New Writings in SF 19 - [Anthology] Read online

  ‘Of course. Mighty One. No comment. Insufficient data.’

  ‘Yes. Well, a mere puff of vapour helps to show the direction of the wind and we are in no position to ignore so much as a single snowflake. Have the human checked out and brought here.’

  The Odar departed obediently, leaving Onsep Ald to brood alone. A peace offer. A deal! It was first law in Meden training that one did not deal with native inhabitants when taking over their planet. One reduced them to helpless surrender and then exploited them. A deal, indeed! Still, the small but significant bias was their way. It had to be altered.

  * * * *

  Caswell got up from the hard seat in the small cell-like room they had shut him up in and again started to jog, flap his arms and breathe deeply in a desperate effort to get warm. He had been waiting over three hours and that was a hopeful sign, but the cold was making it hard to believe. Out of all the data he had, he knew the Meden to be so nearly human as to require expert biological study to pinpoint the differences. Apart from the fact that they enjoyed and were comfortable at an ambient temperature some ten degrees above freezing point. That one was not only obvious, it was slowly stealing away what little confidence he had left. Why, he wondered, was the military mind always so rigidly set against comfort, whether human or Meden? Ten degrees Centigrade would have been comfortable for them—it would still have been bitter for him—but this cell was actually on the frost-mark!

  Even when his cell-door opened to reveal an escort and he was given the order to march, the passages and corridors were no better. And thinking habits die hard. He had expected the chambers of the head-man to be warmer, possibly even comfortable, but they weren’t. As he was routinely being made known to the Dar, and the Odar, and then the Council of Ten, the chamber swirled with vaporising breath. He could have done without the distraction. These people looked so normal, so human, even at ease, in this ice-box? He shivered despite his furs and his insulex underwear.

  ‘I’m cold,’ he said, knowing that he couldn’t possibly think straight all the while he was shaking. ‘Is there anything you can do to help that?’

  The Dar nodded sternly. ‘We know that your kind are in the habit of drinking infusions of herbs and powders in boiling water,’ he said. ‘A quantity of such drink has been made ready for you.’

  Caswell managed to hide his surprise and suspicion of the steaming metal jug and ‘captured’ cup. It smelled and tasted like passable coffee. He was not to know that the Dar, being the Great Leader, had not so far come face to face with a living, breathing human. That had been left to underlings until now, now that the Dar was desperate for that little wisp of vapour in the breeze. So, together with the rest of the Ten, Ald watched in fascination mixed with awe as Caswell sipped the near-boiling coffee and appeared to enjoy it.

  ‘You have come,’ he said, after a respectful interval, ‘with talk of peace offers between us. That is if I understand and speak your language correctly?’

  ‘Right on both counts.’

  ‘Very well. It is not the Meden way to make any kind of agreements with subservient races except those which we formulate and impose. But we are curious. We wish to know how your minds work. First then, are you of authority? Do you speak for all, or only yourself?’

  ‘That’s difficult.’ Caswell looked at it a moment. ‘Nobody speaks for all, with us. We have majorities, minorities and individuals. Everybody is entitled to an opinion and a point of view. I speak for me, but I also speak for a whole lot of other people who think the way I do.’

  ‘I would find that hopelessly confusing,’ Ald admitted.

  ‘Happens to us sometimes, too. So we have machines to help, machines that calculate odds and percentages, using data and trend analysis, machines which can predict the most probable outcome of almost anything, provided we can get the data in there. But you’ll understand that. It’s our information that you also have such machines.’

  ‘Only one!’ the Dar said solemnly. ‘Only one. The Machine. It contains all relevant data. It provides all logical answers. Yours?’

  ‘Not that good,’ Caswell admitted, but, computer-man to the core, he felt bound to add, ‘We’re getting along that way, though. We have a master machine, now, that is a beaut. That’s really why I’m here.’ His momentary glow of enthusiasm passed. ‘You say you don’t talk peace-terms, ever?’

  No Meden ever got to be Dar without acquiring a good layer of philosophy over his native intelligence. Onsep Ald studied Caswell shrewdly. ‘The Meden way is like this, Earthman Caswell. Our home planet is very like this Earth of yours. Long ago we learned how to send ships into space, how to arm and equip them to overcome any opposition. From time to time, when we have too many mouths to feed, too many heads to count, we build a fleet and send away those we cannot keep. We have such a company with us now, asleep, waiting for the time when you have been subdued and are willing to serve. That is how it will be. You will serve us! We do not deal with others as equals, ever! Is that understood ?’

  ‘Plain enough.’ Caswell sighed. ‘It was worth a try.’

  ‘To try what?’

  ‘I told you about the Master machine, didn’t I? Well, by now we have enough data in there to predict the outcome of this invasion of yours. It’s not one hundred per cent accurate, naturally, but close enough for us.’

  ‘That I can understand.’ The Dar was suddenly hopeful, but hid it. ‘Your machine tells you that you will lose, so ...’

  ‘No no! That’s just the hell of it. Our machine predicts that we will win!’

  ‘Hah!’ One of the Ten so far forgot his dignity as to snort aloud. ‘You think you can defeat us ?’

  ‘Put it this way,’ Caswell looked at his interruptor and then back to Ald. ‘We figure you have a lot of weapon-power you’re not using. So have we. Same reason on both sides. We live here. You want to live here. Neither of us wants suicide, the ecosphere sizzling with radio-activity, or so burned and bleached by chemicals that life is impossible. So it’s a limited war, right ? But we live here. We know the place and all its tricks. And we outnumber you millions to one. So, in the long run, we’re going to win. No doubt about that. The machine says so, and you can’t argue against that.’

  Ald raised a palm to quell what looked like further excited interruptions from the Council. One phrase rang a bell. ‘In the long run.’ He singled out his Odar with a bleak eye. ‘Before we go any further we will have insurance. We will be satisfied that this is the truth and not some subtle trick. Bring the detector.’

  Caswell eyed apprehensively but with interest the machine console that appeared on silent wheels. Its attendants made for him with obvious intent and he submitted, not having any choice.

  ‘We have a gadget something like that,’ he offered. ‘We call it a polygraph. Very commonly called a lie-detector. It isn’t, of course.’

  ‘This one is,’ Ald assured him, and by the time all the connections had been made and checked out, Caswell was prepared to believe it. The machine operator arranged twin read-outs, one for himself, the other where the Council could watch it.

  ‘Speak some truths,’ he commanded, and Caswell thought a moment.

  ‘I am human,’ he said. ‘Adult. Male. Dark brown in colour. Weigh about one-fifty. Stand five-eleven. Wearing a fur suit...’

  ‘Enough. Now some untruths of a similar type.’

  ‘I’m pale pink, a little girl aged eight with long yellow hair. I’m three feet tall, wearing a blue dress and blue ribbons in my hair.’

  The operator put up a hand, turned to bow to the Dar and settle by his controls. Onsep Ald settled back in his chair.

  ‘We did not,’ he said, ‘settle the question of your authority to speak. We will do that now.’

  Caswell shrugged and recited his name, qualifications and his post as head of programme and analysis of the United Earth War-Simulation and Strategic Computer Network, while the Dar kept his eye on the read-out.

  ‘And your purpose here?’

  �
�To try and do a deal between us.’

  ‘Yet your data must surely show that we do not deal?’

  ‘Right, but it was worth a try.’

  Ald frowned at that but kept patient. ‘And you say your machine predicts the final victory will go to you?’

  ‘Right. In the long run.’

  Ald lost his patience. ‘You know—believe—that you will win and yet you come here with peace offers that you know we will not hear? Are you then insane?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Caswell answered, and, for what it was worth, that showed up true on the machine too. Onsep Ald blew vapour disgustedly, then scowled, grew curious, then cunning.

  ‘Tell me why you are here. The real reason?’

  Caswell concealed his relief, hoping it wouldn’t show anything odd on the instruments. ‘It’s this way,’ he said, gathering his ideas. ‘We humans have been fighting each other now for a long time. We are pretty good at war. One way or another there has been a war of some kind, somewhere on this planet of ours, throughout recorded history, for at least five thousand years, probably longer than that. So long, in fact, that we had a queer kind of twisted pride in it. We glorified warriors, remembered battles, counted up our glorious dead like so many score-cards of merit. We expended more money, time and ingenuity on war and weapons than on any other activity there was. Our children played with toy soldiers and toy weapons of war. Our retired and senile war-leaders also played with toy soldiers and toy weapons of war. Almost the whole of our technological spin-off came as the result of war. In fact the very computer network that is my job had its beginnings in “brain” machines that started as war-weapons. And that was all true, up to about thirty years ago. And then—it seemed like overnight—we found we were hanging on the edge by our finger-nails!’

  Onsep Ald looked puzzled, so Caswell hastened to explain.

  ‘We found we were talking about the last war. The end. The finish of everything. We had weapons so big and powerful and dirty that no one could win this one. Just one more and it was all over, for ever.’

  ‘Yet you are still here?’ Ald suggested.

  ‘Right. Because while we took a breath to look at that answer, we found something else. That war was irrelevant. It didn’t solve any problems. It just smashed them. And that while we had been so busy blasting, burning and breaking up our war-problem, another kind of enemy had grown up. Not the kind you can fight that way. Pollution. Spoliation. Waste. Over-population. Waste ... we were hip-deep in it. Of all kinds. We live here. We still live here ... because, about thirty years ago, we grew up. We tried figuring out other ways of settling things. We had to. And we succeeded, in bits and pieces and with hard work. Not easy. But we found several new ways, new solutions. And we have been working them for thirty years. And we have grown to like it.’

  Caswell stopped to sigh, to eye the assembled Ten, to wonder if he was getting across to them. ‘It would take me all day to tell you all the ways we are better off by having no more fears, no more destruction, no more hysteria, no more waste of precious assets by making pointless and destructive machines. We have grown to like it. We can see a thousand more ways of progress ahead. And then—you came.’

  ‘And you remembered how to fight.’ The Dar nodded as certain things became clear to him. But there were still obscurities.

  ‘We remembered,’ said Caswell bitterly, ‘but we also remember peace. When our predictor told us that the best we could hope for was a long war, about a hundred years of it, before we could expect victory ...’

  ‘Your Machine mentioned that figure? One hundred years?’

  ‘Right. And it just is not worth it. As I say, we remember peace. We like it. So that’s why I’m here. To try for a treaty, sure. It was worth a try. But if that failed—all right—to offer surrender and find out what your terms are. Anything is better than war—again!’

  Ald was completely baffled. He eyed the Machine, this part of it. So too did every member of the Ten. Then they stared at each other. They knew that Caswell spoke true. It said so, right there on the instrument. But it was a truth that Ald just could not believe. To fight and win, that was good. To fight and lose—was very bad. But to be able to win—and yet surrender—was unthinkable! An exchange of glances with the Council told him that they shared the same shattered unbelief. There could be only one answer, the answer that came straight out of Meden first-law. ‘Never deal with the local inhabitants. ‘Never! And hadn’t he himself said this was a crazy planet with crazy people ? He made his decision fast.

  ‘This interview is concluded. Return that one whence he came, back to his own kind!’

  “But what about terms?’ Caswell asked. ‘What do I tell...?’

  He might as well have talked to the snow. In short order he was disconnected from the Machine and unceremoniously sent back to the outpost, there to find his baffled way across snow and ice to the human fort he had started from, to be warmed and fed and flown back to his immediate superior.

  * * * *

  He confronted General Osborne apologetically, with a sense of having failed. ‘I just don’t understand it,’ he confessed. ‘I told them the way it was, that we couldn’t face another century of war, that we wanted to give up, that we’d had enough. You’d think they would jump at it! But they just threw me out!’

  ‘You’re sure they believed you ?’

  ‘Positive. They tied me into that lie-detector machine of theirs, that one the prisoners have told us about. They knew, all right.’

  ‘Yes,’ Osborne smiled kindly. ‘It needed that. It must have been hard for them to believe that we would lay down our arms, just like that. When we could win, if we kept on.’

  ‘I told them all that,’ Caswell mumbled. ‘I just don’t understand it at all. Complete failure!’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Osborne was still kind. ‘It was a gamble, anyway. You did your best.’

  Within forty-eight hours all Meden forces had pulled in tight to either ice-cap. Eight hours after that the dark ships lifted off and went away without a word. General Osborne was very relieved to be able to report this news to World-President Kolodin himself in person.

  ‘It was a gamble,’ he admitted. ‘But worth trying. I didn’t fancy a century of constant warfare either.’

  ‘Now I don’t understand,’ Kolodin confessed. ‘You say Dr. Caswell genuinely intended offering total surrender ?’

  ‘Genuine for him, yes. He’s a pacifist all the way through. He is also a damned fine computer-man. But there are other kinds of computers.’ Osborne touched his head significantly. ‘I’m old enough to have had military training in the old style. One of the things they tell you is “Try to think into the enemy’s pattern.” Computers can handle statistical strategy but they’re not much good at personality problems. The Meden believe in conquest by war and then subjugation by force. They also believe implicitly in their Machine. That much we knew. From their limited observations they knew we were a peaceful planet. They found out different, fast, and that must have shaken them a bit. So, when I heard Caswell arguing, as he had a right to do, that we would be better off if we surrendered, it struck me we had a chance to throw them something they would never believe at all!’

  ‘Ah! I begin to see. It was all genuine, then?’

  ‘That was the beauty of it. I’ve read up the record on pacifists. I don’t understand them, at all, but I do know the way they act. Anything, to them, is better than war. The Meden wouldn’t understand that. They also wouldn’t understand how a one hundred per cent pacifist could at the same time be responsible for the working of the War-Simulator and Predictor—just a computation problem to Caswell. And, when I suggested it to him, he was all afire to volunteer. He firmly believed he was speaking on behalf of ... no, he was speaking on behalf of all those who think the way he does. So he was the genuine article, all the way down. Their machine said so. And they had to believe their machine.

  ‘You gambled yourself out of a job. General.’

&nb
sp; ‘In a way. But it was worth it. Caswell is right on one thing. The last thirty years have been pleasant. And now I can get back to that Central Australia Irrigation problem I was working on. You really need an army organisation there...’

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  * * * *

  FIRST LIGHT ON A DARKLING PLAIN

  Joseph Green

  In a backward but slowly developing culture, the truth could be a dangerous ploy to adopt for personal gain, especially where religion is involved— but perhaps the whole philosophy might be at fault.

  * * * *

  A blackness almost tangible, real, an assault on the senses ... streaks of white appeared, shot off towards infinity, faded ... streamers of light glowed yellow, flew past, coalesced ahead into burning golden globes ... steadied, solidified, grew ... he was rushing towards them ... the lights swelled, brightened ... and gradually dispelled the darkness as Araman’s vision cleared and he slowly recovered from the intense dizziness that had suddenly overcome him. He was clinging to the tunnel wall, struggling to stay erect, and the lights on which his eyes had focused were two of the forced-draught oil lanterns he had designed, to light this tunnel deep in the heart of the copper mountain.