Текст книги "City"

Автор книги: Clifford D. Simak

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"Are you telling me," asked Fowler, "that I'm right, but you can't do a thing about it?"

"Not exactly. We'll have to work out something. Maybe Jupiter could be made a sort of old folks' home. After a man had lived out a useful life-"

Fowler made a tearing sound of disgust deep inside his throat. "A reward," he snapped. "Turning an old horse out to pasture. Paradise by special dispensation."

"That way," Webster pointed out, "we'd save the human race and still have Jupiter."

Fowler came to his feet in a swift, lithe motion. "I'm sick of it," he shouted. "I brought you a thing you wanted to know. A thing you spent billions of dollars and, so far as you knew, hundreds of lives, to find out. You set up reconversion stations all over Jupiter and you sent out men by dozens and they never came back and you thought that they were dead and still you sent out others. And none of them came back – because they didn't want to come back, because they couldn't come back, because they couldn't stomach being men again. Then I came back and what does it amount to? A lot of high-flown talk... a lot of quibbling... questioning me and doubting me. Then finally saying I am all right, but that I made a mistake in coming back at all."

He let his arms fall to his side and his shoulders drooped. "I'm free, I suppose," he said. "I don't need to stay here."

Webster nodded slowly. "Certainly, you are free. You were free all the time. I only asked that you stay until I could check."

"I cod d go back to Jupiter?"

"In the light of the situation," said Webster, "that might be a good idea."

"I'm surprised you didn't suggest it," said Fowler, bitterly. "It would be an out for you. You could file away the report and forget about it and go on running the Solar System like a child's game played on a parlour floor. Your family has blundered its way through centuries and the people let you come back for more. One of your ancestors lost the world the Juwain philosophy and another blocked the effort of the humans to co-operate with the mutants-"

Webster spoke sharply. "Leave me and my family out of this, Fowler! It is a thing that's bigger-"

But Fowler was shouting, drowning out his words. "And I'm not going to let you bungle this. The world has lost enough because of you Websters. Now the world's going to get a break. I'm going to tell the people about Jupiter. I'll tell the press and radio. I'll yell it from the housetops. I'll-"

His voice broke and his shoulders shook.

Webster's voice was cold with sudden rage. "I'll fight you, Fowler. I'll go on the beam against you. I can't let you do a thing like this."

Fowler bad swung around, was striding towards the garden gate.

Webster, frozen in his chair, felt the paw clawing at his leg.

"Shall I get him, Boss?" asked Elmer. "Shall I go and get him?"

Webster shook his head. "Let him go," he said. "He has as much right as I have to do the thing he wishes."

A chill wind came across the garden wall and rustled the cape about Webster's shoulders.

Words beat in his brain – words that had been spoken here in this garden scant seconds ago, but words that came from centuries away. One of your ancestors lost the Juwain philosophy. One of your ancestors – Webster clenched his fists until the nails dug into his palms.

A jinx, thought Webster. That's what we are. A jinx upon humanity. The Juwain philosophy. And the mutants. But the mutants had had the Juwain philosophy for centuries now and they had never used it. Joe had stolen it from Grant and Grant had spent his life trying to get it back. But he never had.

Maybe, thought Webster, trying to console himself, it really didn't amount to much. If it had, the mutants would have used it. Or maybe – just maybe – the mutants had been bluffing. Maybe they didn't know any more about it than the humans did.

A metallic voice coughed softly and Webster looked up. A small grey robot stood just outside the doorway.

"The call, sir," said the robot. "The call you've been expecting."

***

Jenkins' face came into the plate – an old face, obsolete and ugly. Not the, smooth, lifelike face boasted by the latest model robots.

"I'm sorry to disturb you, sir," he said, "but it is most unusual. Joe came up and asked to use our visor to put in a call to you. Won't tell me what he wants, sir. Says it's just a friendly call to an old-time neighbour."

"Put him on," said Webster.

"He went at it most unusual, sir," persisted Jenkins. "He came up and sat around and chewed the fat for an hour or more before he asked to use it. I'd say, if you'd pardon me, that it's most peculiar."

"I know," said Webster. "Joe is peculiar, in a lot of ways."

Jenkins' face faded from the screen and another face came in – that of Joe, the mutant. It was a strong face with a wrinkled, leathery skin and blue-grey eyes that twinkled, hair that was just turning salt and pepper at the temples.

"Jenkins doesn't trust me, Tyler." said Joe and Webster felt his hackles rising at the laughter that lurked behind the words.

"For that matter," he told him bluntly, "neither do I."

Joe clucked with his tongue. "Why, Tyler, we've never given you a single minute's trouble. Not a single one of us. You've watched us and you've worried and fretted about us, but we've never hurt you. You've had so many of the dogs spying on us that we stumble over them everywhere we turn and you've kept files on us and studied us and talked us up and down until you must be sick to death of it."

"We know you," said Webster grimly. "We know more about you than you know about yourselves. We know how many there are of you and we know each of you personally. Want to know what any one of you were doing at any given moment in the last hundred years or so? Ask us and we'll tell you."

Butter wouldn't have melted in Joe's mouth. "And all the time," he said, "we were thinking kindly of you. Figuring out how sometime we might want to help you."

"Why didn't you do it, then?" snapped Webster. "We were ready to work with you at first. Even after you stole the Juwain philosophy from Grant-"

"Stole it?" asked Joe "Surely, Tyler, you must have that wrong. We only took it so we could work it out. It was all botched up, you know."

"You probably figured it out the day after you had your hands on it," Webster told him, flatly. "What were you waiting for? Any time you had offered that to us we'd known that you were with us and we'd have worked with you. We'd have ca1led off the dogs, we'd have accepted you."

"Funny thing," said Joe. "We never seemed to care about being accepted."

And the old laughter was back again, the laughter of a man who was sufficient to himself; who saw the whole fabric of the human community of effort as a vast, ironic joke. A man who walked alone and liked it. A man who saw the human race as something that was funny and probably just a little dangerous – but funnier than ever because it was dangerous. A man who felt no need of the brotherhood of man, who rejected that brotherhood as a thing as utterly pro vincial and pathetic as the twentieth century booster clubs.

"O.K.," said Webster sharply. "If that's the way you want it. I'd hoped that maybe you had a deal to offer – some chance of conciliation. We don't like things as they are – we'd rather they were different. But the move is up to you."

"Now, Tyler," protested Joe, "no use in flying off the handle. I was thinking maybe you'd ought to know about the Juwain philosophy. You've sort of forgotten about it now, but there was a time when the System was all stirred up about it.

"All right," said Webster, "go ahead and tell me." The tone of his voice said he knew Joe wouldn't.

"Basically," said Joe, "you humans are a lonely lot of folks. You never have known your fellow-man. You can't know him because you haven't the common touch of understanding that makes it possible to know him. You have friendships, sure, but those friendships are based on pure emotions, never on real understanding. You get along together, sure. But you get along by tolerance rather than by understanding. You work out your problems by agreement, but that agreement is simply a matter of the stronger-minded among you beating down the opposition of the weaker ones."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"Why, everything," Joe told him. "With the Juwain philosophy you'd actually understand."

"Telepathy?" asked Webster.

"Not exactly," said Joe. "We mutants have telepathy. But this is something different. The Juwain philosophy provides an ability to sense the viewpoint of another. It won't necessarily make you agree with that viewpoint, but it does make you recognize it. You not only know what the other fellow is talking about, but how he feels about it. With Juwain's philosophy you have to accept the validity of another man's ideas and knowledge, not just the words he says, but the thought back of the words."

"Semantics," said Webster.

"If you insist on the term," Joe told him. "What it really means is that you understand not only the intrinsic meaning, but the implied meaning of what someone else is saying. Almost telepathy, but not quite. A whole lot better, some ways."

"And, Joe, how do you go about it? How do you-"

The laughter was back again. "You think about it a while, Tyler... find out how bad you want it. Then maybe we can talk."

"Horse trading," said Webster.

Joe nodded.

"Booby– trapped, too, I suppose," said Webster.

"Couple of them," said Joe. "You find them and we'll talk about that, too."

"What are you fellows going to want?"

"Plenty," Joe told him, "but maybe it'll be worth it."

The screen went dead and Webster sat staring at it with unseeing eyes. Booby-trapped? Of course it was. Clear up to the hilt.

***

Webster screwed his eyes shut and felt the blood pounding in his brain.

What was it that had been claimed for the Juwain philosophy in that far-gone day when it had been lost? That it would have put mankind a hundred thousand years ahead in two short generations. Something like that.

Maybe stretching it a bit – but not too much. A little justified exaggeration, that was all.

Men understanding one another, accepting one another's ideas at face value, each man seeing behind the words, seeing the thing as, someone else would see it and accepting that concept as if it were his own. Making it, in fact, part of his own knowledge that could be brought to bear upon the subject at band. No misunderstanding, no prejudice, no bias, no jangling – but a clear, complete grasp of all the conflicting angles of any human problem. Applicable to anything, to any type of human endeavour. To sociology, psychology, to engineering, to all the various facets of a complex civilization. No more bungling, no more quarrelling, but honest and sincere appraisal of the facts and the ideas at hand.

A hundred thousand years in two generations? Perhaps not too far off, at that.

But booby-trapped? Or was it? Did the mutants really mean to part with it? For any kind of prize? Just another bait dangled in front of mankind's eyes while around the corner the mutants rolled with laughter.

The mutants hadn't used it. Of course, they hadn't, for they had no real need of it. They already had telepathy and that would serve the purpose as far as the mutants were concerned. Individualists would have little use for a device which would make them understand one another, for they would not care whether they understood one another. The mutants got along together, apparently, tolerating whatever contact was necessary to safeguard their interests. But that was all. They'd work together to save their skins, but they found no pleasure in it.

An honest offer? A bait, a lure to hold a man's attention in one quarter while a dirty deal was being pulled off in another? A mere ironic joke? Or an offer that had a stinger in it?

Webster shook his head. There was no telling. No way to gauge a mutant's motives or his reason.

Soft, glowing light had crept into the walls and ceiling of the office with the departing of the day, the automatic, hidden light growing stronger a' the darkness fell. Webster glanced at the window, saw that it was an oblong of blackness, dotted by the few advertising signs that flared and flickered on the city's skyline.

He reached out, thumbed over a tumbler, spoke to the secretary in the outer office.

"I'm sorry I kept you so long. I forgot the time."

"That's all right, sir," said the secretary. "There's a visitor to see you, Mr. Fowler."

"Fowler?"

"Yes, the gentleman from Jupiter."

"I know," said Webster wearily. "Ask him to come in."

He had almost forgotten Fowler and the threat the man had made.

He stared absent-mindedly at his desk, saw the kaleidoscope lying where he'd left it. Funny toy, he thought. Quaint idea. A simple thing for the simple minds of long ago. But the kid will get a boot out of it.

He reached out a hand and grasped it, lifted it to his eyes. The transmitted light wove a pattern of crazy colour, a geometric nightmare. He twirled the tube a bit and the pattern changed. And yet again His brain wrenched with a sudden sickness and the colour burned itself into his mind in a single flare of soul-twisting torture.

The tube dropped and clattered on the desk. Webster reached out with both hands and clutched at the desk edge.

And through his brain went the thought of horror: What a toy for a kid!

The sickness faded and he sat stock-still, brain clear again, breath coming regularly.

Funny, he thought. Funny that it should do a thing like that. Or could it have been something else and not the kaleidoscope at all. A seizure of some sort. Heart acting up. A bit too young for that and he'd been checked just recently.

***

The door clicked and Webster looked up.

Fowler came across the room with measured step, slowly, until he stood across from the desk.

"Yes, Fowler?"

"I left in anger," Fowler said, "and I didn't want it that way. You might have understood, but again you might not have. It was just that I was upset, you see. I came from Jupiter, feeling that finally all the years I'd spend there in the domes bad been justified, that all the anguish I had felt when I saw the men go out somehow had paid off. I was bringing news, you understand, news that the world awaited. To me it was the most wonderful thing that could have happened and I thought you'd see it, too. I thought the people would see it. It was as if I had been bringing them word that Paradise was just around the corner. For that is what it is, Webster, that is what it is."

He put his hands 'flat upon the desk and leaned forward, whispering.

"You see how it is, don't you, Webster? You understand a bit."

Webster's hands were shaking and he laid them in his lap, clenched them together until the fingers hurt.

"Yes," he whispered back. "Yes, I think I know."

For he did know.

Knew more than the words had told him. Knew the anguish and the pleading and bitter disappointment that lay behind the words. Knew them almost as if he'd said the words himself – almost as if he were Fowler.

Fowler's voice broke in alarm. "What's the matter, Webster? What's the trouble with you?"

Webster tried to speak and the words were dust. His throat tightened until there was a knot of pain above his Adam's apple.

He tried again and the words were low and forced. "Tell me, Fowler. You learned a lot of things out there. Things that men don't know or know imperfectly. Like high grade telepathy, maybe... or... or-"

"Yes," said Fowler, "a lot of things. But I didn't bring them back with me. When I became a man again, that was all I was. Just a man, that's all. None of it came back. Most of it just hazy memories and a... well, you might call it yearning."

"You mean that you haven't one of the abilities you had when you were a Loper?"

"Not a single one."

"You couldn't, by chance, be able to make me understand a thing you wanted me to know. Make me feel the way you feel."

"Not a chance," said Fowler.

Webster reached out a hand, pushed the kaleidoscope gently with his finger. It rolled forwards, then came to rest again.

"What did you come back for?" asked Webster.

"To square myself with you," said Fowler. "To let you know I wasn't really sore. To try to make you understand that I had a side, too. Just a difference of opinion, that's all. I thought maybe we might shake on it."

"I see. And you're still determined to go out and tell the people?"

Fowler nodded. "I have to, Webster. You must surely know that. It's... it's... well, almost a religion with me. It's something I believe in. I have to tell the rest of them that there's a better world and a better life. I have to lead them to it."

"A messiah," said Webster.

Fowler straightened. "That's one thing I was afraid of. Scoffing isn't-"

"I wasn't scoffing," Webster told him, almost gently.

He picked up the kaleidoscope, polishing its tube with the palm of his hand, considering. Not yet , he thought. Not yet .

Have to think it out. Do I want him to understand me as well as I understand him?

"Look, Fowler," he said, "lay off a day or two. Wait a bit. Just a day or two. Then let us talk again."

"I've waited long enough already."

"But I want you to think this over: A million years ago man first came into being – just an animal. Since that time he had inched his way up a cultural ladder. Bit by painful bit he has developed a way of life, a philosophy, a way of doing things. His progress has been geometrical. Today he does much more than he did yesterday. To-morrow he'll do even more than he did today. For the first time in human history, Man is really beginning to hit the ball. He's just got a good start, the first stride, you might say. He's going a lot farther in a lot less time than he's come already.

"Maybe it isn't as pleasant as Jupiter, maybe not the same at all. Maybe humankind is drab compared with the life forms of Jupiter. But it's man's life. It's the thing he's fought for. It's the thing he's made himself. It's a destiny he has shaped.

"I hate to think, Fowler, that just when we're going good we'll swap our destiny for one we don't know about, for one we can't be sure about."

"I'll wait," said Fowler. "Just a day or two. But I'm warning you. You can't put me off. You can't change my mind."

"That's all I ask," said Webster. He rose and held out his hand, "Shake on it?" he asked.

***

But even as he shook Fowler's hand, Webster knew it wasn't any good. Juwain philosophy or not, mankind was heading for a showdown. A showdown that cou1d be even worse because of The Juwain philosophy. For the mutants wouldn't miss a bet. If this was to be their joke, if this was their way of getting rid of the human race, they wouldn't overlook a thing. By to-morrow morning every man, woman and child somehow or other would have managed to look through a kaleidoscope. Or something else. Lord only knew how many other ways there were.

He watched until Fowler had closed the door behind him, then walked to the window and stared out. Flashing on the skyline of the city was a new advcrtising sign – one that had not been there before. A crazy sign that made crazy coloured patterns in the night. Flashing on and off as if one were turning a kaleidoscope.

Webster stared at it, tight-lipped.

He should have expected it.

He thought of Joe with a flare of murderous fury surging through his brain. For that call had been a cackling chortle behind a covering hand, a smart-Aleck gesture designed to let man know what it was all about, to let him know after he was behind the eight-ball and couldn't do a thing about it.

We should have killed them off, thought Webster, and was surprised at the calm coldness of the thought. We should have stamped them out like we would a dangerous disease.

But man had forsaken violence as a world and individual policy. Not for one hundred and twenty-five years had one group been arrayed against another group in violence.

When Joe had called, the Juwain philosophy had lain on the desk. I had only to reach out my hand and touch it, Webster thought.

He stiffened with the realization of it. I had only to reach out my hand and touch it. And I did just that!

Something more than telepathy, something more than guessing. Joe knew he would pick up the kaleidoscope – must have known it. Foresight – an ability to roll back the future. Just an hour or so, perhaps, but that would be enough.

Joe – and the other mutants, of course – had known about Fowler. Their probing, telepathic minds could have told them all that they wished to know. But this was something else, something different.

He stood at the window, staring at the sign. Thousands of people, he knew, were seeing it. Seeing it and feeling that sudden sick impact in their mind.

Webster frowned, wondering about the shifting pattern of the lights. Some physiological impact upon a certain centre of the human brain, perhaps. A portion of the brain that had not been used before – a portion of the brain that in due course of human development might naturally have come into its proper function. A function now that was being forced.

The Juwain philosophy, at last! Something for which men had sought for centuries, now flnally come to pass. Given man at a time when he'd have been better off without it.

Fowler had written in his report: I cannot give a factual account because there are no words for the facts that I want to tell. He still didn't have the words, of course, but he had something else that was even better – an audience that could understand the sincerity and the greatness which lay beneath the words be did have. An audience with a new-found sense which would enable them to grasp some of the mighty scope of the thing Fowler had to tell.

Joe had planned it that way. Had waited for this moment. Had used the Juwain philosophy as a weapon against the human race.

For with the Juwain philosophy, man would go to Jupiter. Faced by all the logic in the world, he still would go to Jupiter. For better or for worse, he would go to Jupiter.

The only chance there had ever been of winning against Fowler had been Fowler's inability to describe what he saw, to tell what he felt, to reach the people with a clear exposition of the message that he brought. With mere human words that message would have been vague and fuzzy and while the people at first might have believed, they would have been shaky in their belief, would have listened to other argument.

But now that chance was gone, for the words would be no longer vague and fuzzy. The people would know, as clearly and as vibrantly as Fowler knew himself what Jupiter was like.

The people would go to Jupiter, would enter upon a life other than the human life.

And the Solar System, the entire Solar System, with the exception of Jupiter, would lie open for the new race of mutants to take over, to develop any kind of culture that they might wish – a culture that would scarcely follow the civilization of the parent race.

***

Webster swung away from the window, strode back to the desk. He stooped and pulled out a drawer, reached inside. His hand came out clutching something that he had never dreamed of using – a relic, a museum piece he had tossed there years before.

With a handkerchief, he polished the metal of the gun, tested its mechanism with trembling fingers.

Fowler was the key. With Fowler dead With Fowler dead and the Jupiter stations dismantled and abandoned, the mutants would be licked. Man would have the Juwain philosophy and would retain his destiny. The Centauri expedition would blast off for the stars. The life experiments would continue on Pluto. Man would march along the course that his culture plotted.

Faster than ever before. Faster than anyone could dream. Two great strides. The renunciation of violence as a human policy – the understanding that came with the Juwain philosophy. The two great things that would speed man along the road to wherever he was going.

The renunciation of the violence and the Webster stared at the gun clutched in his hand and heard the roar of winds tumbling through his head.

Two great strides – and he was about to toss away the first.

For one hundred and twenty-five years no man had killed another – for more than a thousand years killing had been obsolete as a factor in the determination of human affairs.

A thousand years of peace and one death might undo the work. One shot in the night might collapse the structure, might hurl man back to the old bestial thinking.

Webster killed – why can't I? After all, there are some men who should be killed. Webster did right, but he shouldn't have stopped with only one. I don't see why they're hanging him; he'd ought to get a medal. We ought to start on the mutants first. If it hadn't been for them That was the way they'd talk.

That, thought Webster, is the wind that's roaring in my brain.

The flashing of the crazy coloured sign made a ghostly flicker along the walls and floor.

Fowler is seeing that, thought Webster. He is looking at it and, even if he isn't, I still have the kaleidoscope.

He'll be coming in and we'll sit down and talk. We'll sit down and talk

He tossed the gun back into the drawer, walked towards the door.