Beyond This Horizon (2 page)

“I didn’t.”

Monroe-Alpha smiled tolerantly. “I find that difficult to believe. You know the Law of Stable Money.”

“‘In a stable economy, debt-free new currency must be equated to the net re-investment,’” Hamilton quoted.

“Correct enough. But that is Reiser’s formulation. Reiser was sound enough, but he had a positive talent for stating simple things obscurely. There is a much simpler way to look at it. The processes of economic system are so multitudinous in detail and involve so many promises to be performed at later dates that it is a psychological impossibility for human beings to deal with the processes without the use of a symbol system. We call the system ‘finance’ and the symbols ‘money.’ The symbolic structure should bear a one-to-one relationship to the physical structure of production and consumption. It’s my business to keep track of the actual growth of the physical processes and recommend to the policy board changes in the symbol structure to match those in the physical structure.”

“I’m damned if you’ve made it any simpler,” Hamilton complained. “Never mind—I didn’t say I didn’t understand it; I said I didn’t understand it as a kid. But honestly—wouldn’t it be simpler to set up a collective system and be done with it?”

Monroe-Alpha shook his head. “Finance structure is a general theory and applies equally to any type of state. A complete socialism would have as much need for structural appropriateness in its cost accounting as do free entrepreneurs. The degree of public ownership as compared with the degree of free enterprise is a cultural matter. For example, food is, of course, free, but—”

“Freeze it, pal. You’ve just reminded me of one of the two reasons I had for looking in on you. Busy for dinner tonight?”

“Not precisely. I’ve a tentative date with my ortho-wife for twenty-one hundred, but I’m free until then.”

“Good. I’ve located a new pay-restaurant in Meridian Tower that will be a surprise to your gastro tract. Guaranteed to give you indigestion, or you have to fight the chef.”

Monroe-Alpha looked dubious. He had had previous experience with Hamilton’s gastronomic adventures. “Let’s go to the refectory here. Why pay out hard cash for bad food when good food is included in your basic dividend?”

“Because one more balanced ration would unbalance me. Come on.”

Monroe-Alpha shook his head. “I don’t want to contend with the crowds. Honestly, I don’t.”

“You don’t really
like
people, do you?”

“I don’t dislike them—not individually.”

“But you don’t like ’em. Me, I like ’em. People are funnier than anybody. Bless their silly little hearts. They do the craziest things.”

Monroe-Alpha looked morose. “I suppose you are the only sane one in the lot.”

“Me? Shucks, no. I’m one long joke on myself. Remind me to tell you about it sometime. But look—the other thing I came to see you about. Notice my new sidearm?”

Monroe-Alpha glanced at Hamilton’s holster. In fact, he had not noticed that his friend was bearing anything new in the way of weapons—had he arrived unarmed Monroe-Alpha would have noticed it, naturally, but he was not particularly observant about such matters, and could easily have spent two hours with a man and never noticed whether he was wearing a Stokes coagulator or a common needlebeam.

But, now that his attention was directed to the matter, he saw at once that Hamilton was armed with something novel…and deucedly odd and uncouth. “What is it?” he asked.

“Ah!” Hamilton drew the sidearm clear and handed it to his host. “Woops! Wait a moment. You don’t know how to handle it—you’ll blow your head off.” He pressed a stud on the side of the grip, and let a long flat container slide out into his palm. “There—I’ve pulled its teeth. Ever see anything like it?”

Monroe-Alpha examined the machine. “Why, yes, I believe so. It’s a museum piece, isn’t it? An explosive-type hand weapon?”

“Right and wrong. It’s mill new, but it’s a facsimile of one in the Smithsonian Institution collection. It’s called a point forty-five Colt automatic pistol.”

“Point forty-five what?”

“Inches.”

“Inches…let me see, what is that in centimeters?”

“Huh? Let’s see—three inches make a yard and a yard is about one meter. No, that can’t be right. Never mind, it means the size of the slug it throws. Here…look at one.” He slid one free of the clip. “Damn near as big as my thumb, isn’t it?”

“Explodes on impact, I suppose.”

“No. It just drills its way in.”

“That doesn’t sound very efficient.”

“Brother, you’d be amazed. It’ll blast a hole in a man big enough to throw a dog through.”

Monroe-Alpha handed it back. “And in the meantime your opponent has ended your troubles with a beam that acts a thousand times as fast. Chemical processes are slow, Felix.”

“Not that slow. The real loss of time is in the operator. Half the gunfighters running around loose chop into their target with the beam already hot. They haven’t the skill to make a fast sight. You can stop ’em with this thing, if you’ve a fast wrist. I’ll show you. Got something around here we can shoot at?”

“Mmm…this is hardly the place for target practice.”

“Relax. I want something I can knock out of the way with the slug, while you try to burn it. How about this?” Hamilton picked up a large ornamental plastic paperweight from Monroe-Alpha’s desk.

“Well… I guess so.”

“Fine.” Hamilton took it, removed a vase of flowers from a stand on the far side of the room, and set the target in its place. “We’ll face it, standing about the same distance away. I’ll watch for you to start to draw, as if we really meant action. Then I’ll try to knock it off the stand before you can burn it.”

Monroe-Alpha took his place with lively interest. He fancied himself as a gunman, although he realized that his friend was faster. This might be, he thought, the split second advantage he needed. “I’m ready.”

“Okay.”

Monroe-Alpha started his draw.

There followed a single
CRACK!
so violent that it could be felt through the skin and in the nostrils, as well as heard. Piled on top of it came the burbling
Sring-ow-ow!
as the bullet ricocheted around the room, and then a ringing silence.

“Hell and breakfast,” remarked Hamilton. “Sorry, Cliff—I never fired it indoors before.” He stepped forward to where the target had been. “Let’s see how we made out.”

The plastic was all over the room. It was difficult to find a shard large enough to show the outer polish. “It’s going to be hard to tell whether you burned it, or not.”

“I didn’t.”

“Huh?”

“That noise—it startled me. I never fired.”

“Really? Say, that’s great. I see I hadn’t half realized the advantages of this gadget. It’s a psychological weapon, Cliff.”

“It’s noisy.”

“It’s more than that. It’s a terror weapon. You wouldn’t even have to hit with your first shot. Your man would be so startled you’d have time to get him with the second shot. And that isn’t all. Think…the braves around town are used to putting a man to sleep with a bolt that doesn’t even muss his hair. This thing’s bloody. You saw what happened to that piece of vitrolith. Think what a man’s face will look like after it stops one of those slugs. Why a necrocosmetician would have to use a stereo-sculp to produce a reasonable facsimile for his friends to admire. Who wants to stand up to that kind of fire?”

“Maybe you’re right. I still say it’s noisy. Let’s go to dinner.”

“Good idea. Say—you’ve got a new nail tint haven’t you? I like it.”

Monroe-Alpha spread his fingers. “It
is
smart, isn’t it?
Mauve Iridescent
it’s called. Care to try some?”

“No, thank you. I’m too dark for it, I’m afraid. But it goes well with your skin.”

They ate in the pay-restaurant Hamilton had discovered. Monroe-Alpha automatically asked for a private room when they entered; Hamilton, at the same moment, demanded a table in the ring. They compromised on a balcony booth, semi-private, from which Hamilton could amuse himself by staring down at the crowd in the ring.

Hamilton had ordered the meal earlier in the day, which was the point which had caused his friend to consent to venture out. It was served promptly. “What is it?” Monroe-Alpha demanded suspiciously.

“Bouillabaisse. It’s halfway between a soup and a stew. More than a dozen kinds of fish, white wine, and the Great Egg alone knows how many sorts of herbs and spices. All natural foods.”

“It must be terribly expensive.”

“It’s a creative art and it’s a pleasure to pay for it. Don’t worry your head about it. You know I can’t help making money.”

“Yes, I know. I never could understand why you take so much interest in games. Of course, it pays well.”

“You don’t understand me. I’m not interested in games. Have you ever seen me waste a slug or a credit on one of my own gadgets—or any other? I haven’t played a game since I was a boy. For me, it is already well established that one horse can run faster than another, that the ball falls either on red or on black, and that three of a kind beats two pair. It’s that I can’t see the silly toys that people play with without thinking of one a little more complicated and mysterious. If I am bored and have nothing better to do, I may sketch one and dispatch it to my agent. Presently in comes some more money.” He shrugged.

“What are you interested in?”

“People. Eat your soup.”

Monroe-Alpha tasted the mess cautiously, looked surprised, and really went to work on it. Hamilton looked pleased, and undertook to catch up.

“Felix—”

“Yes, Cliff.”

“Why did you group me in the ninety-eight?”

“The ninety-eight? Oh, you mean the sourpuss survey. Shucks, pal, you rated it. If you are gay and merry-merry-be behind that death mask, you conceal it well.”

“I’ve nothing to be unhappy about.”

“No, not to my knowledge. But you don’t look happy.”

They ate in silence for a few minutes more. Monroe-Alpha spoke again. “It’s true, you know. I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“Not happy.”

“So? Mmmm…why not?”

“I don’t know. If I did I could do something about it. My family psychiatrist doesn’t seem to be able to get at the reason.”

“You’re on the wrong frequency. A psychiatrist is the last man to see about a thing like that. They know everything about a man, except what he is and what makes him tick. Besides, did you ever see a worry-doctor that was sane himself? There aren’t two in the country who can count their own fingers and get the same answer twice running.”

“It’s true that he hasn’t been able to help me much.”

“Of course not. Why? Because he will start with the assumption that there is something wrong with you. He can’t find it, so he’s stuck. It doesn’t occur to him that there might be nothing wrong with you and that might be what was wrong.”

The other man looked weary. “I don’t understand you. But he does claim to be following a clue.”

“What sort?”

“Well… I’m a deviant, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Hamilton answered shortly. He was reasonably familiar with his friend’s genetic background, but disliked to hear him mention it. Some contrary strain in Hamilton rebelled against the idea that a man was necessarily and irrevocably the gene pattern handed to him by his genetic planners. Furthermore he was not convinced that Monroe-Alpha should be considered a deviant.

“Deviant” is a question-begging term. When the human zygote resulting from the combination of two carefully selected gametes is different from what the geneticists had predicted but not so different as to be classified with certainty as a mutation, that zygote is termed a deviant. It is not, as is generally believed, a specific term for a recognized phenomenon, but a catch-all to cover a lack of complete knowledge.

Monroe-Alpha (this particular Monroe-Alpha—Clifford, 32-847-106 B62) had been an attempt to converge two lines of the original Monroe-Alpha to recapture and reinforce the mathematical genius of his famous ancestor. But mathematical genius is not one gene, nor does it appear to be anything as simple as a particular group of genes. Rather, it is thought to be a complex of genes
arranged in a particular order
.

Unfortunately this gene complex appears to be close-linked in the Monroe-Alpha line to a neurotic contra-survival characteristic, exact nature undetermined and not assigned to any set of genes. That it is not necessarily so linked appears to be established, and the genetic technicians who had selected the particular gametes which were to produce Monroe-Alpha Clifford believed that they had eliminated the undesired strain.

Monroe-Alpha Clifford did not think so.

Hamilton fixed him with a finger. “The trouble with you, my fine foolish friend, is that you are bothering your head with things you don’t understand. Your planners told you that they had done their level best to eliminate from you the thing which caused your great grandfather Whiffenpoof to raise garter snakes in his hat. There is a long chance that they failed, but why assume that they did?”

“My great grandfathers did nothing of the sort. A slight strain of anhedonism, a tendency to—”

“Then why act like they had to be walked on a leash? You make me tired. You’ve got a cleaner pedigree than ninety-nine out of a hundred, and a chromosome chart that’s as neat and orderly as a checker board. Yet you’re yiping about it. How would you like to be a control natural? How would you like to have to wear lenses against your eyeballs? How would you like to be subject to a doz-dozen filthy diseases? Or have your teeth get rotten and fall out, and have to chew your meals with a set of false choppers?”

“Of course, nobody would
want
to be a control natural,” Monroe-Alpha said reflectively, “but the ones I’ve known seemed to be happy enough.”

“All the more reason for you to snap out of your funk. What do you know of pain and sickness? You can’t appreciate it any more than a fish appreciates water. You have three times the income you can spend, a respected position, and work of your own choosing. What more do you want out of life?”

“I don’t know, Cliff. I don’t know, but I know I’m not getting it. Don’t ride me about it.”