Roger Dee! The name has a fine, myth-making flavor, hasn't it? You'd almost know that our ebullient author—his work has appeared in many magazines—would excel in just such superb fancy-free flights of humorous scientific fantasy as he has brought you here with a spectral chuckle.
The trouble with Fortenay was that he was not merely a skeptic but a professional skeptic, which is just another way of saying that he was a widely known and highly paid journalist who had long ago learned to capitalize on his penchant for iconoclasm. Fortenay was also given to the sort of reflexive arrogance inevitable to some small men, and was unscrupulous enough in its exercise to point up the flavor of his satiric commentary on any currently news-worthy phenomenon with the strong spice of semantic misrepresentation.
Fortenay was, in short, an able, intelligent, ambitious and thoroughly offensive little heel. He was precisely the sort who should never have been permitted in any responsible capacity aboard a scientific vessel like the oceanographic survey tug Cormorant when she was in the process of investigating a find as important as the gigantic artifact which Dr. Hans Weigand had discovered in the six-mile abyss of Bartlett Deep just south of Cuba.
But Fortenay's publisher was a power among politicians as well as among publishers, so Fortenay was able to announce in his syndicated column that his readers would receive on-the-spot coverage of the investigation, and that no smoke-screen of scientific doubletalk should keep the truth from them.
The announcement was greeted with great interest, since various disturbing rumors concerning the nature of Dr. Weigand's discovery were already in circulation. Most of them—since Dr. Weigand himself was frankly unable to offer any clue as to their origin or purpose—were elaborated upon by Fortenay and his colleagues with less regard for truth than for dramatic effect.
As a consequence, the newspaper-reading public was torn between a number of equally improbable theories which supposed that:
Dr. Weigand's find was not an artifact at all, but a monstrous bubble of molten basalt blown up ages before by a subterranean volcano and frozen solid by contact with sea water. A patent impossibility, since the thing occurred in an area free of any early vulcanism and was, by accurate sonar measurement, a sharply-defined oblong body some six miles long, three miles wide and two miles high.
It was an artifact of recent construction, being nothing less than an undersea Russian submarine base built secretly during the Korean diversion and designed to obliterate the Americas under a rain of hydrogen bombs.
It was a colossal structure erected by the inhabitants of an antediluvian country like Atlantis and inundated by the waters of some prehistoric flood.
It was, despite Plato's insistence that that mythical land lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules, Atlantis herself.
It was neither of these but a self-sufficient city built by a naturally marine race of men who had taken a divergent line of evolution and who might, for all anyone knew, be plotting a war of conquest against the honest, industrious, amicable and God-fearing nations of topside humanity.
None of these, Fortenay pontificated, was likely. Only one fact could be accounted certain, he added with clarion determination, and that Fortenay himself, armed with the invincible power of the press, would Find Out.
And Fortenay did, because Fortenay never let his readers down.
By luck, the journalist boarded the Cormorant just in time to keep his promise, for the tug's straining winch was in the process of swinging from her deck the quartz-glass bathysphere which Dr. Weigand had designed for plumbing the Bartlett Deep.
Fortenay's appearance was a source of instant consternation to Dr. Weigand's staff, who had been at their business long enough to know public-relations trouble when they saw it. Promptly they shifted the problem of Fortenay's disposition upward through the chain of seniority to Dr. Weigand himself.
The old oceanographer, in answer to their frantic calls over his bathysphere telephone, unscrewed the circular hatch of his quartz-glass ball and put out his head much after the fashion of a bearded and bifocaled bear peering from his winter den. He made a desperate attempt to close the hatch when he recognized Fortenay, but Fortenay was not to be denied.
"Hold everything!" said Fortenay, in effect. "I am here, in the interests of God and country and twenty million newspaper readers, to investigate this investigation."
Dr. Weigand protested the interruption of his work, and Fortenay invoked the power of the press. Worse, he threatened the good doctor with the personal wrath of Fortenay. His logic was wonderfully cogent.
Dr. Weigand's project depended largely upon government subsidy, and Congress controlled such subsidies. The people controlled Congress, and Fortenay controlled public opinion.
"I'll have them screaming for your head on a pike," Fortenay swore. And Dr. Weigand, who had lived long enough to understand that Fortenay could do just that, reluctantly surrendered.
Fortenay was a tyrannical little heel, but he possessed a certain amount of physical courage. "I'm going down with you, Wiggy," he said, "and see this Lost World shanty for myself."
And Fortenay went down, because he was confident that he would come up again....
Their descent into Bartlett Deep would have been enthralling to Dr. Weigand without Fortenay's company, and deadly dull to Fortenay without the doctor's. As it developed, Dr. Weigand could only moon like a distracted bruin on his leather bathysphere seat and peer miserably out at the marine wonders rising past his eyes, while Fortenay occupied himself with assessing the oceanographer's motives in pursuing an investigation so hare-brained.
For Fortenay did not believe for a minute that it was an artifact which Dr. Weigand had discovered, but a natural and therefore profitless formation. His suspicions were confirmed when he learned that the bathysphere could descend no more than a mile into the six-mile basin of Bartlett Deep without being crushed—to borrow a simile from Fortenay's ready stock—like an eggshell under the mounting pressure of water above.
Since the thing at the bottom stood only two miles in height, it followed by simple subtraction that three miles of dark and watery distance must remain between the cameras of the observer and their target. The only possible inference was that Dr. Weigand had built the bathysphere for the sole purpose of titillating popular interest and so justifying a request for additional funds for his project.
"It gets your name in the papers," Fortenay said with caustic irony. "And makes it easier to bilk the taxpayers next time. And if you're forced to admit it's only another volcanic chunk then your project will still be in the black, won't it?"
The unexpected attack, to tap Fortenay's gift for simile again, knocked the oceanographer for a devastating loop. His reasoning had been much as Fortenay guessed, though the difficulty of maintaining a truly important scientific project without government aid had seemed more than enough to justify the trifling subterfuge.
The doctor saw his mistake now, and while the bathysphere sank lower and lower into the darkening water he sought frantically for a loophole of escape from the disaster he foresaw in tomorrow's newspapers.
He might have saved himself the effort. Fortenay had already headlined his report, and his only interest now was in the sport of baiting his victim....
The exposure of fakes, quacks, mountebanks and myths, Fortenay declared, was his specialty. He offered copious proof.
"There was that pig-tailed brat in Arkansas," Fortenay said, "who claimed she could levitate pianos and start fires by crossing her eyes. The local papers had half the country believing it until I went down and bluffed her into a test demonstration with arc lights and a TV hookup. Maybe you caught that show—the act was a gyp, and I showed the world. You never heard from her again, did you?"
Dr. Weigand recalled the incident, and thought with some commiseration that the nervous breakdown which followed the neurotic child's exposure to Fortenay's baying attack might have been responsible for the loss of any poltergeist power.
"And those three jokers in Ohio," enumerated Fortenay, "who claimed they found a dead flying-saucer pilot. I bought it from them and proved it was only a carnival baboon dipped in laundry blueing. I got those jerks three years for fraud."
And here am I, thought Dr. Weigand, an honest man and a respected scientist, about to suffer a punishment even more terrible at the hands of this trumpeting little ferret because I have sought to keep my project alive. He will shout my little indiscretion from his journalistic housetop and my reputation and my job will go like fog before the wind. I will be discredited and my Anna will hang her head before the neighbors and my little Karen and Wilhelmina, who know nothing of it, will be jeered in the schoolyard....
"Ach," said the doctor, who seldom said ach. "It should not happen to a dog. Not yet even to a hyena!"
"—dowser in Oklahoma who charged fees to locate water," Fortenay ran on relentlessly. "He got away with that racket until I went out with some geological experts and a cameraman and showed him up. After that—"
After that, thought Dr. Weigand, the poor fellow's gift was destroyed along with his confidence, and there was nothing.
But the doctor's commiseration rang hollow even to himself, for it had occurred to him suddenly that it might not be necessary, after all, for this thing to happen to him and to Anna and Karen and Wilhelmina.
It would mean the end of Hans Weigand, of course, but his project would go on. He would be not a heel but a hero, and his family would be pensioned instead of pilloried. And what is death to a true scientist, when the man must die anyway but his reputation may live forever?
"—trouble is that people are so gullible," Fortenay was expounding. (He pronounced it gullable, not that it mattered.) "They'll believe anything they're told as long as it has its roots in some old myth or legend handed down to them. They'll believe it if their fathers believed it, because they're fools."
He leaned across the cramped cell of the bathysphere and tapped the doctor on the knee.
"And do you know why people are fools, Wiggy? Because scientists teach them to be fools. Every superstition that people cling to was handed down from the time when wise men—the scientists of the day—taught it as gospel truth. Scientists are always making some kind of mistake, and the people foot the bill.
"A few years ago they made an error in some law about variable stars, a little bobble of a hundred per cent, and now they're saying the whole universe is twice as big as they'd been teaching.
"And do you know why scientists make stupid mistakes, and why they change their stories ever so often? Because they're fools too, and thieves into the bargain. Like you, Wiggy."
"I must do it," Dr. Weigand muttered. "Yes, I think certainly. It is the only way."
"Scientists are always starting myths," Fortenay gabbled, never dreaming of what went on behind the doctor's bifocals. "Take the legend of Atlantis, for instance."
The soft sheen of undersea light, like a patina of moonbeams filtered through deepest jade, was lost on him. The deep-water cold of Bartlett Deep that crept through the quartz shell of the bathysphere troubled him not at all.
"When a hairy old Greek named Plato wrote a book about Atlantis, everybody believed him because he was a scientist," Fortenay went on. (He pronounced it Platto.) "And now you pop up with a story about an undersea artifact—you might as well have come right out and called it a building—and what you're really trying to do is to start another crazy myth about a drowned civilization right here in our own backyard. That's the way these lies start."
He might have enlarged further upon his topic if Dr. Weigand had not stood up suddenly, like Samson in the temple, and yanked an innocent-seeming lever that disconnected the bathysphere from its overhead cable and let it drop like a stone toward the bottom of Bartlett Deep.
"Perhaps we start a little myth of our own, you and I," Dr. Weigand said as the telephone wires ripped loose. "Perhaps our friends up there will say to the newspapers that a sea monster came up and ate us, nicht wahr?"
Fortenay, of course, sprang upon the burly old oceanographer in a frenzy, and of course accomplished nothing.
Dr. Weigand took him by the shoulders and replaced him in his leather seat.
"We can neither of us do anything now," the good doctor said. "Sit, Mr. Fortenay, and tell me more about how you do not believe in myths."
Fortenay sat, but said nothing, for there was nothing to say.
Fortenay sat for a long while and breathed hard through his thin inquisitive nose while the bathysphere sank down and down into gathering green darkness. After a time it dawned upon him with a great rush of relief that Fortenay the columnist, whose facile wit daily entertained twenty millions of people, could not possibly die in any such fantastic fashion.
It simply couldn't happen. He was the victim of a peculiarly vivid dream—three-dimensional, complete with technicolor and tactile sensations, but still a dream—from which he must waken shortly.
But there was no denying that it was a horribly convincing dream. The monstrous artifact he had come to investigate—it really was a building of some sort, he saw now, and not a ruin at all—rose closer and closer until its vast top spread out under the bathysphere like a mossy green plateau.
A random eddy of current caught the bathysphere and pushed it gently outward as it sank, so that it missed the edge and fell on toward the bottom, and the barnacled wall that slid up to tower over Fortenay was as blank and final as the rim of the world.
They were approaching the bottom of Bartlett Deep when they saw the first gigantic splashes of lettering, emblazoned like the heraldic script of a Titan across the face of the wall. The doctor was beside himself with the frenzy of his discovery, but could make nothing of it because the wall was much too near. It was like looking at a billboard from a distance of six inches, and so Dr. Hans Weigand passed the last moments of his life as he had lived the greater part of it, in disappointment and frustration.
Fortenay, bemused by his dream, took no such interest. Actually he felt a little smug that he should have had the acumen to recognize it for what it was even before he woke and that he should have been able, even in the grip of a nightmare, to face down a big-time myth-making scientist like Wiggy on his own ground.
All this would vanish soon, he told himself, even as the first sudden tracery of strain-fissures appeared in the quartz-glass shell of the bathysphere. A dream is a myth and a myth is a dream, and he would wake up soon—
The bathysphere burst, crushed, as Fortenay would have said, like an eggshell.
Fortenay woke, not from a dream but from an existence. He found himself standing on a smooth floor of shell before a vast and featureless building whose facade towered mistily up out of sight. Little eddies of current bore tiny, feathery creatures that brushed past and through him, glowing phosphorescently. Glittering fragments of the shattered bathysphere fell like a rain of outsized diamonds about his feet.
Dr. Weigand stood beside him, bifocaled eyes speculative, his whiskers comfortably afloat like seaweed in the green water.
"I think we go inside when the door opens," the good doctor said.
"Inside?" echoed Fortenay. "To what?"
"To a myth," said Dr. Weigand. "A myth that was made for such lost ones as you and I."
Fortenay saw the legend then. It was far up on the facade, above the doorway, and at such a distance the quaint antique script, like its meaning, was wonderfully and fearfully clear: DAVY JONES' LOCKER.
The door that opened led downward and outward, companion-wise, to a green and enigmatic beyond.
"Let us go, my little friend," said Dr. Weigand. "It is better not to be sent for, I think."
And Fortenay went, because he had no choice.
Original publication: New York, NY: King-Size Publications, Inc, 1954
A kind of peace had endured for a century and people had forgotten what anything else was like. They would scarcely have known how to react had they discovered that a kind of war had finally come.
Certainly, Elias Lynn, Chief of the Bureau of Robotics, wasn't sure how he ought to react when he finally found out. The Bureau of Robotics was headquartered in Cheyenne, in line with the century-old trend toward decentralization, and Lynn stared dubiously at the young Security officer from Washington who had brought the news.
Elias Lynn was a large man, almost charmingly homely, with pale blue eyes that bulged a bit. Men weren't usually comfortable under the stare of those eyes, but the Security officer remained calm.
Lynn decided that his first reaction ought to be incredulity. Hell, it was incredulity! He just didn't believe it!
He eased himself back in his chair and said, "How certain is the information?"
The Security officer, who had introduced himself as Ralph G. Breckenridge and had presented credentials to match, had the softness of youth about him; full lips, plump cheeks that flushed easily, and guileless eyes. His clothing was out of line with Cheyenne but it suited a universally air-conditioned Washington, where Security, despite everything, was still centered.
Breckenridge flushed and said, "There's no doubt about it."
"You people know all about Them, I suppose," said Lynn and was unable to keep a trace of sarcasm out of his tone. He was not particularly aware of his use of a slightly-stressed pronoun in his reference to the enemy, the equivalent of capitalization in print. It was a cultural habit of this generation and the one preceding. No one said the "East," or the "Reds" or the "Soviets" or the "Russians" any more. That would have been too confusing, since some of Them weren't of the East, weren't Reds, Soviets, and especially not Russians. It was much simpler to say We and They, and much more precise.
Travelers had frequently reported that They did the same in reverse. Over there, They were "We" (in the appropriate language) and We were "They."
Scarcely anyone gave thought to such things any more. It was all quite comfortable and casual. There was no hatred, even. At the beginning, it had been called a Cold War. Now it was only a game, almost a good-natured game, with unspoken rules and a kind of decency about it.
Lynn said, abruptly, "Why should They want to disturb the situation?"
He rose and stood staring at a wall-map of the world, split into two regions with faint edgings of color. An irregular portion on the left of the map was edged in a mild green. A smaller, but just as irregular, portion on the right of the map was bordered in a washed-out pink. We and They.
The map hadn't changed much in a century. The loss of Formosa and the gain of East Germany some eighty years before had been the last territorial switch of importance.
There had been another change, though, that was significant enough and that was in the colors. Two generations before, Their territory had been a brooding, bloody red, Ours a pure and undefiled white. Now there was a neutrality about the colors. Lynn had seen Their maps and it was the same on Their side.
"They wouldn't do it," he said.
"They are doing it," said Breckenridge, "and you had better accustom yourself to the fact. Of course, sir, I realize that it isn't pleasant to think that they may be that far ahead of us in robotics."
His eyes remained as guileless as ever, but the hidden knife-edges of the words plunged deep, and Lynn quivered at the impact.
Of course, that would account for why the Chief of Robotics learned of this so late and through a Security officer at that. He had lost caste in the eyes of the Government; if Robotics had really failed in the struggle, Lynn could expect no political mercy.
Lynn said wearily, "Even if what you say is true, they're not far ahead of us. We could build humanoid robots."
"Have we, sir?"
"Yes. As a matter of fact, we have built a few models for experimental purposes."
"They were doing so ten years ago. They've made ten years' progress since."
Lynn was disturbed. He wondered if his incredulity concerning the whole business were really the result of wounded pride and fear for his job and reputation. He was embarrassed by the possibility that this might be so, and yet he was forced into defense.
He said, "Look, young man, the stalemate between Them and Us was never perfect in every detail, you know. They have always been ahead in one facet or another and We in some other facet or another. If They're ahead of us right now in robotics, it's because They've placed a greater proportion of Their effort into robotics than We have. And that means that some other branch of endeavor has received a greater share of Our efforts than it has of Theirs. It would mean We're ahead in force-field research or in hyper-atomics, perhaps."
Lynn felt distressed at his own statement that the stalemate wasn't perfect. It was true enough, but that was the one great danger threatening the world. The world depended on the stalemate being as perfect as possible. If the small unevennesses that always existed over-balanced too far in one direction or the other—
Almost at the beginning of what had been the Cold War, both sides had developed thermonuclear weapons, and war became unthinkable. Competition switched from the military to the economic and psychological and had stayed there ever since.
But always there was the driving effort on each side to break the stalemate, to develop a parry for every possible thrust, to develop a thrust that could not be parried in time—something that would make war possible again. And that was not because either side wanted war so desperately, but because both were afraid that the other side would make the crucial discovery first.
For a hundred years each side had kept the struggle even. And in the process, peace had been maintained for a hundred years while, as byproducts of the continuously intensive research, force-fields had been produced and solar energy and insect control and robots. Each side was making a beginning in the understanding of mentalics, which was the name given to the biochemistry and biophysics of thought. Each side had its outposts on the Moon and on Mars. Mankind was advancing in giant strides under forced draft.
It was even necessary for both sides to be as decent and humane as possible among themselves, lest through cruelty and tyranny, friends be made for the other side.
It couldn't be that the stalemate would now be broken and that there would be war.
Lynn said, "I want to consult one of my men. I want his opinion."
"Is he trustworthy?"
Lynn looked disgusted. "Good Lord, what man in Robotics has not been investigated and cleared to death by your people? Yes, I vouch for him. If you can't trust a man like Humphrey Carl Laszlo, then we're in no position to face the kind of attack you say They are launching, no matter what else we do."
"I've heard of Laszlo," said Breckenridge.
"Good. Does he pass?"
"Yes."
"Then, I'll have him in and we'll find out what he thinks about the possibility that robots could invade the U. S. A."
"Not exactly," said Breckenridge, softly. "You still don't accept the full truth. Find out what he thinks about the fact that robots have already invaded the U. S. A."
Laszlo was the grandson of a Hungarian who had broken through what had then been called the Iron Curtain, and he had a comfortable above-suspicion feeling about himself because of it. He was thick-set and balding with a pugnacious look graven forever on his snub face, but his accent was clear Harvard and he was almost excessively soft-spoken.
To Lynn, who was conscious that after years of administration he was no longer expert in the various phases of modern robotics, Laszlo was a comforting receptacle for complete knowledge. Lynn felt better because of the man's mere presence.
Lynn said, "What do you think?"
A scowl twisted Laszlo's face ferociously. "That They're that far ahead of us. Completely incredible. It would mean They've produced humanoids that could not be told from humans at close quarters. It would mean a considerable advance in robo-mentalics."
"You're personally involved," said Breckenridge, coldly. "Leaving professional pride out of account, exactly why is it impossible that They be ahead of Us?"
Laszlo shrugged. "I assure you that I'm well acquainted with Their literature on robotics. I know approximately where They are."
"You know approximately where They want you to think They are, is what you really mean," corrected Breckenridge. "Have you ever visited the other side?"
"I haven't," said Laszlo, shortly.
"Nor you, Dr. Lynn?"
Lynn said, "No, I haven't, either."
Breckenridge said, "Has any robotics man visited the other side in twenty-five years?" He asked the question with a kind of confidence that indicated he knew the answer.
For a matter of seconds, the atmosphere was heavy with thought. Discomfort crossed Laszlo's broad face. He said, "As a matter of fact, They haven't held any conferences on robotics in a long time."
"In twenty-five years," said Breckenridge. "Isn't that significant?"
"Maybe," said Laszlo, reluctantly. "Something else bothers me, though. None of Them have ever come to Our conferences on robotics. None that I can remember."
"Were They invited?" asked Breckenridge.
Lynn, staring and worried, interposed quickly, "Of course."
Breckenridge said, "Do They refuse attendance to any other types of scientific conferences We hold?"
"I don't know," said Laszlo. He was pacing the floor now. "I haven't heard of any cases. Have you, Chief?"
"No," said Lynn.
Breckenridge said, "Wouldn't you say it was as though They didn't want to be put in the position of having to return any such invitation? Or as though They were afraid one of Their men might talk too much?"
That was exactly how it seemed, and Lynn felt a helpless conviction that Security's story was true after all steal over him.
Why else had there been no contact between sides on robotics? There had been a cross-fertilizing trickle of researchers moving in both directions on a strictly one-for-one basis for years, dating back to the days of Eisenhower and Khrushchev. There were a great many good motives for that: an honest appreciation of the supra-national character of science; impulses of friendliness that are hard to wipe out completely in the individual human being; the desire to be exposed to a fresh and interesting outlook and to have your own slightly-stale notions greeted by others as fresh and interesting.
The governments themselves were anxious that this continue. There was always the obvious thought that by learning all you could and telling as little as you could, your own side would gain by the exchange.
But not in the case of robotics. Not there.
Such a little thing to carry conviction. And a thing, moreover, they had known all along. Lynn thought, darkly: We've taken the complacent way out.
Because the other side had done nothing publicly on robotics, it had been tempting to sit back smugly and be comfortable in the assurance of superiority. Why hadn't it seemed possible, even likely, that They were hiding superior cards, a trump hand, for the proper time?
Laszlo said, shakenly, "What do we do?" It was obvious that the same line of thought had carried the same conviction to him.
"Do?" parroted Lynn. It was hard to think right now of anything but of the complete horror that came with conviction. There were ten humanoid robots somewhere in the United States, each one carrying a fragment of a TC bomb.
TC! The race for sheer horror in bomb-ery had ended there. TC! Total Conversion! The sun was no longer a synonym one could use. Total conversion made the sun a penny candle.
Ten humanoids, each completely harmless in separation, could, by the simple act of coming together, exceed critical mass and—
Lynn rose to his feet heavily, the dark pouches under his eyes, which ordinarily lent his ugly face a look of savage foreboding, more prominent than ever. "It's going to be up to us to figure out ways and means of telling a humanoid from a human and then finding the humanoids."
"How quickly?" muttered Laszlo.
"Not later than five minutes before they get together," barked Lynn, "and I don't know when that will be."
Breckenridge nodded. "I'm glad you're with us now, sir. I'm to bring you back to Washington for conference, you know."
Lynn raised his eyebrows. "All right."
He wondered if, had he delayed longer in being convinced, he might not have been replaced forthwith—if some other Chief of the Bureau of Robotics might not be conferring in Washington. He suddenly wished earnestly that exactly that had come to pass.
The First Presidential Assistant was there, the Secretary of Science, the Secretary of Security, Lynn himself, and Breckenridge. Five of them sitting about a table in the dungeons of an underground fortress near Washington.
Presidential Assistant Jeffreys was an impressive man, handsome in a white-haired and just-a-trifle-jowly fashion, solid, thoughtful and as unobtrusive, politically, as a Presidential Assistant ought to be.
He spoke incisively. "There are three questions that face us as I see it. First, when are the humanoids going to get together? Second, where are they going to get together? Third, how do we stop them before they get together?"
Secretary of Science Amberley nodded convulsively at that. He had been Dean of Northwestern Engineering before his appointment. He was thin, sharp-featured and noticeably edgy. His forefinger traced slow circles on the table.
"As far as when they'll get together," he said. "I suppose it's definite that it won't be for some time."
"Why do you say that?" asked Lynn, sharply.
"They've been in the U. S. at least a month already. So Security says."
Lynn turned automatically to look at Breckenridge, and Secretary of Security Macalaster intercepted the glance. Macalaster said, "The information is reliable. Don't let Breckenridge's apparent youth fool you, Dr. Lynn. That's part of his value to us. Actually, he's 34 and has been with the department for ten years. He has been in Moscow for nearly a year and without him, none of this terrible danger would be known to us. As it is, we have most of the details."
"Not the crucial ones," said Lynn.
Macalaster of Security smiled frostily. His heavy chin and close-set eyes were well-known to the public but almost nothing else about him was. He said, "We are all finitely human, Dr. Lynn. Agent Breckenridge has done a great deal."
Presidential Assistant Jeffreys cut in. "Let us say we have a certain amount of time. If action at the instant were necessary, it would have happened before this. It seems likely that they are waiting for a specific time. If we knew the place, perhaps the time would become self-evident.
"If they are going to TC a target, they will want to cripple us as much as possible, so it would seem that a major city would have to be it. In any case, a major metropolis is the only target worth a TC bomb. I think there are four possibilities: Washington, as the administrative center; New York, as the financial center; and Detroit and Pittsburgh as the two chief industrial centers."
Macalaster of Security said, "I vote for New York. Administration and industry have both been decentralized to the point where the destruction of any one particular city won't prevent instant retaliation."
"Then why New York?" asked Amberly of Science, perhaps more sharply than he intended. "Finance has been decentralized as well."
"A question of morale. It may be they intend to destroy our will to resist, to induce surrender by the sheer horror of the first blow. The greatest destruction of human life would be in the New York Metropolitan area—"
"Pretty cold-blooded," muttered Lynn.
"I know," said Macalaster of Security, "but they're capable of it, if they thought it would mean final victory at a stroke. Wouldn't we—"
Presidential Assistant Jeffreys brushed back his white hair. "Let's assume the worst. Let's assume that New York will be destroyed some time during the winter, preferably immediately after a serious blizzard when communications are at their worst and the disruption of utilities and food supplies in fringe areas will be most serious in their effect. Now, how do we stop them?"
Amberley of Science could only say, "Finding ten men in two hundred and twenty million is an awfully small needle in an awfully large haystack."
Jeffreys shook his head. "You have it wrong. Ten humanoids among two hundred twenty million humans."
"No difference," said Amberley of Science. "We don't know that a humanoid can be differentiated from a human at sight. Probably not." He looked at Lynn. They all did.
Lynn said heavily, "We in Cheyenne couldn't make one that would pass as human in the daylight."
"But They can," said Macalaster of Security, "and not only physically. We're sure of that. They've advanced mentalic procedures to the point where they can reel off the micro-electronic pattern of the brain and focus it on the positronic pathways of the robot."
Lynn stared. "Are you implying that they can create the replica of a human being complete with personality and memory?"
"I do."
"Of specific human beings?"
"That's right."
"Is this also based on Agent Breckenridge's findings?"
"Yes. The evidence can't be disputed."
Lynn bent his head in thought for a moment. Then he said, "Then ten men in the United States are not men but humanoids. But the originals would have had to be available to them. They couldn't be Orientals, who would be too easy to spot, so they would have to be East Europeans. How would they be introduced into this country, then? With the radar network over the entire world border as tight as a drum, how could They introduce any individual, human or humanoid, without our knowing it?"
Macalaster of Security said, "It can be done. There are certain legitimate seepages across the border. Businessmen, pilots, even tourists. They're watched, of course, on both sides. Still ten of them might have been kidnapped and used as models for humanoids. The humanoids would then be sent back in their place. Since we wouldn't expect such a substitution, it would pass us by. If they were Americans to begin with, there would be no difficulty in their getting into this country. It's as simple as that."
"And even their friends and family could not tell the difference?"
"We must assume so. Believe me, we've been waiting for any report that might imply sudden attacks of amnesia or troublesome changes in personality. We've checked on thousands."
Amberley of Science stared at his finger-tips. "I think ordinary measures won't work. The attack must come from the Bureau of Robotics and I depend on the chief of that bureau."
Again eyes turned sharply, expectantly, on Lynn.
Lynn felt bitterness rise. It seemed to him that this was what the conference came to and was intended for. Nothing that had been said had not been said before. He was sure of that. There was no solution to the problem, no pregnant suggestion. It was a device for the record, a device on the part of men who gravely feared defeat and who wished the responsibility for it placed clearly and unequivocally on someone else.
And yet there was justice in it. It was in robotics that We had fallen short. And Lynn was not Lynn merely. He was Lynn of Robotics and the responsibility had to be his.
He said, "I will do what I can."
He spent a wakeful night and there was a haggardness about both body and soul when he sought and attained another interview with Presidential Assistant Jeffreys the next morning. Breckenridge was there, and though Lynn would have preferred a private conference, he could see the justice in the situation. It was obvious that Breckenridge had attained enormous influence with the government as a result of his successful Intelligence work. Well, why not?
Lynn said, "Sir, I am considering the possibility that we are hopping uselessly to enemy piping."
"In what way?"
"I'm sure that however impatient the public may grow at times, and however legislators sometimes find it expedient to talk, the government at least recognizes the world stalemate to be beneficial. They must recognize it also. Ten humanoids with one TC bomb is a trivial way of breaking the stalemate."
"The destruction of fifteen million human beings is scarcely trivial."
"It is from the world power standpoint. It would not so demoralize us as to make us surrender or so cripple us as to convince us we could not win. There would just be the same old planetary death-war that both sides have avoided so long and so successfully. And all They would have accomplished is to force us to fight minus one city. It's not enough."
"What do you suggest?" said Jeffreys, coldly. "That They do not have ten humanoids in our country? That there is not a TC bomb waiting to get together?"
"I'll agree that those things are here, but perhaps for some reason greater than just mid-winter bomb-madness."
"Such as?"
"It may be that the physical destruction resulting from the humanoids getting together is not the worst thing that can happen to us. What about the moral and intellectual destruction that comes of their being here at all? With all due respect to Agent Breckenridge, what if They intended for us to find out about the humanoids; what if the humanoids are never supposed to get together, but merely to remain separate in order to give us something to worry about."
"Why?"
"Tell me this. What measures have already been taken against the humanoids? I suppose that Security is going through the files of all citizens who have ever been across the border or close enough to it to make kidnapping possible. I know, since Macalaster mentioned it yesterday, that they are following up suspicious psychiatric cases. What else?"
Jeffreys said, "Small X-ray devices are being installed in key places in the large cities. In the mass arenas, for instance—"
"Where ten humanoids might slip in among a hundred thousand spectators of a football game or an air-polo match?"
"Exactly."
"And concert halls and churches?"
"We must start somewhere. We can't do it all at once."
"Particularly when panic must be avoided?" said Lynn. "Isn't that so? It wouldn't do to have the public realize that at any unpredictable moment, some unpredictable city and its human contents would suddenly cease to exist."
"I suppose that's obvious. What are you driving at?"
Lynn said strenuously, "That a growing fraction of our national effort will be diverted entirely into the nasty problem of what Amberley called finding a very small needle in a very large haystack. We'll be chasing our tails madly, while They increase their research lead to the point where we find we can no longer catch up; when we must surrender without the chance even of snapping our fingers in retaliation.
"Consider further that this news will leak out as more and more people become involved in our counter-measures and more and more people begin to guess what we're doing. Then what? The panic might do us more harm than any one TC bomb."
The Presidential Assistant said, irritably, "In Heaven's name, man, what do you suggest we do, then?"
"Nothing," said Lynn. "Call their bluff. Live as we have lived and gamble that They won't dare break the stalemate for the sake of a one-bomb headstart."
"Impossible!" said Jeffreys. "Completely impossible. The welfare of all of Us is very largely in my hands, and doing nothing is the one thing I cannot do. I agree with you, perhaps, that X-ray machines at sports arenas are a kind of skin-deep measure that won't be effective, but it has to be done so that people, in the aftermath, do not come to the bitter conclusion that we tossed our country away for the sake of a subtle line of reasoning that encouraged do-nothingism. In fact, our counter-gambit will be active indeed."
"In what way?"
Presidential Assistant Jeffreys looked at Breckenridge. The young Security officer, hitherto calmly silent, said, "It's no use talking about a possible future break in the stalemate when the stalemate is broken now. It doesn't matter whether these humanoids explode or do not. Maybe they are only a bait to divert us, as you say. But the fact remains that we are a quarter of a century behind in robotics, and that may be fatal. What other advances in robotics will there be to surprise us if war does start? The only answer is to divert our entire force immediately, now, into a crash program of robotics research, and the first problem is to find the humanoids. Call it an exercise in robotics, if you will, or call it the prevention of the death of fifteen million men, women and children."
Lynn shook his head, helplessly, "You can't. You'd be playing into their hands. They want us lured into the one blind alley while they're free to advance in all other directions."
Jeffreys said, impatiently, "That's your guess. Breckenridge has made his suggestion through channels and the government has approved, and we will begin with an all-Science conference."
"All-Science?"
Breckenridge said, "We have listed every important scientist of every branch of natural science. They'll all be at Cheyenne. There will be only one point on the agenda: How to advance robotics. The major specific sub-heading under that will be: How to develop a receiving device for the electromagnetic fields of the cerebral cortex that will be sufficiently delicate to distinguish between a protoplasmic human brain and a positronic humanoid brain."
Jeffreys said, "We had hoped you would be willing to be in charge of the conference."
"I was not consulted in this."
"Obviously time was short, sir. Do you agree to be in charge?"
Lynn smiled briefly. It was a matter of responsibility again. The responsibility must be clearly that of Lynn of Robotics. He had the feeling it would be Breckenridge who would really be in charge. But what could he do?
He said, "I agree."
Breckenridge and Lynn returned together to Cheyenne, where that evening Laszlo listened with a sullen mistrust to Lynn's description of coming events.
Laszlo said, "While you were gone, Chief, I've started putting five experimental models of humanoid structure through the testing procedures. Our men are on a twelve-hour day, with three shifts overlapping. If we've got to arrange a conference, we're going to be crowded and red-taped out of everything. Work will come to a halt."
Breckenridge said, "That will be only temporary. You will gain more than you lose."
Laszlo scowled. "A bunch of astrophysicists and geochemists around won't help a damn toward robotics."
"Views from specialists of other fields may be helpful."
"Are you sure? How do we know that there is any way of detecting brain waves or that, even if we can, there is a way of differentiating human and humanoid by wave pattern. Who set up the project, anyway?"
"I did," said Breckenridge.
"You did? Are you a robotics man?"
The young Security agent said, calmly, "I have studied robotics."
"That's not the same thing."
"I've had access to text-material dealing with Russian robotics—in Russian. Top-secret material well in advance of anything you have here."
Lynn said, ruefully, "He has us there, Laszlo."
"It was on the basis of that material," Breckenridge went on, "that I suggested this particular line of investigation. It is reasonably certain that in copying off the electromagnetic pattern of a specific human mind into a specific positronic brain, a perfectly exact duplicate cannot be made. For one thing, the most complicated positronic brain small enough to fit into a human-sized skull is hundreds of times less complex than the human brain. It can't pick up all the overtones, therefore, and there must be some way to take advantage of that fact."
Laszlo looked impressed despite himself and Lynn smiled grimly. It was easy to resent Breckenridge and the coming intrusion of several hundred scientists of non-robotics specialties, but the problem itself was an intriguing one. There was that consolation, at least.
It came to him quietly.
Lynn found he had nothing to do but sit in his office alone, with an executive position that had grown merely titular. Perhaps that helped. It gave him time to think, to picture the creative scientists of half the world converging on Cheyenne.
It was Breckenridge who, with cool efficiency, was handling the details of preparation. There had been a kind of confidence in the way he said, "Let's get together and we'll lick Them."
Let's get together.
It came to Lynn so quietly that anyone watching Lynn at that moment might have seen his eyes blink slowly twice—but surely nothing more.
He did what he had to do with a whirling detachment that kept him calm when he felt that, by all rights, he ought to be going mad.
He sought out Breckenridge in the other's improvised quarters.
Breckenridge was alone and frowning. "Is anything wrong, sir?"
Lynn said, wearily, "Everything's right, I think. I've invoked martial law."
"What!"
"As chief of a division I can do so if I am of the opinion the situation warrants it. Over my division, I can then be dictator. Chalk up one for the beauties of decentralization."
"You will rescind that order immediately." Breckenridge took a step forward. "When Washington hears this, you will be ruined."
"I'm ruined anyway. Do you think I don't realize that I've been set up for the role of the greatest villain in American history: the man who let Them break the stalemate. I have nothing to lose—and perhaps a great deal to gain."
He laughed a little wildly, "What a target the Division of Robotics will be, eh, Breckenridge? Only a few thousand men to be killed by a TC bomb capable of wiping out three hundred square miles in one micro-second. But five hundred of those men would be our greatest scientists. We would be in the peculiar position of having to fight a war with our brains shot out, or surrendering. I think we'd surrender."
"But this is impossible. Lynn, do you hear me? Do you understand? How could the humanoids pass our security provisions? How could they get together?"
"But they are getting together! We're helping them to do so. We're ordering them to do so. Our scientists visit the other side, Breckenridge. They visit Them regularly. You made a point of how strange it was that no one in robotics did. Well, ten of those scientists are still there and in their place, ten humanoids are converging on Cheyenne."
"That's a ridiculous guess."
"I think it's a good one, Breckenridge. But it wouldn't work unless we knew humanoids were in America so that we would call the conference in the first place. Quite a coincidence that you brought the news of the humanoids and suggested the conference and suggested the agenda and are running the show and know exactly which scientists were invited. Did you make sure the right ten were included?"
"Dr. Lynn!" cried Breckenridge in outrage. He poised to rush forward.
Lynn said, "Don't move. I've got a blaster here. We'll just wait for the scientists to get here one by one. One by one we'll X-ray them. One by one, we'll monitor them for radioactivity. No two will get together without being checked, and if all five hundred are clear, I'll give you my blaster and surrender to you. Only I think we'll find the ten humanoids. Sit down, Breckenridge."
They both sat.
Lynn said, "We wait. When I'm tired, Laszlo will spell me. We wait."
Professor Manuelo Jiminez of the Institute of Higher Studies of Buenos Aires exploded while the stratospheric jet on which he traveled was three miles above the Amazon Valley. It was a simple chemical explosion but it was enough to destroy the plane.
Dr. Herman Liebowitz of M. I. T. exploded in a monorail, killing twenty people and injuring a hundred others.
In similar manner, Dr. Auguste Marin of L'Institut Nucléonique of Montreal and seven others died at various stages of their journey to Cheyenne.
Laszlo hurtled in, pale-faced and stammering, with the first news of it. It had only been two hours that Lynn had sat there, facing Breckenridge, blaster in hand.
Laszlo said, "I thought you were nuts, Chief, but you were right. They were humanoids. They had to be." He turned to stare with hate-filled eyes at Breckenridge. "Only they were warned. He warned them, and now there won't be one left intact. Not one to study."
"God!" cried Lynn and in a frenzy of haste thrust his blaster out toward Breckenridge and fired. The Security man's neck vanished; the torso fell; the head dropped, thudded against the floor and rolled crookedly.
Lynn moaned, "I didn't understand, I thought he was a traitor. Nothing more."
And Laszlo stood immobile, mouth open, for the moment incapable of speech.
Lynn said, wildly. "Sure, he warned them. But how could he do so while sitting in that chair unless he were equipped with built-in radio transmission? Don't you see it? Breckenridge had been in Moscow. The real Breckenridge is still there. Oh my God, there were eleven of them."
Laszlo managed a hoarse squeak. "Why didn't he explode?"
"He was hanging on, I suppose, to make sure the others had received his message and were safely destroyed. Lord, Lord, when you brought the news and I realized the truth, I couldn't shoot fast enough. God knows by how few seconds I may have beaten him to it."
Laszlo said, shakily, "At least, we'll have one to study." He bent and put his fingers on the sticky fluid trickling out of the mangled remains at the neck end of the headless body.
Not blood, but high-grade machine oil.
Title: Let's Get Together
Author: Isaac Asimov
Original publication: United States: Royal Publications, Inc, 1956
Time, 1890
November frost lay on the ferns and mosses along the Calhoun bluffs, and on that castellated mass of rock with round turrets which hangs over the cove known as French Hollow. From a divide in wooded hills a small stream came down unfrozen, quivering over pebbles and clean sand. Crossing an alluvial plat of ground, it turned beside a cabin to meet the broad and whispering Illinois.
In all Calhoun County, that long narrow ridge isolated between two great rivers, there was not on height or in cove such another cabin. It was fifty-two feet square and two stories high, with a Norman projection of the eaves. The house, with its back to a road winding at the foot of the bluffs, sat facing the historic Illinois—a river now yellow and wrathful with floods, now spreading in blue or seashell tints away to the opposite forest.
In the days of old Antoine Dejarnet, the builder of this log-house and the first Frenchman who ever set foot in Calhoun County, hospitality had overflowed the now silent place. Then there was dancing every Sunday after mass, in the undivided lower story like a feudal hall; and the family violin was coaxed to heavenly tunes by Antoine Dejarnet himself.
But long before this November afternoon the French colony in Calhoun County had dwindled to a remnant; the forty goats which used to climb those heights or stand captive to half old Antoine’s many daughters while the rest milked them, had not a single descendant; and the last Dejarnet carried his name locally disfigured into De Zhirley.
Jeanne Sattory, following a road beside the stream, was coming down the hollow. The mail-carrier cantered below her toward Kampsville, riding a nervous pony, and having the letter pouch strapped behind him. Twice a week he thus carried news through Calhoun County, where there are neither railroads nor telegraph lines, neither banks nor thieves. But such a courier feels his freedom and importance; he impudently kissed his merry finger-tips to the pretty girl up the slope. She hid behind a rock until he was out of sight. The mail-carrier had seen this girl before, and desired to have a closer look at her. The usual type in Calhoun County was the broad Dutch maid, whose stock had superseded the French. But Jeanne Sattory felt a dread rising to terror of all men. Her first recollection was of a stepfather who had made her take to trees like a cat, every time he approached the dwelling. Her next was of his son, who finished the small rites of her mother’s funeral by taking the orphan’s ear in his grip, leading her to the limit of the garden patch, and dismissing her, with the threat of a kick if she ever came back there again. He kept her mother’s own household goods and the few belongings left by her father, and nobody took it in hand to interfere with him. She came back across the Illinois River to her native county, but even yet shrank from old Henry Roundcounter, whose family afforded her a home.
The Rencontres had held land under the first Dejarnet. As Roundcounters, and farmers of their own small holding, they now kept up hereditary interest in that last De Zhirley who, since his mother’s death, had lived solitary in the great square cabin. Mrs. Roundcounter baked bread for him; and once a week she went down the bluff to tidy his bachelor hall, except when rheumatism detained her. This afternoon Jeanne Sattory was sent reluctantly to the task.
The last De Zhirley was a ferryman; and it must be owned that voices calling him from the other side of the river were often drowned in the music of his fiddle. In clear summer nights he walked a sandy strip in front of his cabin, hugging the fiddle beneath his chin and playing tunes which had come down from his forefathers.
The ferryboat could now be seen at the farther bank of the Illinois. Jeanne knew she might do her work before it could again cross the current. The cabin door is always left unfastened in that primitive county. She noticed a fresh coon skin nailed on the logs beside the door, as with shrinking she entered this haunt of man.
The imposing old dancing-hall of the De Zhirleys gave her a welcome from its ruddy fireplace hooded with a penthouse. Jeanne’s first care was to push the embers together, heap on more of the wood which lay ready, and clean the stone hearth. She then hung a pot on the crane, and filled it with spring water. Before the water was scalding hot there was time to sweep the floor and beat up a feather-bed which had grown as hard as a mat on its corner bedstead.
An unrailed stairway mounted beside the front wall. Jeanne had heard Mrs. Roundcounter tell how many little rooms were overhead, and what stores of family goods were piled there, disregarded by a young man who cared for no wife but his fiddle.
No attention could be given to the upper rooms. Amid all her services, the girl was full of starts and panics, turning her head and widening her eyes at any stir without. She mopped the broad boards worn by foot-marks of dead dancers; she washed log imbedded windows and an accumulation of yellow bowls and pewter; and drew the only easy chair to the hearth. Something in a green bag hung on the wall farthest from the fire, which Jeanne knew to be the De Zhirley fiddle. She touched it carefully with a turkey-wing duster, recoiling from its faint ting as if some charm had been ignorantly worked.
Dried meat and scarlet peppers, a gun and powderhorn hung on the richly smoked hewn joists. She felt keen, quiet delight in the place, and reluctance to leave it. The jollity of former times, perhaps, lingered, making a fit atmosphere for girlhood.
But she was standing with her shawl over her head, casting back a last look, when some hand blundered at the latch outside. She sprang upstairs and put the first door between her and the intruder on the lightning of impulse. Some person entered and seemed to pause and listen suspiciously. Her heart labored like the beating of a steamer, and she expected to hear feet following her up the stairs. But after uncertain shuffling the comer dragged a chair, and, with a suggestion of effort, sat down.
Jeanne knew it could not be young De Zhirley, whom she had just seen through a window fighting the current in midriver. He had a loaded wagon and a pair of restless mules on board; and he ran back and forth outside the railing of his boat, now poling, now steering, and now pulling with a wing-like oar. Jeanne could have been at the top of the bluff before his return. And here she was, trapped in an upper room, vaguely ashamed; unable to come down and face eyes which might insult her, yet terrified by the prospect of indefinite hiding.
Daylight’s gradual fading out was of more interest to her than the accumulation of De Zhirley things around her. She listened for the crunch of the ferryboat prow on gravel; and voices and departing wheels at last moved by the cabin, and the proper owner entered. She stealthily unlatched her door and set it ajar, so the crack intersected the hearth. There in the seat she had taken thought to set ready sagged the drunken person of her stepbrother.
“You here, Billy Aarons?” said young De Zhirley, as he approached the fire; and his voice had no joy in it. His blind eye was toward the stair door, for the Calhoun fiddler was a one-eyed man. This defacement scarcely marred the beauty of the athletic man thrown out by firelight. Jeanne Sattory had, indeed, never seen him without pitying people who were two-eyed. His misused skin yet held the milk and wine flush of childhood, and his fleece of red-gold rings was a gift not to be spoiled.
“Yes, I’m here, Theodore,” said the man in the chair thickly.
“Mother Roundcounter has been here too,” added De Zhirley, as he looked about. “It makes a feller feel good to see his house clean and smell new bread.”
He hung a teakettle on the crane, and thrust a fork through some bacon to toast on the polished hearthstone. Then he drew his table toward the fireplace, and Jeanne could see his appreciative touch on the yellow ware she had washed.
“What do you want, Billy? Did you come in to take a bite with me?”
“No.” Aarons stirred from his doze. “I’m buyin’ cattle, Theodore.”
“No cattle to sell here.”
“I know it, Theodore. You’re a poor man by the side of me.”
Indifferent to this fact, De Zhirley turned his bacon and proceeded to make coffee.
“You’re a poor man, Theodore,” repeated the heavy guest, “and I’ve got all my father had.”
“And all his second wife had,” added young De Zhirley, with a one-eyed glance of contempt, at which Aarons made a fist. “You go upstairs and sleep off what’s the matter with you, after I give you some coffee.”
“That’s not what I come for. You’re a poor man, Theodore.”
“Well, don’t let that keep you awake; it don’t me.”
“You hain’t got no cattle, nor much land, nor even two eyes.”
“And what do you want on my blind side, Billy?”
“But you’ve got a fiddle. Yes; you’ve got a fiddle.”
De Zhirley moved back and took his violin off the wall with a jealous motion. It was his custom to play while his supper cooked; but as he felt the bow with his thumb, and fitted the instrument to his neck, he looked distrustfully at Aarons.
The first sweet long cry filled the cabin. The fiddler gradually approached the hearth, playing as he came, and Aarons’s head, hands, and feet responded to the magic.
De Zhirley’s back was toward Jeanne, but she saw joy in his whole bearing, and herself felt the piercing rapture of sound.
“Let me see that fiddle,” demanded Aarons, when the young man finished and put down his bow, and brought the coffee-pot to set on the coals.
De Zhirley turned a distrustful eye, but no precious violin toward his guest.
“Let me see that fiddle, I say,” repeated Aarons, rising up.
“Behave yourself,” said the young man, standing a head above him, and humoring him as a child might be humored by half granting his request.
The fellow handled its ancient body, and looked at Stradivari’s inscription.
“What’s that there, Theodore?”
“That’s the maker’s name.”
“Seventeen hunderd and—what’s them figgers?”
“That’s the year it was made.”
“Then it’s a mighty poor old thing, ain’t it?”
The fiddler said nothing, but tried to recover his violin, to which the tormentor hung with both hands.
“I can sell it for you, Theodore. It’s worth fifty dollars.”
De Zhirley’s face expressed impatience to regain his instrument.
“Yes, it’s worth a hunderd dollars. I’ve been talkin’ with a man, Theodore; that’s why I come in. You give this fiddle to me, and I’ll make some money for you. You’re a poor man, Theodore.”
“Let go of it,” exclaimed De Zhirley. “I don’t want to sell my fiddle.”
“It’s worth five hunderd dollars.”
“Let go of it! You don’t know what you’re doing. You ain’t fit to do anything now. Let go,” cried De Zhirley, as he felt the greedy, drunken hands crushing his treasure. “If you don’t let go, I’ll kill you!”
The two men struggled, and there was a crackling, twanging sound, followed by Aarons’s curses. Then De Zhirley caught him by the neck, dragged him to the cabin door, and kicked him far out into the dusk.
Jeanne hid her face. She heard her stepbrother battering at the fastened door, and finally a stone dashed through the window, to fall with splintered glass upon the floor. A storm of drunken curses surrounded the house and died away in mutterings along the bluff road. Through this clamor an awful silence made its void in the cabin.
De Zhirley had set his foot upon a chair, and was nursing the mangled instrument on his knee, examining every part. His tense face denied despair; but the broken neck hung down by its strings, the chest was crushed, the back split, the bridge lay beside his foot. Jeanne watched him, forgetting the darkness of the bluffs and her dreadful ambush.
When De Zhirley first came in she had decided to let herself down from an upper window rather than face him. When he recommended her stepbrother to a sleeping-room upstairs, she looked about in panic for something which could be made an immediate rope or ladder. But when she saw the violin’s destruction, it was to hang outside that tragedy in a passion of sympathy. She had been the most solitary creature in Calhoun County, but this supreme sharing of the young fiddler’s anguish broke the shell of her dumbness; she felt her soul spreading out its crumpled wings like a new butterfly.
He laid the violin on the chair, and with a sudden abandonment of all restraint shook his fists above his head, wailing and sobbing:—
“Oh, my Lord, my Lord! What will I do now?”
It was the agony of an artist, of a lonely soul, of unspeakable bereavement.
Jeanne wept in her shawl. She had thought her hunger for the unknown best thing in the world a singular experience. She waited until his tears and hers could be wiped off, and then opened the door and came lightly downstairs.
De Zhirley huddled his violin again in his arms, as if dreading the descent of more drunken men, and, in the embarrassment and anguish of a man whose weakness has been spied upon, turned his face to the hearth. Jeanne stopped at the foot of the stairs and drew her shawl over her head. They continued in silence while the coffee bubbled up and firelight flickered on the wall.
De Zhirley understood her errand into his cabin with the simplicity of primitive manhood. He knew she always took to flight when her stepbrother appeared. When he could speak without a sob, he said, acknowledging all she had done for his comfort that afternoon:—
“I’m much obleeged.”
Jeanne, on her part, ignored the services.
“Is it bad hurt?” she murmured, with unconscious maternal pathos.
He offered to yield the wreck to her hands, and, drawn from her place, she went and stooped on one knee to the firelight. De Zhirley dropped on one knee beside her, and they tried to fit the mangled parts in place again.
“It’s such a spite,” said Jeanne, and her trembling voice comforted him as a mother comforts her child. He had instant anxiety to make the calamity appear less to her than it really was.
“Mebby by patchin’ and glue I can put it together again—though I don’t know whether it’ll sound the same. I’ve always thought so much of it,” he apologized.
“I wish he had broke my neck instead of this fiddle’s,” said the girl with passion.
“I’d like to see him try such a thing as that,” responded the fiddler sternly. “I’d killed him as ’twas, if I hadn’t been bigger than him.”
“I must go back,” exclaimed Jeanne, stirring to rise from this post-mortem. “They’ll think I’ve fell in the river.”
“I’ll go with you,” said De Zhirley. “It’s dark now, and that fellow ain’t gone far.”
“No,” objected Jeanne, with sudden terror of what her neighborhood called a beau. “I don’t want no one with me.”
De Zhirley took up his cap with gentle insistence like the courtliness of a great seignior. He smiled at Jeanne, and she gave him back a look of which she was unconscious.
“Your supper’s all ready,” she reminded him.
“I ain’t hungry like I was when I come in from the ferry. Won’t you set down and take supper with me?” invited the young man sincerely.
The mere suggestion sent Jeanne Sattory to the door. Their hands mingled upon the latch, and she slid hers away, loath to part from a touch which she yet eluded.
De Zhirley made the door pause while he looked down at her and said, with a shaking voice:—
“If it hadn’t been for you—there ain’t no tellin’.”
Jeanne had no reply to this acknowledgment of sympathy, but drew her shawl together under her chin. Chin and mouth corners were tempting even to a one-eyed man, but he continued with gentle courtesy:
“Spite of my fiddle’s gettin’ broke, I b’lieve this is the best day this cabin ever seen.”
“What makes you say that?”
“’Cause it’s the first time you ever come to the house.”
“I’m obleeged for your politeness,” trembled Jeanne, turning scarlet; and she lifted a laughing dark glance. “If you’ll be a little politer and let me out, I won’t come no more.”
“Then I’ll go where you are,” declared the Calhoun fiddler. “I’ll foller you from this time on.”
“You’ll have to walk on the other side of the road if you do,” said Jeanne Sattory; and they stepped out and took the way up the bluff, two figures indistinct in darkness, with a width of wagon-track between them.
From: The Queen of the Swamp, and other plain Americans
By Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Original publication: 1899
Time, 1857
The perfection of summer noon, when acres of corn tassels seemed in a trance and the blueness of far-off hills suggested incense rising, was not without its effect on Miss Sally Vandewater as she rode toward General Poynton’s plantation. The turnpike, stretching its ash-colored ribbon across the greenness of the country, rang like a causeway of rock to the beat of horseshoes.
From this plantation or from that, as hill or sweep of woodland revealed them, shone marble stones in family burial lots.
Occasionally Miss Sally met girls or young men on dashing horses, and these merry people saluted her cordially in passing. But in all that blue-grass region, where each member of every comfortable family had his own gaited saddle-horse, there was not a finer animal than Miss Sally’s Pacer. Cæsar and his fortune were aboard when she mounted. Pacer was her entire capital in life, carrying her on visits among good families whereby she subsisted, and furnishing colts for her pin-money. The camel is not more to the Bedouin. Had Pacer failed Miss Sally in any point, she must have fallen into the straits of a reduced gentlewoman, instead of carrying a high head through all the best houses of the county.
She rode at a steady hand gallop through the sultry day, though a young colt whinnied behind her; increasing her speed past one pillared brick house set far up an avenue. The woods about it were close trimmed and free from underbrush, like all Kentucky woodland. Some evergreens made gloom about its eaves, but not such gloom as the reputation of the house itself. There lived a man who was said to have a chain stretched across his cellar. He bought up slaves and handcuffed them in pairs along this chain until he was ready to drive them to market, when a band of musicians was employed to lead their march, cheerfully playing “Yankee Doodle.” The house was worse than haunted. Both whites and blacks hurried past its handsome gate with abhorrence—spot of mystery and abomination on those pleasant corn lands.
Miss Sally was anxious to get out of her riding-skirt at Poynton’s, and bully the black boy who would come to take her bridle. The wealthiest slave-owner in Kentucky could not exact more deference. Everybody humored her. In a country where hospitality was a social religion, her little visits of a month or two were welcomed even when they crowded dearer guests. And in spite of fine traits concealed under the haughty airs of a nomad, well did she know how to crowd people distasteful to her.
When she turned into Poynton’s avenue, the white pillared mansion seemed to doze. The quarters stretched in a long row fieldward. Miss Sally could not see the kitchen, standing by itself behind the great house. No drowsiness had settled there. A stir of preparation was going on, not only for the two o’clock dinner, but for the wedding yet a week distant. Miss Sally had omitted one place in her rounds, and shortened her visit at another, that she might be at Poynton’s in time to gather every detail of the wedding.
A yellow boy skipped out to help her at the mounting-block. He would have lounged to meet his master. Approvingly she saw him pull his hat to her.
“Miss Sally, you sho’ly bake you’se’f to-day!”
“Yes, it’s hot, Peach. And if you’re concerned for me I hope you’ll feel more concern about Pacer.” Miss Vandewater’s anxiety about her property grew in the ratio of its approach to a crib.
“Sam’ll rub her down,” promised Peachy. “I’ll tell Sam to give her a good feed.”
“You attend to it yourself,” commanded Miss Sally.
“I isn’t a stable-boy,” remonstrated Peachy. “I’se a house-boy.”
“House-boy or stable-boy, you mind what I tell you. In my father’s time—and he owned fifty—our boys did whatever they were told to do.”
“Ya-as, m’m.”
“And the poor little colt,” said Miss Sally, making that infant’s discomfort her own,—“I don’t want my colt kicked to death among a lot of wild shod heels.”
“He go with his mammy. No ha’um evah happen to you’ colts on this place, Miss Sally.”
“You see to it that none happens to it this time! All the family at home?” she stopped to inquire, with her riding-skirt gathered in her hand.
“Ya-as, m’m.”
“Has my trunk been carried up? I sent it this morning.”
“Ya-as, m’m.”
“Who’s here?” demanded Miss Vandewater, stiffening her figure.
Peachy followed her eye to the stable-yard, where stood a vehicle she never beheld with calmness. It was the handsome and shining carriage of Judge Poynton, from the county seat.
Peachy grinned. “Miss Judge come out this mawnin’ to spend the day.”
So sore does one’s pride become when chafed by poverty, that Miss Sally hated that plump and opulent woman for naught but being plump and opulent; though she would have given as her reason the airs of a woman married above her wildest expectations.
“You can fetch my riding-skirt to my room, Nancy,” said Miss Sally to the colored girl who admitted her, casting it across the stair-rail as she ascended. “I reckon I go to the same room I always have.”
“Miss Ma’ky’s things is all spread out in that bedroom,” apologized Nancy.
“You can soon move them out of the way.”
“But Miss Maria ’bleeged to have you’ trunk set in the back bedroom fo’ this week, Miss Sally.”
A solicitous hostess, trailing a muslin wrapper—for even Kentucky hospitality may be overpowered by the languors of summer midday—met the guest with outstretched hands. Miss Sally permitted her cheek to be brushed, and at once put the lady into the apologetic attitude of an overcrowded landlord.
“You ought to have sent me word if it was inconvenient to have me now, Mrs. Poynton, and I wouldn’t have skipped the Moores as I did.”
“Miss Sally, it is not inconvenient to have you now!” the delinquent pleaded. “It is never inconvenient. Only America’s things are so spread out, and we are obliged to keep dressing-rooms for the wedding, and the bridesmaids! I thought you would be less annoyed in that back room than anywhere else. I am so glad you have come!”
“The judge’s wife is here?”
“But it is only for the day,” unconsciously conciliated Mrs. Poynton. “She is not staying. Sue Bet Moore has been here, helping America to try on. Her dresses are all done. But Sue Bet has gone.”
“I knew Sue Bet was to be one of the bridesmaids,” said Miss Sally. It was not necessary to mention bridesmaids to a woman of her thorough information.
“We have all been lying down; the day is so sultry. We shall not have America’s things filling up the chambers much longer. I feel like giving her all the rooms in the house—yes, the plantation itself! If you can only make yourself comfortable a few days, we can change your room after the wedding.”
“The back bedroom makes not the slightest difference in the world to me, Mrs. Poynton”—
“O Miss Sally, I am so glad it makes no difference!”
—“but I am sorry I came at such an inconvenient time!”
Thus the duet went on, until Mrs. Poynton accepted as positive beneficence Miss Sally Vandewater’s willingness to descend from the back chamber, dine with the family, and sit down in the parlor.
Miss Sally had kept her sprightliness and her youthful shape. Her muslin dress was cut low, and her shoulders were concealed by a bertha of lace. Fine embroidered undersleeves made delicate frills about her folded hands. The curling-iron had created two large spirals at each temple, but the rest of her hair was pinned in a knot at the back of her head.
America Poynton came into the parlor in her tight-fitting habit of black velvet, and sat down with the guests, holding her riding-whip, her gauntlets, and tall hat.
“Are you going to ride in this heat?” inquired her aunt, the judge’s wife.
“We always ride Thursday afternoons, about four o’clock, if the weather is fine,” America replied.
She looked no less cool and white in the heavy fabric than in a gold dotted vaporous tissue which she had worn at dinner. Her black eyes moved with languid interest from speaker to speaker as the visiting chat ran on. America Poynton was called the proudest girl who ever appeared in the county seat from surrounding plantations. The manners of this tall beauty were considered too quiet by romping young people who danced, drove, and flirted to the limit of their privileges; yet she was sovereign among them, and ruled by a look while others expended noisy effort. It was told of her that she often sat veiled in her room to save her complexion from sun glare and wind, so matchless was it. She had a robe of black curls in which she could wrap herself when her maid let it down to brush. America was General Poynton’s only child. She had inherited from her grandmother a plantation adjoining her father’s, with more than a hundred slaves. When she went to boarding-school in the county town, one of her servants led to her every pleasant Friday evening a milk-white mule, saddled and bridled with silk, fine leather, and silver.
Though above such pastime as flirtation, America had more offers than any other girl in her set. Her low, slow voice never recounted these conquests, but the victims published themselves, wondering whom America Poynton would marry, since she was so hard to suit. When she accepted Ross Carr, therefore, the astonishment was general. He was good enough for some girls, but hardly good enough for America Poynton. He had also been a wild youth, but people said he was settling down. The Carrs ranked somewhat below the Poyntons, and Ross had no plantation of his own. Yet when the community thought it over, they were willing to accept him as America’s husband if he proved a credit to her.
“Miss Maria,” said Nancy, coming to the door with a face full of meaning, “Miss Becky Inchbald’s done lighted down by the quarters, and tied her horse.”
“What does she want?” inquired Mrs. Poynton, disturbed.
“Dunno, Miss Maria.”
“Why doesn’t she come to the house?”
“She hardly ever came to the house in her best days,” murmured the judge’s wife.
“Perhaps she’s sick,” continued Mrs. Poynton. “Some of you run and see.”
“Peachy done been down to her, and she say she just waitin’ there in the shade. Miss Becky got her baby ’long with her.”
The general’s wife heard this with rising dignity.
“Don’t annoy her,” she commanded. “Let the poor girl alone.”
“Law, Miss Maria, nobody won’t say nothin’ to Miss Becky. But all the little niggehs has come out to look at her.”
“Go yourself and see if she needs anything.”
“I have heard,” remarked Miss Vandewater, through the silence which followed, “that Becky Inchbald, for all she was so close-mouthed at first, threatens now to carry her child to its father.”
Mrs. Poynton, with an instant’s pause on the subject, hoped he could be found and made to do his duty. The judge’s wife heard with a mere lifting of the eyebrows. She thought it scarcely a fit topic to mention before America. But America’s plane was so much above Becky Inchbald that she had never even disapproved of the girl.
Becky Inchbald’s people were not poor whites, for they owned land and slaves; but their raw unfitness for encountering the old stock held them on the verge of society. That Becky was uneducated was her own fault. She had become the mother of a hapless baby and the scandal of the neighborhood before America Poynton’s engagement was announced.
“She’s spiteful about that baby,” pursued Miss Sally. “There’ll be trouble somewhere before sundown, if she’s started out with it.”
“I do not see that Inchbald’s affairs need disturb us,” suggested the judge’s wife, making dimples at the finger roots of one hand as she smoothed her polished hair.
“Some women are never disturbed about any of the sin in the world,” said Miss Vandewater incisively, “until it comes into their houses and takes their children by the throat.”
“That can never be said of you, Miss Sally,” the judge’s indolent wife responded, smiling. Though she generally bore Miss Sally’s attacks as a lady should, and felt indulgent sympathy for the migratory spinster, she sometimes allowed herself to retort.
“Aunt and Miss Sally, kiss and make up,” said America, with the deliberate accent that gave weight to all her words. But without response one of the combatants sat glowering, while the other, waving a lazy fan, indicated through the window Ross Carr cantering to his appointment, man and steed moving like one, so perfect was his horsemanship.
America’s mother, impatiently anxious to go on recounting to Miss Sally the silver and linen bought for America’s new home, resigned herself for a few moments. Ross Carr threw his bridle to the groom, who was walking Miss Poynton’s saddled thoroughbred.
He entered the room. America gave him her hand with a light word, and he stood holding his hat, talking to her elders.
It was the culminating moment of her betrothal, a dot of time separating ease and care-free thoughts from what followed.
The young man chatted idly with four women, when another screamed out behind him:—
“Here it is, Ross Carr! So you’ve got to take it, and no words betwixt us—for I won’t take care of it any longer!”
“Why, Miss Becky!—why, Miss Becky!” Mrs. Poynton herself ran gasping forward to interpose between such scandalous outcry and America’s lover. “Come away with me, Miss Becky, and let me help you with your baby—and don’t speak that way before the gentlemen!”
A shaker bonnet fell back from the girl’s hot and furious face. She had narrow sunken temples like a hen’s. Her entire profile was chicken beaked, yet a fluff of golden down made her comely. The wrathful rings in her eyes sent out their fires toward Ross Carr.
“He thinks he’s a great gentleman, and he thinks he’s going to get a great lady”—
“Becky Inchbald, sit down in that chair!” commanded America, standing at the other side of the room. Her hat and gloves and whip lay on the floor. The other women, even her mother, waited, sitting blanched.
Carr remained with his hand on the back of the chair, like a frozen figure, while Becky Inchbald placed herself in it and stretched the baby across her lap. Her first courage leaving her, she began to cry.
The men of the west do not cower when found out in their sins. Ross Carr stood six feet and one inch high; a handsome, light-haired Kentuckian, the man most abundant in vitality, and the best horseman in Bourbon County. A culprit waiting to be shot, he looked his death in the face, erect, but blighted through every outline. He had carried this guilt a long time, trying to shape it for disclosure; while day after day continued to separate him farther from the Ross Carr of the past, and to make more incomprehensible the deeds which he inherited from that miserable wretch.
When you or I stand, on our day of judgment, to be looked at through the dark medium of our basest moments, may some eye among our contemners discern the angel shape struggling in remorse and anguish behind the bar.
“Is this your child?” America demanded of her lover, pointing to it for his identification.
The baby, oppressed by the jaunt, under arm, or on lap, according to its mother’s convenience in riding, was covered all over its visible surface by that prickly rash which nurses call “heat.” It was gowned in pink calico, and diffused a sour odor.
Ross Carr looked down at it with the slighting masculine eye, which since Saturn has seen little to admire in extremely young offspring. He controlled the muscles of his lips to reply.
“I reckon it is.”
“Answer me on your word as a man—is this your child?”
“Yes. It is.”
“He knows it’s his, and he’s got to take care of it and support it—it’s his place to take care of it, not mine,” sobbed Becky, her head wagging.
America directed her face to Becky. “Do you intend to turn it off entirely?”
“Yes. I do! It’s his, and he ought to keep it!”
“But you are its mother!”
“I won’t be its mother!” exploded Becky, flinging the ill-kept and wretched infant about on her knees with a vicious grip. “I’ll leave it on a doorstep first!”
The child put up a piteous lip and uttered those cries by which bruised infancy protests against tormentors whom it feels but does not know.
America stared at the girl; her alabaster face was suddenly drained of horror at the wrong done a woman, and filled with passionate contempt.
“Then I’ll be its mother! Give it to me.”
She gathered it off Becky’s lap and laid its heat-blotched face against her shoulder. The tiny creature discharged a mouthful of its wretchedness there. America stanched the spot, and made a softer rest for its cheek with her rose-scented handkerchief. Her unconscious sweep of figure in taking the child and standing up publicly with it, thrilled beholders like piercing music or the sight of great works of art. The mother-spirit, which has brooded for centuries over this world—the passion to foster and protect and train—shone white and large in her face. She was that fair impersonation men call the Goddess of Liberty, holding the outcast to her breast. She was Mother Mary, with a reminder of the Heavenly Infant in her arms.
No one remonstrated or spoke a word to her as she moved from the room.
Becky Inchbald, pulling her shaker over her face, went out and mounted her horse.
America was at the top of the stairs when she heard Ross Carr speak hoarsely at the foot. She stood looking at him over the balustrade. The baby was quiet.
“One word, America!—It’s all over—between us?”
He could hear his watch ticking; and outdoor sounds buzzed in his ears.
“No,” answered America. “It is not all over between us.”
Ross Carr dropped his groping hand on the stair newel, his next sentence also coming in fragments.
“There won’t be any use—Shall I come here—for the ceremony—next Thursday?”
“Thursday,” spoke the low, slow voice above him, “at two o’clock, was the time we set.”
The culprit lifted his eyes to her and exclaimed:—
“America, tell me what you want me to do!”
“I want you,” she said, “to be a father to your child!” Her mouth struggled. She flung out the rest in a wail—“and never speak to me of this again!”
Not fit to prostrate himself before her virgin motherhood, the tarnished man hid his face on his arm against the stair-rail. She carried his child out of sight.
There was scarcely a negro on the plantation who did not know what had happened when Ross Carr staggered out of the house and passed his chafing horse and the groom as if he had forgotten his own property.
Baseless mountains which had been piling lucent peak over peak, now seemed to sink in smoke to the effacement of the sun. Stretches of forest and road, plantation and dimpled hill, from horizon to horizon, ceased smiling; for the day’s heat was about to pass off in drenching rain.
This cloudy interval before the thunder-burst was just the time for stealing corn to roast at the quarters in the evening. So Peachy crept on all fours down narrow avenues to avoid agitating the corntops, such telltales are the tassel fingers. His sack already bulged; but unexpectedly he came against a man stretched out in the dirt face downward—Miss Ma’ky’s Mist’ Ross Carr!
Peachy backed away from the spectacle, the grinding of teeth and the swelling of veins on a man’s neck! Not until many cornstalks screened him had Peachy the courage to burst recklessly down a slim alley, spilling his stolen ears, while corn leaves slashed his face with their edged sabres. The superstitious African instinctively fled from anguish so dumb and dreadful.
While the county was shocked by America Poynton’s adoption of Ross Carr’s child, her beauty as a bride softened all critics. She went to live with her husband on her plantation, and there the baby grew into robust and happy boyhood. Reticence on the subject of Becky Inchbald was diffused through her small world. At that date a small world held all the acts of many lives.
Even Miss Sally Vandewater, swelling her visiting list with another hospitable home, grew into complete harmony with the judge’s wife on this delicate subject.
Becky Inchbald went on a long visit to Tennessee. News came back that she had married there; and in the course of years that she had died.
So far as human knowledge goes, Ross Carr’s wife took no shrewish revenge, though a woman of her nature must have suffered from the blot. She always spoke of his son as “our eldest boy,” and he grew up among brothers and sisters without noting that he was part alien, until some neighbor dropped the fact in his ear. Personally he was much like his father, whose sin matured its bitterest fruit when that child threw himself on the ground to sob in secret agony because the beautiful and tender woman he loved with such devotion was really not his mother.
From: The Queen of the Swamp, and other plain Americans
By Mary Hartwell Catherwood
Original publication: 1899
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