Sinister Barrier (9 page)

“Like hell they do!” swore a voice at the back.

Nobody looked round. Carmody frowned his displeasure at the interruption, the rest concentrated their attention on Graham.

“Little has been discovered,” Graham told them, “but that little means plenty. Beach has satisfied himself that not only are the Vitons composed of energy, but also that they live on energy, feed on it—
our
energy! So far as they’re concerned, we exist as energy-producers which kindly nature has provided to satisfy whatever they use for bellies. Thus, they breed us, or incite us to breed. They herd us, drive us, milk us, fattening on the currents generated by our emotions in precisely the same way that we fatten on juice involuntarily surrendered by cattle to whom we have given fodder containing stimulants for lactation. Show me the highly emotional man whose life has been healthy and long, and you show me the Vitons’ prize cow, the medal-winner!”

“The devils!” snapped a voice.

“If you ponder this to the full, gentlemen,” Graham persisted, “you will realize its awful implications. The nervous energy produced by the act of thinking, also as the reaction to glandular emotions, has long been known to be electrical or quasi-electrical in nature, and it is this output which nourishes our shadowy superiors. They can and do boost the harvest anytime they want, by stimulating rivalries, jealousies, hatreds and thus rousing emotions. Christians against Moslems, whites against blacks, Communists versus Catholics, all are grist to the Viton mill, all are unwitting feeders of other, unimaginable guts. As we cultivate our food, so do the Vitons cultivate theirs. As we plow our fields, sow and reap, so do they plow and sow and reap. We are fleshly soil, furrowed with Viton-dictated circumstances, sown with controversial ideas, manured with foul rumors, lies and wilful misrepresentations, sprinkled with suspicion and jealousy, all that we may raise fine, fat crops of emotional energy to be reaped with knives of trouble. Every time someone screams for war, a Viton is using his vocal chords to order a Viton banquet!”

A man sitting near Veitch stood, up and said, “Maybe you know what some of us are doing. We’re trying to make atom-splitting behind the times. We’re trying to find a way to bring about the complete dissipation of sub-atomic particles into primal energy. We’re trying to make a wavicle-bomb. If we ever get it, boy, it’ll be some bomb! Even a little one will rock the world.” He licked his lips, looked around. “Are you suggesting that we’re Viton-inspired?”

“You haven’t made such a bomb?”

“Not yet.”

“There’s your answer,” said Graham, dryly. “Maybe you’ll never make one. Or if you do, you may never use it. But if you do make one—and drop one—!”

There came a heavy knock on the door, its sudden sound making several start in their seats. A uniformed man entered, whispered briefly to Keithley, then took his departure. Keithley arose, his face pale, his tones vibrant. He looked at Graham, then at the audience, and spoke slowly, earnestly.

“Gentlemen, I regret to inform you that I have just been told that the
Olympian
has been involved in a collision twenty miles west of Pittsburgh.” He swallowed hard. His strain was obvious. “Many people have been injured, and one killed. The casualty is Doctor Beach!”

Amid a babble of comment from his horrified listeners, he sat down. For a full minute the audience shifted about, muttered, stared at each other, at the screen, at the feverish eyes of Graham.

“Another informed mind has been tossed into oblivion,” Graham commented, bitterly. “The hundredth or the thousandth, for all we know!” He spread dramatic arms. “We eat, but we do not roam haphazardly around seeking wild potatoes. We grow them, and in growing them we improve them according to our notions of what potatoes ought to be. Similarly, our emotional tubers are not enough to fill higher and mightier bellies; they must be grown, stimulated, bred according to the ideas of those who do the surreptitious cultivating.”

“That,” he shouted, bunching a strong fist and shaking it at his wide-eyed hearers, “is the sole reason why human beings, otherwise rational enough, ingenious enough to amaze themselves with their own cleverness, cannot conduct world affairs in a way that does justice to their intelligence. That is the reason why, in this present day and age, we can build glories greater than history has ever held, yet live among the miserable monuments to our own destructive powers, and cannot build peace, security, tranquility. That is the reason why we advance in science, and all the emotion-producing arts, and all the exciting graces, but not in sociology, which has been hamstrung from the beginning.”

Expressively, he rolled wide an imaginary sheet of paper, and said, “If I were showing you a microphotograph of the edge of an ordinary saw, its peaks and valleys would be a perfect graph representing the waves of emotion which have upset this world with damnable regularity. Emotion—the crop! Hysteria—the fruit! Rumors of war, preparations for war, accusations of preparations for war, actual wars, ferocious and bloody; religious revivals, religious riots; financial crises; labor troubles; color rivalries; ideological demonstrations; specious propaganda; murders, massacres, so-called natural disasters, or slaughter in any emotion-arousing form; revolutions and more wars.”

His voice was loud, determined as he went on. “Despite the fact that the enormous majority of ordinary men of all colors and every creed instinctively yearn for peace and security above all else, this world of otherwise sane, sensible people cannot satisfy that yearning.
They are not allowed to satisfy it!
Peace, real peace, is a time of famine to those higher than us in the scale of life. There must be emotion, nervous energy, great, worldwide crops of it, brought into being, somehow, anyhow.”

“It is atrocious!” swore Carmody.

“When you see this world riddled with suspicion, rotten with conflicting ideas, staggering beneath the burden of preparation for war, you can be certain the harvest time is drawing near—a harvest for others. Not for you, not for you—you are only the poor, bleeding suckers whose lot it is to be pushed around.
The harvest is for others!”

He bent forward, his jaw jutting aggressively, his eyes burned into theirs. “Gentlemen, I am here to give you Bjornsen’s formula that you may test it for yourselves. Maybe there are one or two among you who think I’ve been no more than making noises. God knows, I really wish that I’m deluded! So, soon, will you!” His grin was hard and completely humorless. “I ask, I demand that the truth be given the world before it becomes too late. Humanity will never know peace, never build a heaven upon earth while its collective soul bears this hideous burden, its collective mind is corrupted from birth. Truth must be a weapon, else these creatures would never have gone to such drastic lengths to prevent it from becoming known. They fear the truth, therefore the world must learn the truth. The world
must
be told!”

Sitting down, he covered his face with his hands. There were things he could not tell them, things he did not want to tell them. Before morning some of them would have gained the ability to test the facts, they would gaze into the dreadful skies—and some of them would die. They would die screaming the guilty knowledge that filled their minds, the fear that stuffed their leaping hearts. They would fight futilely, run uselessly, babble the dying protests of the damned, and expire helplessly.

Dimly, he heard Colonel Leamington addressing the audience, telling the scientists to go their separate ways with care and circumspection, to take with them mimeographed copies of the precious formula, to test it as soon as possible and inform him of the results immediately they were obtained. Above all, they were to exercise mental self-control, keeping well apart so that at worst their minds could betray them only as individuals and not as a group. Leamington, too, appreciated the danger. At least, he was taking no chances.

The governmental experts went out one by one, each accepting his slip of paper from Leamington. All looked at the seated Graham, but none spoke. Their faces were grim, and ominous thoughts already were burgeoning in their minds.

When the last of them had gone, Leamington said, “We’ve prepared sleeping quarters farther below this level, Graham. We must take good care of you until the facts have been checked, because Beach’s death means that you’re now the only one with first-hand information.”

“I doubt it.”

“Eh?” Leamington’s jaw dropped in surprise.

“I don’t think so,” asserted Graham, wearily. “Heaven alone knows how many scientists have had private information about Bjornsen’s discovery. Undoubtedly, some dismissed it on sight, as manifestly ridiculous—or so they thought. They never bothered to test it for themselves, and their omission saved their lives. But there may be others who have confirmed Bjornsen’s claims and have been fortunate enough to have escaped detection up to the moment. They will be terrified, haunted men, driven half-mad by their own knowledge, afraid to risk ridicule, or precipitate their own end, or even cause a major holocaust by shouting from the house-tops. They’ll be down, way down somewhere out of sight, skulking silently around, like sewer-rats. You’d have hell’s own job finding them!”

“You think that general dissemination of the news will cause trouble?”

“Trouble is putting it mildly,” Graham declared. “The word for what will happen isn’t in the dictionary. The news will be broadcast only if the Vitons fail in their positive attempts to prevent it. If they deem it necessary, they’ll have no compunctions about wiping out half the human race to preserve the blissful ignorance of the other half.”

“Supposing that they can do it,” Leamington qualified.

“They’ve organized two world wars and have kept us emoting in suspense for the last twenty years over the possibility of a third and even bigger one.” Graham rubbed powerful hands together, felt dampness oozing between the pores. “What they could do before they can do again.”

“You’re not suggesting that they’re so all-powerful that it’s futile to struggle against them, are you?”

“Most definitely not! But I don’t under-estimate the enemy. That’s a mistake we’ve made too many times in the past!” He noted Leamington’s wince without commenting upon it. “Their numbers and strength still remain a matter of speculation. Pretty soon they’ll be swarming all over the place, looking for ringleaders of mutinies, dealing with them quickly, thoroughly—and finally. If they discover me, and remove me, you’ll have to seek some other survivor. Bjornsen told his friends, some of whom passed the information along to their friends, and there’s no telling just how far the news has spread through purely personal channels. Dakin, for instance, got it from Webb, who got it from Beach who got it from Bjornsen. Reed got it from Mayo and back to Bjornsen by another route. Dakin and Reed got it third-hand, or fourth-hand or maybe tenth-hand, but it killed them just the same. There may be a few others who, more by luck than anything else, have managed to keep alive.”

“It is to be hoped so,” said Leamington, with a touch of gloom.

“Once the news does get out, those of us who know it now will all be safe. The motive for removing us will then have ceased to exist.” There was pleased anticipation in his tones, the glee of one who looks forward to ridding himself of an intolerable burden.”

“If the results gained by these scientists bear out your statements,” interjected Senator Carmody, “I, personally, shall see to it that the president is informed without delay. You can depend upon all the action of which the government is capable.”

“Thanks!” Nodding gratefully, Graham arose, went out with Leamington and Wohl. They conducted him to his temporary refuge many levels deeper beneath the War Department Building.

“Say, Bill,” spoke Wohl, “I collected a mess of reports from Europe that I’ve not had a chance to tell you about. There have been autopsies on Sheridan, Bjornsen and Luther, and the results were exactly the same as in the cases of Mayo and Webb.”

“It all ties up,” remarked Colonel Leamington. He patted Graham on the shoulder, performing the action with an amusing touch of paternal pride. “Your story is one that is going to strain the credulity of the world, but I believe you implicitly.”

They left him to the much-needed sleep he knew he would not get. It was impossible to slumber with the crisis so near to hand. Mayo had gone, and he had seen him go. He had seen Dakin flee from a fate that was fast, determined, implacable, and he had anticipated and heard Corbett’s similar end. Tonight—Beach! Tomorrow—who?

In the cold, damp hours of early morning, the news burst wide over a startled planet, broke with breath-taking suddenness and with a violence that transcended everything. The whole world howled in horror.

Chapter 8

IT WAS THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING of June the ninth, 2015, and the seldom-mentioned but superbly efficient United States Department of Propaganda was working overtime. Its two huge floors in Home Affairs Building were dark, deserted, but half a mile away, hidden in a two-acre basement comprising a dozen great cellars, slaved the department’s complete staff augmented by eighty willing helpers. One floor above them, held by an immense thickness of concrete and steel, rested the mammoth weights of several old-fashioned presses, clean, bright, oiled, kept for years in constant readiness against the time when there might be a nation-wide breakdown in the television news-reproduction system. One thousand feet higher soared the beautifully slender pile that was the home of the semi-official
Washington Post.

Into the hands of the bustling four hundred, jacketless, perspiring, were being drawn the threads of communication over an entire world. Television, radio and cable systems, strat-plane couriers, even the field-signalling sections of the fighting forces were theirs to command.

For all the intense activity, there was no sign of it at ground-level. The Post Building stood apparently lifeless, its mounting rows of windows reflecting a multitude of sallow moons. Unconscious of the frantically active battalion far below him, a patrolling police officer stamped his lonely way along the sidewalk, his eyes on a distant illuminated clock, his mind occupied with nothing more damning than the cup of coffee at the end of the beat. A cat ran daintily across his path, vanished into the shadows.

But down, down, down, far underneath the brooding monoliths, buried amid a million unsuspecting sleepers, the four hundred toiled in preparation for the awful dawn. Morse keys and high-speed autotypers rattled brief, staccato messages or longer, more ominous ones. Teletypers chatted furiously through chapters of information. Telephones shrilled and emitted metallic words while, in one corner, a powerful multi-channel shortwave transmitter forced impulses through its sky-high antenna and out to faraway ears.

News flowed in, was dissected, correlated, filed. Bleeker has completed the test, reports that he is watching two spheres gliding over Delaware Avenue. Okay, tell Bleeker to forget it—
if he can!
Here’s Williams on the phone, saying he’s made his test and can see luminescent spheres. Tell Williams thanks, and to go bury himself fast! Tollerton on the wire, saying test comes out positive and that he’s now observing a string of blue globes moving high across the Potomac. Tell him to go underground and take a sleep.

“That you, Tollerton? Thanks for the information. No, sorry, we’re not permitted to tell you whether other tests have produced reports confirming your own. Why? For your own sake, of course! Now stop thinking about it and go bye-bye!”

It was a noisy but systematic hurly-burly in which incoming calls squeezed their way between outgoing messages and every long-distance talker yearned for priority over every other. Here, a man clung desperately to a phone during his twentieth attempt to raise station WRTC in Colorado. Giving it up, he made a contact request to the police department in Denver. Over there, in one corner, a radio operator recited into his microphone in a patient monotone, “Calling aircraft-carrier
Arizona.
Calling aircraft-carrier
Arizona.”

In the middle of it all, exactly at the hour of four, two men arrived through the tunnel which for a decade had provided swift means of egress for thousands of still-damp newspapers being rushed to the railroad terminus.

Entering, the first man respectfully held the door open for his companion. The second man was tall, heavily built, with iron-gray hair, light gray eyes that looked calmly, steadily from a muscular confident face.

While this last one stood appraising the scene, his escort said, simply, “Gentlemen, the President!”

There followed a momentary silence while every man came to his feet, looked upon the features they knew so well. Then the chief executive signed them to carry on, permitted himself to be conducted to an enclosed booth. Inside, he adjusted his glasses, arranged some typewritten sheets in his hand, cleared his throat and faced a microphone.

The signal lamp flashed. The president spoke, his delivery assured, convincing, his voice impressive. Two blocks away, hidden in another basement, delicate machinery absorbed his voice, commenced to reproduce it two thousand times.

Long after he had departed, the machinery sped on, pouring forth tiny reels of magnetised wire which were snatched up, packed in airtight containers, and rushed away.

The New York-San Francisco strat-plane left at five o’clock with a dozen canned reproductions of the president’s speech hidden in its cargo. It dropped three of them en route before its pilot lost control of his thoughts—whereupon it disappeared forever.

The four-thirty special for London received the first score of copies, bore them safely across the Atlantic, delivered them at their destination. The pilot and co-pilot had been told that the sealed cans contained microfilms. They thought they were microfilms, and thus anything—or any things—which may have been interested in their thoughts were successfully deceived into believing the same.

About three-quarters of the reproductions had been received by the time zero hour arrived. Of the missing quarter, a few had suffered natural and unforeseeable delays, while the remainder represented the first casualties in the new and eerie conflict. The speech could have been made quite easily by the president in person, over a nation-wide hook-up. And just as easily the speech could have been defeated at utterance of the first sentence, by death lurking at one microphone. Now, in effect, there were fifteen hundred presidents ready with fifteen hundred microphones so completely scattered that some waited in American consulates and embassies in Europe, Asia and South America, some were ready on solitary islands in the Pacific, several were aboard warships far out at sea, away from human—and Viton—haunts. Ten were located in Arctic wastes where harmless flickers in the sky were the only Vitonesque phenomena.

At seven o’clock in the morning in the eastern States, at noon in Great Britain, and at equivalent times elsewhere, the news splashed over the front pages of old-fashioned papers, glowed into telenews screens, stood out starkly on stereocine screens, blared from loudspeakers, bawled over public address systems, was shouted from the housetops.

A low, incredulous cry of anguish came from the world of mankind, a wail that grew with growing belief and built itself into a shrill, hysterical scream. The voice of humanity expressed its shock, each race according to its emotional trend, each nation to its creed, each man to his glands. In New York, a frightened mob filled Times Square to suffocation point, surging, shouting, shaking fists at sullen skies, driven bellicose by peril in the manner of cornered rats. In Central Park, a seemlier crowd prayed, sang hymns, screamed for Jesus, protested, wept.

Piccadilly, London, was messed with the blood of forty suicides that morning. Trafalgar Square permitted no room for traffic, even its famous lions being concealed beneath a veritable flood of half-crazy human figures, some howling for the august presence of George the Eighth, others bellowing orders at the Lord God Almighty. And while the lions crouched even lower than humanity was crouching, and surrounding white faces were staring sweatily at wages-of-sin-is-death orators, Nelson’s Column broke at its base, leaned over, propped itself for one tremendous second against another column of shrieks, fell and crushed three hundred. Emotion welled to the heavens, bright, clear, thirst-quenching emotion!

Mohammedans embraced Christianity that morning, and Christians became Mohammedans, Buddhists, boozers… anything. The churches swapped inmates with the bordellos and the asylums eventually gained from both. While many of the sinful made haste to bathe themselves in holy water, the pure did some mind-diverting wallowing in iniquity. Each according to his lights, but all a little unbalanced. Every one a Viton-cow satisfactorily stimulated to over-swollen udders!

But the news was out despite every attempt to prevent it, despite various obstacles to its broadcasting. Not all newspapers had acceded to official requests that their front pages be devoted to the authorized script. Many asserted their journalistic independence—or their proprietors’ dimwitted obstinacy—by distorting the copy with which they had been provided, lending it humor or horror according to their individual whims, thus maintaining the time-honored freedom of gross misrepresentation which is the freedom of the press. A few flatly refused to print such obvious balderdash. Some mentioned it editorially as a manifest election stunt for which they were not going to fall. Others loyally tried to comply, and failed.

The
New York Times
came out with a belated edition stating that its early morning issue had not appeared because “of sudden casualties among our staff.” Ten had died in the
Times
office that morning. The
Kansas City Star
came out on time loudly demanding to know what sort of a dollar-snatching gag Washington had cooked up this time. Its staff survived.

In Elmira, the editor of the
Gazette
sat dead at his desk, the television-printed data from Washington still in his cold grasp. His assistant editor had tried to take the sheet, and had slumped on the floor beside him. A third sprawled near the door, a foolhardy reporter who had dropped even as his mind conceived the notion that it was up to him to fulfill the duty for which his superiors had given their lives.

Radio Station WTTZ blew itself to hell at the exact moment that its microphone became energized and its operator opened his mouth to give the news which was to be followed by the presidential speech.

Later in the week, it was estimated that seventeen radio stations in the United States and sixty-four in the entire world had been wrecked mysteriously, by supernormal means, in time to prevent the broadcasting of revelations considered undesirable by others. The press, too, suffered heavily, newspaper offices collapsing at the critical moment, being disrupted by inexplicable explosions, or losing one by one the informed members of their staffs.

Yet the world was told, warned, so well had the propagandists prepared beforehand. Even invisibles could not be everywhere at once. The news was out, and a select few felt safe, but the rest of the world had the jitters.

Bill Graham sat with Lieutenant Wohl and Professor Jurgens in the latter’s apartment on Lincoln Parkway. They were looking through the evening editions of every newspaper they’d been able to acquire.

“The reaction is pretty well what one might expect,” commented Jurgens. “Some mixture! Look at this!”

He handed over a copy of the
Boston Transcript.
The paper made no mention of powers invisible, but contented itself with a three-column editorial ferociously attacking the government.

“We are not concerned,” swore the
Transcript’s
leader-writer, “with the question of whether this morning’s morbid scoop is true or untrue, but we are concerned with the means by which it was put across. When the government exercises powers that it has never been given by mandate of the people, and practically confiscates the leading pages of every newspaper in the country, we perceive the first step toward a dictatorial regime. We see a leaning toward methods that will never for one moment be tolerated in this free democracy, and that will meet with our uncompromising opposition so long as we retain a voice with which to speak.”

“The problem that arises,” said Graham, seriously, “is that of whose views this paper represents. We can assume that the person who wrote it did so with complete honesty and in good faith, but are those opinions really his own, or are they notions which cunningly have been insinuated into his mind, notions which he has accepted as his own, believes to be his own?”

“Ah, there lies the peril!” agreed Jurgens.

“Since all our data points to the fact that the Vitons sway opinions any way they want them, subtly guiding the thoughts that best suit their own purposes, it is well-nigh impossible to determine which views are naturally and logically evolved, which implanted.”

“It is difficult,” Jurgens conceded. “It gives them a tremendous advantage, for they can maintain their hold over humanity by keeping the world divided in spite of all our own attempts to unite it. From now on, every time a trouble-maker shoots his trap, we’ve got to ask ourselves a question of immense significance:
who’s talking now?”
He put a long, delicate finger on the article under discussion. “Here is the first psychological counterstroke, the first blow at intended unity—the crafty encouragement of suspicion that somewhere lurks a threat of dictatorship. The good old smear-technique. Millions fall for it every time. Millions will always fall so long as they would rather believe a lie than doubt a truth.”

“Quite.” Graham scowled at the sheet while Wohl watched him thoughtfully.

“The
Cleveland Plain Dealer
takes another stand,” Jurgens observed. He held up the sheet, showing a two-inch streamer. “A nice example of how journalism serves the public with the facts. This boy fancies himself on satire. He makes sly references to that vodka party in Washington a fortnight ago, and insists on referring to the Vitons as ‘Graham’s Ghouls.’ As for you, he thinks you’re selling something, probably sunglasses.”

“Damn!” said Graham, annoyedly. He caught Wohl’s chuckle, glared him into silence.

“Don’t let it worry you,” Jurgens went on. “When you’ve studied mass psychology as long as I’ve done you’ll cease to be surprised at anything.” He tapped the paper. “This was to be expected. From the journalistic viewpoint, truth exists to be raped. The only time facts are respected is when it’s expedient to print them. Otherwise, it’s smart to feed the public a lot of guff. It makes the journalist feel good; it gives him a sense of superiority over the suckers.”

“They won’t feel so darned superior when they’ve got an eye-full.”