The Best of Argosy #7 - Minions of Mercury Read online

  The policeman refused to do a thing to give them an opportunity to cross. Yet surprisingly, they didn’t seem to resent, this in the least. They appeared perfectly content to await their chance to make a dash for it.

  MARK was suddenly distracted by a loud yell from the policeman. It was accompanied by lesser yells from several of the pedestrians. An old man, who had been waiting on the opposite side of the larger street, thought he saw an opportunity to scurry across. Several others took the same chance. But in the center of the street one of the younger men in the group jostled against the old one and tripped him.

  The oldster fell heavily, directly in the path of a huge truck!

  Squealing brakes mingled with the shouts of pedestrians. Mark didn’t yell. He acted.

  With a speed born of tireless, steel-spring muscles, he leaped in front of the truck and snatched the old man to safety. He carried him to the pavement and stood him upright. He tried to inquire if the oldster had been hurt, but his voice made not a dent in the din raised by dozens of horns and a score or so of angry voices.

  The horns subsided as the trucks hurried on. But the voices became louder. Mark, for a minute, couldn’t make it out. The people, instead of being glad that the old man had escaped death, were angry that he had delayed traffic for an instant! The oldster cringed at their insulting tirades. Mark patted him reassuringly on the shoulder and turned to face the irate policeman who was approaching.

  “Doddering old fool!” raged the cop. “If you’re too feeble to cross a street, why don’t you use the underpass?”

  “Where’s the underpass?” asked Mark, somewhat out of patience, himself.

  “A half mile up the street,” quavered the old man. “A hundred steps down and then a hundred steps up again. My legs aren’t up to it.”

  “Makes no difference,” rasped the officer. “You’ll face the tribunal for delaying traffic!”

  A murmur of approval came from the crowd of onlookers as the cop reached forth a hand to take the old one’s arm. Mark struck it away.

  “Not so fast,” he said. “The man was knocked down. He couldn’t help delaying your precious traffic.”

  The cop flushed from his eyebrows to his short ribs, which were exposed.

  “Wise guy, huh? Okay, for that I’ll take you along, too. Assaulting an officer!”

  The officer evidently thought his pistol would be needed for the job, for he began to draw it. That was a mistake.

  In an instant he was flat on his back and Mark was dusting off his knuckles and grinning at the glazed look in the cop’s eyes. The latter made an effortful and badly coordinated attempt to pull himself together, gave it up as a bad job, and subsided peacefully on the pavement.

  Mark’s grin faded at the sound of the gasp of horror which arose from the onlookers. He turned to face them, wondering what manner of people inhabited this modern city of Detroit. They certainly weren’t behaving as normal urbanites. In his day a cheer would have greeted the manhandling of a cop who had acted like this one.

  He noticed that the crowd was composed mainly of young people, with apparently only a few over fifty. These few, he was pleased to see, were smiling happily. The rest were frowning and muttering threateningly.

  “You inhuman brats,” Mark told the latter. “This old man might have been the father of any of you. Out of the way, now, or I’ll lay some of you out beside the cop.”

  THE crowd parted reluctantly and he piloted the old man down the street. At the next corner he turned, looking back for an instant to see if there was any pursuit. There wasn’t. Evidently the cop hadn’t recovered and none of the others cared to invite similar treatment. He slowed his fast pace to allow the old man to catch his breath.

  “Where are you headed for, Pop?” he asked. “I’ll stay with you and see that you get there.”

  “Another block,” said the oldster. “You took a terrible chance, young man. I’m very grateful. But more than that, I’m pleased. I thought that Vargo had stamped out such things as respect for one’s elders. You must be a stranger in this city. What is your name? Mine is Dodd.”

  “Mark. And you’re right. I am a stranger. But what’s all this about a lack of respect for elders? I should expect the opposite. I heard some talk of ancestor worship in this city.”

  The old man shuddered. “The Ancestors!” he whispered, with something like loathing in his voice. “They’re a blight on humanity! They fostered all this. They dream of a perfect world, yet they couldn’t make a perfect one in their own time. Their progress is all a sham, a thing of no substance. It is bringing only misery, because it leads to the one thing that made theirs an imperfect civilization. War!

  As he said the last, the old man turned into the doorway of a two-story structure. A small sign, etched in brass, proclaimed that the place was a home for the aged.

  Dodd led the way into a large room which looked like a combination library and recreation room. For an instant Mark fancied himself transported six thousand years into the past and set down inside a YMCA.

  One wall was lined with bookcases, and scattered here and there were tables where men played chess, checkers and cards. The men were all aged, yet appeared like any similar group of his own time. There were kindly-looking men with silky white beards, crabbed-appearing ones, and tired, spiritless ones.

  Here and there were notes of incongruity. The cards weren’t the same as those of the twentieth-century sort, and the chess boards had twice as many pieces, And there were a few games that he failed to recognize at all.

  Books, on the other hand, were the same. Probably the present-day civilization had developed along lines similar to his own because of the many things which had been salvaged from the ruins after the end of the last wars. The art of bookmaking may have been one of the salvaged processes. Though, of course, the thing might be an accidental development, the result of progress in similar peoples reaching approximately the same point.

  “The men you see here,” Dodd said, “number more than half of the completely sane and free mentalities in this entire city!”

  MARK gazed about him, quite astonished. There weren’t any more than fifty men in the large room. Some of them were looking at him in polite curiosity. Physically a young man, he did look out of place here in a roomful of the aged and feeble.

  “Perhaps I’d better explain,” said Dodd, indicating a chair.

  “These men were in their forties when Vargo instituted his new idea of vocational training. And that is why they are among the few remaining entirely sane people in this city. Vargo...”

  “Wait a minute,” interrupted Mark. “Let’s start at the beginning. Who the devil is Vargo? I’ve been hearing a lot about that character.”

  Dodd made a wry expression. “Vargo, Giver of Life!” he said, sarcastically. “He’s well on the way to becoming a god, right now. But those who knew him before he gained power consider him a grasping, egotistical tyrant. Something which should be eliminated for the betterment of the city.

  “We, however, are in the minority. We number about a hundred as opposed to two million or so who think him almost divine.

  “Our government used to be something on the order of those ancient republics you have probably read about. Our citizenry elected its king once every ten years. It did, that is, until Vargo came along. A business depression preceded his election, and his scientific methods ended it. He made drastic changes in social organization and in a very short time everybody was prosperous and happy. Happier than ever before. Result; no more elections. Vargo is king as long as he lives.”

  Mark’s eyebrows lifted as he waited for some more. But Dodd, with senile absentmindedness, seemed to have sunk into a gloomy reverie.

  “Pardon me,” ventured Mark, and waited until Dodd’s eyes raised to regard him glassily. “Vargo — remember?”

  “Yes... Vargo! The scheming, sadistic. But you don’t understand. We are not really prosperous. Our people are merely contented with much less than before. That is w
hy they are happy. They don’t have much, but they don’t want much. Vargo has increased working hours and the people like it because everyone now enjoys his work! All they want is the opportunity to work longer hours, and they’re deliriously happy about it!”

  Mark shook his head and wondered if the old fellow had told the truth about the state of sanity of those who met in this room. Somebody certainly was crazy.

  “Sounds like an unusual state of affairs,” he remarked.

  Dodd nodded gloomily. “It’s not natural,” he said, resentfully.

  “You men don’t happen to be oldtime union organizers, do you?” Mark inquired.

  Dodd seemed to be mystified at this. Mark concluded that the present civilization hadn’t got quite that far. And if everyone liked his work as much as Dodd claimed, unions would never develop.

  “Just what is your main objection to this Vargo?” he asked.

  Dodd looked at him in amazement. “Why, because he is responsible for all this. He brought the Ancestors to life. He caused our people to think of nothing but production, production, production... That’s why I was almost arrested. I was delaying production.

  “If I slowed a couple of trucks for a few seconds, the materials which those trucks carried would be a few seconds late in arriving. And the factories to which they were going would be a few seconds later in using those materials to manufacture guns and other war equipment. It’s getting so that human life is nothing compared to high-geared production. And the people want it that way!

  Mark frowned. “Something’s getting past me,” he said. “Let’s go back. What have the Ancestors to do with this? What did you mean by saying that Vargo brought them to life?”

  A COMMOTION at the door prevented Dodd from answering. An elderly attendant raised his voice in quavering protest as several men pushed their way past him. Mark saw that they were police, or perhaps soldiers. Then he recognized the cop who had stopped his right hook. “That’s him!” cried the policeman, pointing to Mark. “I remember that axe. And there’s the old man, too.”

  Mark jumped to his feet as the police surged forward. He grinned as he noticed that there were only five of them. Fair enough odds, he thought. Should make a nice little pile on the floor.

  But his grin faded when he saw them draw their pistols. He considered briefly the chances of dodging between bullets fired from five guns at once. Then he happened to think of the usual fate of innocent bystanders. That was really what made him raise his hands in surrender. He didn’t relish the thought of any of the old men stopping a bullet intended for him.

  Dodd was quivering with excitement as they were led toward a closed truck at the curb. Mark was slightly annoyed because he had permitted the officers to remove his weapons. But he consoled himself with the thought that he didn’t really need them anyway.

  “This is the last ride,” Dodd quavered, as one of the police pushed him inside. “Vargo himself handles all cases involving malcontents. A thief would fare better.”

  Mark eased himself off a splinter in the rough bench, which ran the length of the truck’s interior. This conveyance, he was thinking, was a poor imitation of the jiffy wagons of the twentieth century.

  For although they hadn’t been exactly luxurious, they had at least been equipped with padding on the seats. And the springs had been better. But then, some of the best people had ridden in them. Maybe it was different now.

  “Keep your chin up, Pop,” he advised. “I was going to drop in on Vargo, anyway. By the way, we were interrupted. What were you going to say? About Vargo, you know, bringing the Ancestors to life...”

  DODD shook his head wonderingly. “You’re a strange man,” he said. “Vargo is a scientist. He worked with electricity back in the days when little was known about it. I remember when he and I were in the same class in physics... But you wouldn’t be interested in that...

  “At any rate, Vargo discovered some kind of vibration which would reassemble the atoms of a decomposed body and bring it back to its original form. He did that when he was still in college. He had failures without number, producing freaks of all sorts. Foreign elements would be acted upon by his vibration and reconstruct all sorts of things within the bodies of the animals he experimented upon.

  “For years none of them lived. He was finally successful when he turned his ray upon the contents of a bronze casket which had been dug up from one of the ancient cemeteries.

  “A man was reconstructed, and he lived! Though he died shortly after from the effects of some copper oxide which had been restored within his body. The oxide from the casket had mingled with the remains of the body.

  “And so, though he didn’t give up, he met failure again.

  “But Vargo was entirely successful when he tried his vibration on the contents of a casket made of one of the rustless steel compounds. That man became the first Ancestor. He restored others, five altogether, each one a specialist in some particular branch of science in which the ancients excelled. He put them to work, and they have done much to advance science and industry.

  “Motor trucks have replaced horse-drawn vehicles within the city. Guns have come into existence. And about ten years ago one of the Ancestors invented the ray for forcing vegetable growth. Old-fashioned farming was abandoned, and we now grow enough to feed the city, entirely within the walls. Even the enormous quantities of vegetable matter that is fermented to produce the alcohol for the motors.

  “Vargo took the credit for most of the work of the Ancestors, which they don’t seem to mind, and as a result he was elected king. And he became so popular that no more elections have been held. For thirty years, during which time the face of the city has changed tremendously, he has used the science of the Ancestors to further his own ambitions.”

  The old man fell into a fretful silence, watching the progress of the patrol wagon through a barred window. Mark was equally silent, for there was a lot to think about.

  Chapter 6: Without Wings, You Fly

  IT WAS almost too much to digest at one sitting. Especially considering the available accommodations for sitting. It was enough to give one an ache in various places.

  Dead men brought back to life! Dead for quite some time, too. Living ancestors! And they actually were that, for the bodies had been dug up from the very graveyards which the remote ancestors of these people had used.

  The mention of stainless steel caskets gave Mark to believe that the Ancestors must be from a period only slightly later than his own former existence. Rustless metals had come into wide usage during the years preceding the beginning of his long sleep. Therefore these Ancestors had lived, sometime during that century, at the height of Man’s conquest of Science. No wonder Vargo had put them to profitable use.

  That raised another question. Why did they allow him to do so? Did Vargo’s plans match their own aims? Or did he have some hold over them?

  Mark was about to ask when the patrol wagon bumped over a curbing and heaved itself up a driveway. Dodd and he were kept covered by the policemen’s pistols as they got out. Then they were herded through a door and down a corridor lined with cells. Mark frowned at the sight of them.

  “Take us to Vargo,” he demanded.

  The answer to that was a sudden rush by three policemen, at the conclusion of which Mark found himself on the less pleasing side of a cell door. It clanged decisively shut. Decisively, that is, from the viewpoint of the police. Cell doors are supposed to be that way. This one, for some reason wasn’t. They were more than surprised to see it bounce open as quickly as it had closed! The foremost cop slammed it shut again, even harder than before. That was a tactical error, for it only bounded back harder. It caught him before he could get out of the way and knocked him flat.

  Mark stepped back, deeper into the darkness of his cell, and thus farther from the door. He didn’t want to be in the way should it suddenly decide to swing inward. From his personal experience with cell doors he knew that they were unpredictable. Omega, you see, liked to play wi
th them when he was around.

  Mark remembered one which had turned a cherry red, and then melted at his feet.

  This one, however, did no such a thing. It completed its swing, banged against the wall and then returned slowly and locked itself. The policemen, looking puzzled and pretty sullen, retired from the immediate vicinity, first cautiously closing the door of another cell on the unfortunate Dodd.

  Mark listened to their footsteps march down the corridor and cease with the closing of a door at its end. “Come on, you old fox,” he coaxed. “Make yourself visible.”

  “Haven’t time,” said a soft voice close to his ear. “I just dropped in to see how you’re doing. And as usual, I find you in jail. What are you, anti-social?”

  “They got a law here against socking cops,” Mark explained.

  “Narrow-minded, eh? What have you done about telekinesis?”

  MARK groaned. “I was afraid you’d bring that up. Here it’s been two hours since you allegedly operated on me, and I haven’t done a thing. I can’t even melt those cell doors. I guess I’m a failure.”

  “Two hours is a long time,” Omega stated. “I went clear to Andromeda, several hundred light-years away, and back in that interval.”

  Mark affected a yawn. “Interesting,” he commented. “And how are all the folks on dear old Andromeda? It’s been quite some time since I’ve...”

  “Cut it out, nitwit,” Omega snapped. “I told you I’m short of time. But I just happened to remember that I didn’t finish that operation.”

  “That’s why I said ‘alleged,’ ” Mark said. “I didn’t feel anything.”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Omega. “I operated on that portion of your brain which controls the energies locked in the sub-etheric vibrations. You now have enough development to use them to move matter. That’s all, though. I didn’t develop it enough to allow you to create or destroy matter. You’ll be able to do that yourself, if you practice for a few hundred years. But I forgot something. Remember the time I developed your hypnotic ability?”