

  ‘But it didn’t say what I was to prepare for,’ Stevens replied, exasperation bursting into his mind as he remembered those three months. What madness they had been, as he spent them preparing frantically for this interview; all the wise and cunning men of the system had visited him: logicians, actors, philosophers, generals, mathematicians … And the surgeons! Yes, the skilful surgeons, burying the creations of the technologists in his ear and throat.

  And all the while he had marvelled: Why did they pick me?

  ‘Supposing it hadn’t been me?’ he said to Mordregon aloud. ‘Supposing it had been a madman or a man dying of cancer you picked on?’

  Silence fell. Mordregon looked at him piercingly and then answered slowly: ‘We find our random selection principle entirely satisfactory, considering the large numbers involved. Whoever is brought here is responsible for his world. Your mistakes or illnesses are your world’s mistakes or illnesses. If a madman or a cancerous man stood in your place now, your world would have to be destroyed; worlds which have not been made free from such scourges by the time they have interplanetary travel must be eradicated. The galaxy is indestructible, but the security of the galaxy is a fragile thing.’

  All the light-heartedness seemed gone from the assembly of Ultralords now. Even Ped2 of the Dominion of the Sack sat bolt upright, looking grimly at the Earthman. Stevens himself had gone chill, his throat was as dry as his sleeve. Every time he spoke he betrayed a chunk of the psychological atmosphere of Earth.

  During the three months’ preparation, during the month-long voyage here in a completely automatic ship, he had chased his mind round to come only to this one conclusion: that through him Man was to be put to a test for fitness. Thinking of the mental homes and hospitals of Earth, his poise almost deserted him; but clenching his fists together behind his back – what matter if the assembly saw that betrayal of strain, so long as the searching eyes of Mordregon did not? – he said in a voice striving to remain firm: ‘So then I have come here on trial?’

  ‘Not you only but your world Earth – and the trial has already begun!’ The voice was not Mordregon’s nor Ped2’s. It belonged to Arntibis Isis of Sirius III, the Proctor Superior of the Tenth Sector, who had not yet spoken. He stood like a column, twelve feet high, his length clad in furled silver, a dark cluster of eyes at his summit probing down at Stevens. He had what the others, what even Mordregon lacked: majesty.

  Surreptitiously, Stevens touched his throat. The device nestling there would be needed presently; with its assistance he might win through. This Empire had no sub-radio; in that fact lay his and Earth’s hope. But before Arntibis Isis hope seemed stupidity.

  ‘Since I am here I must necessarily submit to your trial,’ Stevens said. ‘Although where I come from, the civilised thing is to tell the defendant what he is defending, how he may acquit himself and which punishment is hanging over his head. We also have the courtesy to announce when the trial begins, not springing it on the prisoner half-way through.’

  A murmur circling round the hall told him he had scored a minor point. As Stevens construed the problem, the Ultralords were looking for some cardinal virtue in man which, if Stevens manifested it, would save Earth; but which virtue did this multicoloured mop consider important? He had to pull his racing mind up short to hear Arntibis Isis’s reply to his thrust.

  ‘You are talking of a local custom tucked away in a barren pocket of the galaxy,’ the level voice said. ‘However, your intellect being what it is, I shall enumerate the how and the wherefore. Be it known then, David Stevens of Earth, that through you your world is on trial before the Supreme Diet of the Ultralords of the Second Galaxy. Nothing personal is intended; indeed, you yourself are barely concerned in our business here, except as a mouthpiece. If you acquit yourself – and we are more than impartial, we are eager for your success, though less than hopeful – your race Man will become Full Fledgling Members of our great concourse of beings, sharers of our skills and problems. If you fail, your planet Earth will be annihilated – utterly.’

  ‘And you call that civilised – ?’ Stevans began hotly.

  ‘We deal with fifty planets a week here,’ Mordregon interrupted. ‘It’s the only possible system – cuts down endless bureaucracy.’

  ‘Yes, and we just can’t afford fleets to watch these unstable communities any more,’ one of the Ultralords from the body of the hall concurred. ‘The expense …’

  ‘Do you remember that ghastly little time-swallowing reptile from somewhere in the Magellans?’ Ped2 chuckled reminiscently. ‘He had some crazy scheme for a thousand years’ supervision of his race.’

  ‘I’d die of boredom if I watched them an hour,’ Mordregon said, shuddering.

  ‘Order, please!’ Arntibis Isis snapped. When there was silence, he said to Stevens: ‘And now I will give you the rules of the trial. Firstly, there is no appeal from our verdict; when the session is over, you will be transported back to Earth at once, and the verdict will be delivered almost as soon as you land there.

  ‘Next, I must assure you we are scrupulously fair in our decision, although you must understand that the definition of fairness differs from sector to sector. You may think we are ruthless; but the Galaxy is a small place and we have no room for useless members within our ranks. As it is we have this trouble, with the Eleventh Galaxy on our hands. However …

  ‘Next, many of the beings present have powers which you would regard as supernormal, such as telepathy, deep-vision, precognition, outfarling, and so on. These powers they are holding in abeyance, so that you are judged on your own level as far as possible. You have our assurance that your mind will not be read.

  ‘There is but one other rule; you will now proceed with your own trial.’

  For a space of a few chilly seconds, Stevens stared unbelievingly at the tall column of Arntibis Isis: that entity told him nothing. He looked round at Mordregon, at the others, at the phalanx of figures silent in the hall. Nobody moved. Gazing round at the incredible sight of them, Stevens realised sadly how far, far from home he was.

  ‘… my own trial?’ he echoed.

  The Ultralords did not reply. He had had all the help, if help it was; now he was on his own: Earth’s fate was in the scales. Panic threatened him but he fought it down; that was a luxury he could not afford. Calculation only would help him. His cold hand touched the small lump at his throat; his judges had, after all, virtually played into his hands. He was not unprepared.

  ‘My own trial,’ he repeated more firmly.

  Here was the classic nightmare made flesh, he thought. Dreams of pursuit, degradation, annihilation were not more terrible than this static dream where one stands before watchful eyes explaining one’s existence, speaking, speaking to no avail because if there is right it is not in words, because if there is a way of delivering the soul it is not to this audience. He thought, I must all my life have had some sort of a fixation about judgement without mercy; now I’ve gone psychopathic – I’ll spend all my years up before this wall of eyes, trying to find excuses for some crime I don’t know I’ve committed.

  He watched the slow revolutions of Mordregon’s domino costume. No, this was reality, not the end results of an obsession. To treat it as other than reality was the flight from fear; that was not Steven’s way: he was afraid, but he could face it.

  He spoke to them.

  ‘I presume by your silence,’ he said, ‘that you wish me to formulate both the questions and the answers, on the principle that two differing levels of intelligence are thus employed; it being as vital to ask the right question as to produce the correct answer.

  ‘This forcing of two roles upon me obviously doubles my chance of failure, and
I would point out that this is, to me, not justice but a mockery.

  ‘Should I, then, say nothing more to you? Would you accept that silence as a proof that my world can distinguish justice from injustice, surely one of the prime requisites of a culture?’

  He paused, only faintly hopeful. It could not be as simple as that. Or could it? If it could the solution would seem to him just a clever trick; but to these deeper brains it might appear otherwise. His thoughts swam as he tried to see the problem from their point of view. It was impossible: he could only go by his own standards, which of course was just what they wanted. Yet still he kept silence, trusting it more than words.

  ‘Your point accepted. Continue,’ said Ped2 brusquely, but he gave Stevens an encouraging nod.

  So it was not going to be as easy as that. He pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and wiped his forehead, thinking wildly: ‘Would they accept that as a defence: that I am near enough to the animal to sweat but already far enough away to object to the fact? Do they sweat, any of them? Perhaps they think sweat’s a good thing. How can I be sure of anything?’

  Like every other thought to his present state of mind, it turned circular and short-circuited itself.

  He was an Earthman, six foot three, well proportioned, he had made good in a tough spot on Ganymede, he knew a very lovely woman called Edwina. Suppose they would be content with hearing about her, about her beauty, about the way she looked when Stevens left Earth. He could tell them about the joy of just being alive and thinking of Edwina: and the prodding knowledge that in ten years their youth would be sliding away.

  Nonsense! he told himself. They wouldn’t take sentiment here; these beauties wanted cold fact. Momentarily, he thought of all the other beings who had stood in the past where he stood now, groping for the right thing to say. How many had found it?