The Fourth Frank Belknap Long Science Fiction MEGAPACK®

CHAPTER IAgnes and Claire. I’ll say it again. Agnes—Claire. How could both be so much a part of my life, and so different; and how could I have taken Agnes into my arms before I even knew her name? Perhaps it wasn’t so strange. How could I have known the name of the girl who stood beside me? You stand before the humming computers and you fight off terror. You feel a more-than-human wisdom crushing you, denying you the right to think for yourself. You know that your future should be in your own hands, but you can’t wring that much independence from the master controls. The Big Brain can’t know what a man is thinking, but the feeling is there—the guilt feeling. You want to escape, and can’t. You look around you, and you see your own face mirrored back. You see on gleaming metal the haggard eyes, and tight, despairing lips of a total stranger. The girl who stood beside me was trembling violently. She’d punched her identity number, and the Big Brain’s answer had struck her like a hard-knuckled hand in the dark. I could see the punched metal tape gleaming on her palm, four inches of tape. I could see the torment in her eyes, the film of moisture she was furiously trying to blink away. She was staring straight at me, but I knew my face meant nothing to her. It could only have seemed the cold face of a stranger, trapped like herself. The realization of her torment gave a sharp, heady quality to my anger. The guilt feeling dissolved and I felt only anger. She was so very beautiful that I succumbed to the universal human fantasy. I saw her as an outcast girl in a freedom ruin, and there was the tang of death in the air, the rich, heavy perfume which outcast women wore. She was standing against a crumbling stone wall, her large dark eyes wide with desperation, her unbound hair falling to her shoulders. She was a hostage to desperation, appealing to the primitive in man in the pitiful hope of awakening love that might know reverence and respect. I had come upon her suddenly, and I was fighting for her in a canyon of crumbling steel against men lost to all honor. Then I saw the light of the dome glowing on her hair, and the bright, dangerous vision was gone. I wanted to whisper to her: “A computation denying you the right to marry is a crime against beauty such as yours. Don’t accept it. Insist on a more rigorous check on every phase of your ancestry!” But I didn’t say it. How could a man and a woman reach each other with sympathy and warmth when a terrifying weight of non-human wisdom denied them the right to courtship. A glance is a beginning courtship, a word spoken in a certain way, the briefest of handclasps in a shadowed room. Even that was denied us; we were strangers. There could be no hands stretched forth in friendship or reassurance. If you listened carefully you could hear the humming computers. You could hear the click of the metal tapes being punched, being cut off sharply. You could hear a lifetime of misery being punched out in exactly ten seconds. Marriage Privilege Permitted Marriage Privilege Denied The vault was like a prison, harsh with artificial sunlight, each of the twenty computation units guarded by heavy bars. You could look up at the glittering tears of memory banks and stimulus-response circuits and tell yourself that the Big Brain was society’s only bulwark against decay from within. But if the unit before which you stood flashed its cold light upon you, the dryness in your throat wouldn’t be from pride. To the simple fellow yonder, the humming meant that the Big Brain was taking a personal interest in every man and woman in the vault. To the junior coordinator, whose lips had gone suddenly white, it was quite otherwise. He was an educated man; he was waiting for the Giant Computer to make an impersonal analysis of data as unalterable as the stars in their courses. It was the Giant Computer in the eyes of Society, and the technicians who had designed and constructed it. But to me “Big Brain” cut closer to the truth. Popular names have a way of doing that. Whatever the pros and cons of logic and science, a machine that can destroy your happiness takes an interest in you. Marriage Privilege Permitted Marriage Privilege Denied There is more to it than that, of course; but you had to have good eyesight to read the micro-lettering, which told you exactly why you’d made a tragic mistake in allowing yourself to be born. Biogenetic advances in electron-microscopic Rontgen-ray analysis having made possible the exact determination of the genes of human inheritance in the human adult, the individual’s blindly instinctive urge to marry and have children can now for the first time be successfully controlled. Experience has shown that it is to society’s best interest to maintain at all times a perfect balance of the more desirable genetic types. It thus becomes obvious that curtailment of the marriage privilege must of necessity, be directed solely to that end. It was as simple as that. I looked down at my own tape, at the cruel words punched into the metal. John Tabor… Marriage Denied Ironically, I wasn’t even an undesirable type; I was perfectly healthy mentally and physically. In a few years my type could marry again. But right at that moment there were too many of me. If I married now, I would be destroying the beautiful socio-biogenetic balance which had to be preserved—even if it meant enforced celibacy, or a freedom ruin, for a man who had thought to find his greatest happiness in marriage and a home. The girl next to me hadn’t turned. She was still staring at me, and her eyes were clear now—clear and fearless. I hadn’t intended to speak to her. I had fought that impulse, knowing what it could lead to. I thought of the vigilance against unlawful love-making, save in the uncontrolled freedom of one’s rooms, how every instrument of technology was arrayed against it. It could not fail to be detected and the penalty—death. Otherwise, banishment for evermore to a hunted existence in the primitive, decadent ruins of Nuork. The desires of youth have no beginning, no end. It wasn’t sympathy alone which made me ask: “How bad is it?” “My classical Mendelian ratio is too low,” she said. “Too low, that is, for anyone of the pooled offspring of a series of families where the parental mating types are identical.” She laughed a little hysterically. “I seem to have memorized it word for word. It’s funny how you’ll do that when everything stops for you, and you want to die.” “If it ties in that closely with multiple-family data you can ask for another analysis,” I said. “Computations based on more than fifty predicable ratios are often in error.” I showed her my tape. “This is my third computation. I received my first two years ago.” She seemed not to hear me. She was looking at me with a new interest, as if my sympathy had brought her new hope and courage. She drew nearer to me and suddenly there was a flame of yearning between us. Her femininity became so overwhelming it frightened me. I looked around the vault. A security guard stood by the door, but he wasn’t watching us. His eyes were on another girl, halfway down the vault—a wholly unattractive girl who stood with her head held high, as if defying the humming computers to deny her happiness. Spots of color burned in her cheeks, and in her eagerness to become a wife and mother she seemed suddenly almost beautiful. I looked away quickly, feeling I had no right to stare. My temples were throbbing, but I refused to admit that I could be in danger. If a woman I did not know was weak, and wanted to touch me, I could be strong. Her hand was suddenly warm in mine. “Tell me about yourself,” she whispered. Realization came with a numbing suddenness. She could have asked anything of me, and I could not have refused her. I told her my name, my occupation. I told her I’d just come from Venus Base, and I told her why I was going back. “Hard work is the only real compensation,” I said. “When you’re headed for a construction job on the planets, you don’t have time to think much. It’s better than staying on Earth, and seeking a substitute for happiness.” I told her of the planet’s savage beauty, and there was only one thing I kept back—how different I was from most of the men who sought escape on Venus Base. I didn’t tell her how great and unusual were my telepathic powers. It was far too dangerous a secret to entrust to a woman. When a child has been born abnormally telepathic, he learns caution at an early age—even though he cannot hope to conceal his secret from the Big Brain. “There are no women on Venus?” she whispered. She was standing very close to me, and suddenly her hair brushed my cheek. I told her about the construction work. “Men who can’t marry on Earth will have their chance,” I said. “Women will be sent out. There are restrictions you can’t impose on pioneers and builders.” “Women will be sent out when you are dust,” she whispered. I pretended I hadn’t heard her. I held on to Venus as a child will hold on its most treasured toy, pretending it has found a way to make it yield adult pleasures. “The restrictions will be gradually relaxed,” I said. “Even now it is a free and easy world. You can travel from construction camp to construction camp, whenever the urge to roam takes hold of you. To quiet that urge, women will be sent out.” “They will let you die first. The Brain has not yet made its power felt on Venus. It knows that when men have tasted freedom, society must move with caution.” Her fingers tightened on my arm. “Society needs men like you for construction work, but those who come after you will be a more docile breed. Society will never reward men whom it dares not trust.” “I’ll have to risk that,” I said. She gave me an odd look. “I suppose it is better than sitting under a psycho-helmet dreaming about a woman who exists only in your mind.” “Emotional Illusion Therapy can be a satisfying experience,” I told her. “You can have beautiful experiences in dreams. Sometimes it’s so real you never want to wake up.” “But when you do wake up?” “I went to Venus Base because I preferred to stay awake,” I said. “Does that answer you?” Her eyes searched my face. “Did you ever go to a freedom ruin?” I shook my head. I would have gone to the freedom ruins, if the stakes had been clear cut. In the ruins it was kill, or be killed. The women who went expected to be fought over, and the men— You found a woman you could love and you courted her until tenderness and desire flamed in her eyes. Then, unless you were completely a beast, she became your woman for as long as you could hold her. No society can exist without its safety valves. By computation, a certain percentage of the denied would find their way to the ruins. A certain percentage would die. Whenever I thought about the ruins I could almost hear the Big Brain whispering: “Society has taken certain regions, and about them it has erected barriers of self-loathing. Beyond the barriers there is no law but the law of the jungle. Beyond the barriers my wisdom has no meaning. But it is well that some should go; it is necessary.” If the stakes had been clear cut—a choice between living and dying—I’d have accepted them gladly. It was kill or be killed, for in the ruins men outnumbered women, five to one. The eyes of the girl at my side burned into mine. Large eyes she had, a deep lustrous violet which looked black until you discovered that they could glow for you alone. “Do you know why women who can never have love here go to the ruins?” “This is why!” she said. Her arms went around my shoulder, and she crushed her lips to mine, so hard I couldn’t breathe for an instant. Then she stepped back quickly, her eyes shining. “Call it anything you wish.” “There’s a name for it you don’t often hear in the ruins,” I said. She came into my arms again; it was a madness we couldn’t control, and there was a terrible danger in it. * * * * We were saved from disaster by the utterly unexpected. Far down the vault a man was screaming. His fists were tightly clenched, and he was screaming out imprecations against the humming computers. There was a hopeless rage in his eyes—rage, and bitter, savage defiance. Even as he screamed, he began to slouch forward with a terrible weariness of a man trapped beyond all hope of rescue. I had no right to interfere; it was a problem for the Security Guard. The Guard was just starting to turn, the electro-sap at his wrist glittering in the harsh light. The thought of what might happen made me almost physically ill. I had no right to interfere, but I did. I crossed the vault in five long strides, and I grasped the screaming man by the shoulder. I swung him about, and I started slapping his face. First his right cheek, then his left. It may have been bad psychology, but I had to chance it. I’d seen men killed or crippled for life by electro-saps. The guards weren’t deliberately brutal, but sometimes they didn’t know their own strength. Between slaps I spoke to the poor devil in a whisper, deliberately keeping my voice low, knowing that you can’t reason with a sick man by shouting at him. “Careful—the guard’s watching you! Don’t force him to use his sap! Do you hear? You won’t walk out of here alive!” Abruptly the poor devil stopped screaming, sagged forward, and would have collapsed if I hadn’t caught him. The guard was instantly at my side. “Just what did you say to him, friend? Don’t you know that helping the wrong people can get you into trouble?” I didn’t answer; I just waited, hoping he’d let my interference pass. He glared at me, then said, “Get his arm around my shoulder. I want to find out if he can walk.” I stood watching the Guard assisting the poor devil out of the vault. It’s funny how tension will distort reality. I watched the Guard pass-from the vault, then turn back to reassure the girl I’d taken so impetuously into my arms. She was gone. For a moment I stood staring around the vault, shaken, despairing. Then slowly balance and sanity returned to my mind. I realized with a shudder of relief by what a narrow margin I’d been saved from utter disaster. Unlike that poor devil, I could face the future with confidence. I was a potential “marriage privilege permitted” type, and I knew that hopes temporarily dashed wouldn’t stay buried. I knew that when I left the vault and emerged into the clear, bright sunlight it would light up the world for me. My heart was singing when I turned, and walked out into the corridor, and descended to the street.