The Perfect Host (39 page)

“Then the rock was shown, and it turned a shimmering yellow; and it, too, ran together into a formless mass, separated into two cubes. And these too, came together and moved apart.

“Next, all four cubes were shown, the two red and the two yellow, the red above, the yellow below; and a red and yellow cube changed places. A red cube moved and touched a yellow—and both dissolved in ghastly, glaring flame. And again, the remaining yellow cube moved and touched the red one, and they married in purple-white violence and were gone. And Falu breathed, ‘I think I see—’

“The pictures then repeated the scene of Gryce’s ship, the
Falu
, approaching the cloudy world. And then the scene was frozen into a still photograph, and the
Falu
turned the same glowing red as had the insulex, while the planet was shown in the shimmering yellow.

“The red ship moved down to the yellow planet and devastated it.

“We were then shown a picture of our own ship as it released the
insulex. Ship and insulex turned red as the rock fragment and the bowl-ships turned yellow; and when our red property touched the yellow rock, the hell was loosed again.

“And now we saw the great expanding chart of the galaxy, and on it again were superimposed the shining networks of dotted gold and silver lines, showing the wide commerce of these people. And suddenly every sun and planet was the shimmering yellow—every one, except for a scattering of red here and there near the edges of the galaxy.

“The eye of the camera moved to one of these red spots, expanded it, and we saw Sol and her planets, all untouched by the shining network, and all of them but the retrograde moon of Uranus, in glowing ruby.

“We saw a new kind of dotted line, the deadly red this time, leave the third planet, and followed it across the corner of the universe to the cloudy planet, and saw for the third time the picture of the
Falu
plunging into the deadly clouds.

“After that, the black screen dissolved and the seven ships took up their ring position around us again.

“Slowly, with sick hands, Falu Englehart fired the jets and swung the ship about. Hawton cried, ‘What are you doing?’

“Tiredly, Falu said, ‘Going back, Horton. Back.’

“Hawton ran to the screen. ‘They’ll kill us! They’ll kill us!’

“Falu glanced briefly at the seven ships. They were not moving. Still in a ring, they were motionless, letting us leave them behind. ‘They’d kill us if we went toward their planets, or any other sun in the universe but Sol—or one or two others. They won’t kill us if we go home. They wanted us to know what we are. They’ve known it for … for eons. And they want us to go home and tell our people. The fools!’ he spat suddenly. ’Gryce surprised them. They didn’t know we had advanced as far as capsule-flight. Gryce did it, and I followed, and they judge all humanity by Gryce. They don’t know, they just don’t know—”

“Hawton said he only partly understood. ‘I mean, I know that when we contact them, there is an insane violence; but why? Why?’

“ ‘They’re contraterrene,’ said Falu.

“Hawton grunted in surprise. ‘I thought that was simply an idle amusement for theoretical physicists.’

“Falu waved at the screens. ‘You saw.’

“ ‘Contraterrene,’ Hawton mused. ‘Matter with the signs transposed—atoms with negative nuclei, and positive satellite-shells. And when terrene matter comes close, the whole thing becomes unstable and turns to energy.
Falu!
Were they telling us that the whole universe, except Sol and a few other outer-edge stars are contraterrene?’ I think that only at that moment had Hawton received the full impact of what he had seen with his own eyes.

“Falu simply nodded tiredly.

“And they have commerce—galaxy-wide commerce, and civilizations on every habitable planet, while we—”

“ ‘We’re in the corner. Excommunicado. Left to our own devices, as long as those devices don’t bring us to contact them,’ Falu finished.”

With the bland
non sequitur
quality of his writing, Gudge here departs from the narrative, in a welter of thoughts of his own. He looked on Englehart and Horton—(Hawton?)—with new eyes; indeed, he seemed to regard all of humanity in a new way. He himself had always lived “in Coventry”—out of contact with those around him; and he seemed to take a certain pleasure in the chance to regard all mankind as in the same position. These long and gleeful passages contain nothing of the events which followed, except for one brief and important scene:

“Falu had told him and told him not to say it again, but he did. He shrieked at Falu. He said, ‘You must tell the world, Falu! You’ll be great, don’t you see? Terrene beings can rule the galaxy. What science would the Contraterrene peoples share with us, to appease us? What man could fail to see the advantage of his unique position, when every stone he throws can be an atomic bomb? Let us build a fleet of Gryce-drive capsule ships, and go out and demand equality in the universe!’

“Falu said, ‘Hawton, for the last time—for really and truly the last time—the Earth isn’t ready for this yet. What you suggest would have one of two results; if we succeeded, which isn’t likely, we would
only bring terror and destruction into a highly organized, peaceful universe—just as we have brought it on ourselves repeatedly. The other and more likely result is that before we could launch our ships, the Contraterrenes would wipe us out. There will be no more picture-shows. We have already killed a planet; in return they gave us some information about ourselves which we had not known. The next time we make a move toward them, they will destroy us with a clear conscience. I don’t doubt for a moment their ability to hurl a planet the size of Earth into Sol, and then you know what would happen. You’ve studied supernovae.’

“ ‘You’re an idealistic child,’ Hawton screamed. ‘And if you won’t tell the world, I will.’

“Falu squinted up at him through his heavy glasses. He saw, I think, the beginnings of fanatic purpose in the man. ‘Gudge,’ he said.

“I went to him. He pointed his finger at Hawton, and said, ‘Gudge, kill him.’

“So I did, with my hands, very quickly, and put him into the disposal lock and turned the valve.

“When I came back Falu looked at me strangely. ‘I suppose I should kill you, monster,’ he said. ‘Can I rely on your not talking?’

“I said nothing. Suddenly he shrugged. ‘I’d give a whole lot to know what goes on in that ugly head of yours. If I wanted to kill you, I don’t believe you’d try to stop me. Right?’

“I nodded, pitying him a little, for he was thinking about loyalty and wondering why I had given him mine; he did not know that one goes on doing what one is doing, and never stops.”

And that is how, according to the sheets found in a carven spaceship model, Samuel Falu Englehart made his journey, and how he saved us from certain doom at the hands of those who are perfectly willing to leave us alone. Now we can know the story, for we are grown and no longer acquisitive, and have our farms and our minds, and can bridge space telepathically, wherein there is no valence.

M
AYB
, C
HIEF
G
UARDIAN
for the Third Sector of the Crèche, writhed in her sleep. She pressed her grizzled head into the mattress, and her face twisted. She was deep in slumber, but slumber could not keep out the niggling, soundless, insistent pressure that had slipped into her mind. Sleep was as futile a guard as the sheet which she instinctively pulled up about her ears.

“Mayb!”

She rolled over, facing the wall, her mind refusing to distinguish between the sound of her name in the annunciator and this other, silent, imperative, thing.

“Mayb!”

She opened her eyes, saw on the wall the ruby radiance from the annunciator light, grunted and sat up, wincing as she recognized consciously both summonses. Swinging her legs out of the bed, she leaned forward and threw the toggle on the annunciator. “Yes, Examiner.”

The voice was resonant but plaintive. “Can’t you do something with that little br—with that Andi child? I need my sleep.”

“I’ll see what he wants,” she said resignedly, “although I
do
think, Examiner, that these midnight attentions are doing him more harm than good. One simply does not cater to children this way.”

“This is not an ordinary child,” said the speaker unnecessarily. “And I still need my sleep. Do what you can, Mayb. And thank you.” The light went out.

There was a time, thought Mayb grumpily, as she pulled on her robe, when I thought I could shield the little demon. I thought I could do something for him. That was before he began to know his own power.

She let herself out into the hall. “Subtle,” she muttered bitterly. Sector One, where children entered the Crèche at the age of nine
months, and Sector Two, into which went those who had not fallen by the wayside in eighteen months of examinations—they were simple. The mutants and the aberrants were easy to detect. The subtlety came in Sector Three, where abnormal metabolisms, undeveloped or non-developing limbs or organs, and high-threshold reactive mentalities were weeded out by the time they got there and behavior, almost alone, was the key to normality.

Mayb loved children, all children—which was one of the most important parts of being a Guardian. When it became necessary for her to recommend a child for Disposal, she sometimes stalled a little, sometimes, after it was done, cried a great deal. But she did it when it had to be done, which was the other part of being a good Guardian. She hadn’t been so good with Andi, though. Perhaps the little demon had crawled farther into her affections—at first, anyway—with his unpretty, puckish face and his extraordinary coloring, his toasted-gold hair and the eyes that should have belonged to a true redhead. She remembered—though at present it was difficult to recall a tenderness—how she had put aside the first suspicions that he was an Irregular, how she had tried to imagine signs that his infuriating demands were temporary, that some normal behavior might emerge to replace the wild talent for nuisance that he possessed.

On the other hand, she thought as she shuffled down the hall, it may seem hard-hearted of me, but things like this justify the Code of the Norm. Things like this can be remembered when we have to send some completely endearing little moppet into the Quiet Room, to await the soft hiss of gas and the chute to the incinerator.

Mayb reacted violently to the thought, and wondered, shaking, whether she was getting calloused in her old age, whether she was turning a personal resentment on the child because of this personal inconvenience. She shook off the thought, and for a moment tried not to think at all. Then came the shadow of a wish for the early days of the Normalcy program, two centuries before. That must have been wonderful. Normalcy came first. The children went into the crèches for observation, and were normal or were disposed of. Homo superior could wait. It was humanity’s only choice; restore itself to what it had been before the Fourth War—a mammal which
could predictably breed true—or face a future of battles between mutations which, singly and in groups, would fight holy wars on the basis of “What I am is normal.”

And now, though the idea behind the program was still the same, and the organizations of the crèches were still the same, a new idea was gaining weight daily—to examine Irregulars always more meticulously, with a view, perhaps, to letting one live—one which might benefit all of humanity by his very difference; one who might be a genius, a great artist in some field, or who might have a phenomenal talent for organizing or some form of engineering. It was the thin end of the wedge for Homo superior, who would, by definition, be an Irregular. Irregulars, however, were not necessarily Homo superior, and the winnowing process could be most trying. As with Andi, for example.

Holding her breath, she opened the door of his cubicle. As she did so the light came on and the ravening emanation from the child stopped. He rose up from his bed like a little pink seal and knelt, blinking at her, in the middle of the bed.

“Now, what do you want?”

“I want a drink of water and a plastibubble and go swimmin’ ” said the four-year-old.

“Now Andi,” Mayb said, not unkindly, “there’s water right here in your room. The plastibubbles have all been put away and it isn’t
time
for swimming. Why can’t you be a good boy and sleep like all the other children?”

“I am NOT like the uvver children,” he said emphatically. “I want a plastibubble.”

Mayb sighed and pulled out an old, old psychological trick. “Which would you like—a drink of water or a plastibubble?” As she spoke she slid her foot onto the pedal of the drinking fountain in the corner of the tiny room. The water gurgled enticingly. Before he was well aware of what he was doing. Andi was out of bed and slurping up the water, with the cancellation of his want for the plastibubble taking root in his mind.

“It tas—tuz better when you push the pedal,” he said charmingly.

“Well, that’s sweet of you, Andi. But did you know I was fast asleep and had to get up and come here to do it?”

“Thass all right,” said Andi blandly.

She turned to the door as he climbed back on the bed. “I wanna go swimmin’.”

“No one goes swimming at night!”

“Fishes do.”

“You’re not a fish.”

“Well, ducks, then.”

“You’re not—” No; this could go on all night. “You go to sleep, young fellow.”

“Tell me a story.”

“Now Andi, this isn’t story telling time. I told you a story before bedtime.”

“You tol’ it to everybody. Now tell it to
me
.”

“I’m sorry, Andi, this isn’t the time,” she said firmly. She touched the stud which would switch the light off when she closed the door. “Shut your eyes, now, and have a nice dream. Good night, Andi.”

She closed the door, shaking her head and yawning. And instantly that soundless, pressurized command began yammering out, unstoppable, unanswerable. Telepathy was not a novelty nowadays, with the welter of mutations which had reared their strange, unviable heads since the Fourth War; but this kind of thing was beyond belief. It was unbearable. Mayb could sense the Examiner rearing up on his bed, clapping his hands uselessly over his ears, and swearing volubly. She opened the door. “Andi!”