The Paradox Men Read online

  Alar followed Haven with narrowed eyes. The little biologist poured a cup of coffee of the consistency of mud, added a little cream from the portofrij and stirred it absently, the while looking out of the window from the shadows of the room.

  “‘Some sixth sense warned Eoanthropus of danger. The old male shook his five-hundred-pound body and convulsed into a snarling squat over the reindeer, searching through nearsighted eyes for the rash interlopers. He feared nothing but the giant cave bear, Ursus spelaeus. The females and children scurried behind him with mingled fear and curiosity.

  “‘Through the green foliage the invaders stared thunderstruck. It was immediately evident to them that the killers were some sort of animal, pretending to be men. The more intelligent of the Neandertals, including the old leader, exchanged glances of wrathful indignation. Without more ado the leader broke through the brush and raised his spear high with an angry shout.

  “‘He was seized by the conviction that these offensive creatures were strange, hence intolerable, that the sooner they were killed the more comfortable he would feel. He drew back his heavy spear and hurled it with all his strength. It passed through the heart of Eoanthropus to protrude half a foot beyond the back.’”

  Haven was frowning when he turned away from the window. He lifted the cup of coffee to his mouth and, just before he drank, his lips silently formed the words, “Audio search beam.”

  Alar knew that Corrips had caught the signal, even though the latter continued to read as though nothing had happened.

  “‘The brute-mind behind that hurtling spear, faced with the problem of an alien people, arrived at a solution by a simple thalamic response, uncomplicated by censorship of the frontal lobes—kill first, examine later.

  “‘This instinctive reaction, a vestige perhaps from the minuscule mental organization of his insectivore ancestor (Zalambdolestes?), dating probably back to the Cretaceous, has characterized every species of Hominidae before and since Neandertal.

  “‘The reaction is still strong, as two World Wars bear horrible witness. If the man with the spear could have reasoned first and hurled second, his descendants might have reached the stars within a very few millennia.

  “‘And now that fissionable materials are being mined directly from the sun’s surface in enormous quantities by America Imperial, the Western and Eastern hemispheres will not long delay another attempt to contest the superiority of their respective cultures. This time, however, neither side can hope for victory, stalemate, or even defeat.

  “‘The war will end, simply because there will be no human beings left to fight—if we except a hundred or so animal-like creatures huddling in the farthest corridors of the underground cities, licking their radiation sores and sharing with a few rats the corpses that lie so well-preserved everywhere (there being no putrefying bacteria remaining to decompose the dead). But even the ghouls are sterile and in another decade—’”

  There was a knock at the door.

  Haven and Corrips exchanged quick glances. Then Haven put down his coffee and walked toward the foyer. Corrips looked quickly about the room, reaffirming the positions of their sabers, which hung with innocent decorativeness from straps among the Hominidae skeletons.

  They heard Haven’s voice from the hallway. “Good evening, sir—? Why, it’s General Thurmond. What a delightful surprise, general! I recognized you at once but of course you don’t know me. I’m Professor Haven.”

  “Mind if I come in, Dr. Haven?” There was something chilling and deadly in that dry voice.

  “Not at all! Why, bless my soul we’re honored. Come in! Micah! Alar! It’s General Thurmond, Minister of Police!”

  Alar knew that the man’s effusiveness covered unusual nervousness.

  Corrips timed his approach so that the group would coalesce about the Hominidae. Alar, following close behind, observed uneasily that the ethnologist’s hands were twitching. Were they so afraid of just one man? His respect for Thurmond was increasing rapidly.

  Except for a piercing appraisal of Alar, Thurmond ignored the introductions. “Professor Corrips,” he rasped gently, “you were reading something very peculiar just before I knocked. You know, of course, that we had a search beam on the study?”

  “Did you? How odd. I was reading from a book that Dr. Haven and I are writing—Suicide of the Human Race. Were you interested?”

  “Only incidentally. It’s really a matter for the Minister of Subversive Activities. I shall report it, of course, for whatever action he deems best. But I’m really here on another matter.”

  Alar sensed the tension mount by a full octave. Corrips was breathing loudly—Haven, apparently, not at all. Thurmond’s feral eyes, he knew, had not missed the cluster of sabers dangling with the Hominidae.

  “What,” asked the officer abruptly, “is the Geotropic Project?”

  “Surely not a question of subversion, general?” said Corrips. “We understand the project was recommended by the Meganet Mind himself.”

  “Irrelevant,” said the visitor calmly. “Please summarize it briefly.”

  The two professors exchanged glances. Corrips shrugged. “The project investigates the effects of high velocities and accelerations on living organisms. In the general case we used an extremely fast centrifuge, providing a gravity gradient developing from one G to several million over a period of weeks.”

  “Results?” said Thurmond.

  “Results varied. And are still not understood.”

  “Examples?” said the visitor.

  “Well, in one case obelia, a sea-dwelling primitive polyp-feeder, evolved forward into the sea anemone. On the other hand, radiolaria, a silica-secreting protozoa, evolved backward to limax amoeba—which doesn’t secrete anything. In another case, euglena, the first of the one-celled protozoa to possess chlorophyll, as well as being the first plant-like form, fell back down the evolutionary ladder to become a simple flagellate.”

  “Higher forms?” asked Thurmond.

  “Various,” said Corrips. He did not elaborate.

  The general lifted his hand indolently, as though to indicate it didn’t matter. “I understand that the project is staffed largely with persons with—impediments,” he said coldly.

  “Yes,” said Corrips. The word faded into a whisper.

  “They work for you?”

  “We direct and assist them in their work,” explained Haven.

  “You control them,” said Thurmond flatly.

  No one answered. Haven wiped perspiring hands on the sides of his coat.

  “May I see the personnel register?” asked Thurmond.

  The two professors hesitated. Then Corrips stepped to the desk and returned with a black book. He gave it to Thurmond, who leafed through it idly, examining two or three of the photographs with gloomy curiosity. “This chap with no legs,” he said. “What does he do within the project?”

  Alar’s pulse beat had climbed to one hundred seventy a minute.

  Corrips cleared his throat. “The Gemini…” The words were garbled. He coughed and tried again. “The Gemini Run.”

  Thurmond looked at him with thinly veiled amusement. “Which is?”

  “Two tree shrew fetuses in the centrifuge. Extraordinary gravities, recorded under strobe lights at picoseconds. One went up the scale, to become the fetus of what looked like a lemur. The other retrogressed to a lizard-like form. Just before it died it looked rather like a dog fish.”

  “He can’t carry a gun, can he?”

  “Who? Oh, the Gemini scientist?”

  Alar watched the six black-shirted I.P.’s ease quietly into the room behind Thurmond.

  “Of course not,” snapped Corrips. “His contributions lie in an altogether different—”

  “Then the government can’t be expected to continue his support,” interjected Thurmond. He ripped the sheet from the book and handed it to the officer who stood just behind him. “And here’s another,” he said, frowning at the next page. “A blind woman. No use at all
in a factory, is she?”

  “Her mother,” said Haven tightly, “collaborated with Kennicot Muir in determining the Nine Fundamental Equations that culminated in the establishment of our solarions on the surface of the sun. This child, in her own right, is one of the most brilliant minds in the Geotropic Project. For instance, she has fed all our data into the computer, and she has put the question, ‘What would be the effect on a human being?’”

  “The answer?”

  Haven clenched his fists. “I—we—we need more work.”

  “But what does it look like so far? What effect on human beings?”

  The professor sighed. “It would be a bit like the Gemini Run. According to the computer, two samples of the same species would have to be associated together to show the effect. In the hypothetical case, one would evolve, the other would devolve.”

  “And this girl programmed the computer for that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Most unscientific, Professor Haven. In fact, it’s downright ridiculous.” Thurmond studied the registry sheet. “If that’s the best this girl can do, you’ll never miss her. More to the point, she’s incapable of precision labor and her mother was an associate of Muir, a known traitor.” He ripped the sheet out and passed it back to a young officer.

  “Just what does the lieutenant intend doing with those sheets?” asked Haven with a rising voice. He moved his hand carelessly to the clavicle of the Cro-Magnon skeleton, a few inches from the sabers.

  “We’re going to take all your research staff away, professor.”

  Haven’s mouth opened and closed. He seemed to shrink where he stood. Finally he said hesitantly: “For what reason, sir?”

  “For the reason I have said. They are useless to the Imperium.”

  “Not really sir,” Haven said slowly. “Their usefulness must be evaluated in terms of the long range good they will do for humanity—and, of course, the Imperium…”

  “Perhaps,” Thurmond said unemotionally. “But we shall not take that chance.”

  “Then,” Haven asked cautiously, “then you plan to…?”

  “Do you insist that I be precise?”

  “Yes.”

  “They will be sold to the highest bidder—probably a charnel-house.”

  Alar found himself licking pallid lips. It could not be happening but it was happening. Twenty-two young men and women, some of the most brilliant minds in the Imperium, were going to be snuffed out with casual brutality—why?

  Corrips’s voice was hardly a whisper. “What do you want?”

  “Alar,” stated Thurmond icily. “Give me Alar and keep the others.”

  “No!” cried Haven, staring white-faced at Thurmond. He turned to Corrips and found confirmation there.

  Alar listened to his voice. It seemed that of another man. “I must go with you, of course,” he said to Thurmond.

  Haven shot out a restraining hand. “No, boy! You haven’t the faintest idea what it’s all about. You’re worth far more than any two dozen minds on Earth. If you love humanity do as we tell you!”

  5

  The Projection

  THURMOND CALLED A quiet command over his shoulders. “Shoot them.”

  Six blasts of lead, urged by the titanic pressures of fission-generated steam, bounced harmlessly off the three men and ricocheted about the walls.

  The sabers were no longer hanging from the Hominidae.

  And Thurmond’s blade was lunging for Alar’s heart.

  Only the tightest breast parry saved the Thief. The lieutenant and his men, evidently hand picked, were forcing the two older men back down the wall.

  “Alar!” cried Haven. “Don’t fight Thurmond! The trapdoor! We’ll cover you!”

  The Thief flung an anguished look toward the professors. Haven broke free from the wall and joined Alar, who was as yet miraculously unbloodied. They immediately crashed into the wing of the grand piano.

  The floor dropped from under them.

  Alar’s last view of the study was Corrips’s body at the foot of the wall with his face cut away. With a shriek of grief he flung his sword futilely at Thurmond, and then the trap wings closed over his head.

  As he careened through the tunnel his nostrils were assailed by the musty, mysterious smell of earth. His face broke spider webs. The little eight-leggers must live on smaller, blundering insects, he thought. He and Haven dashed by algae growing in vague green circles around the dim intermittent lights. A couple of tiny winged insects flew off in alarm. A diminutive underground ecosystem. Predators and prey. He deeply sympathized. Like rabbits, he and his friend were fleeing through the emergency exit burrow. The wolves behind them would break down the entrance trapdoor in another sixty seconds. Time enough. Unless more wolves awaited them at the exit. Keep running. No choice. Not now. Too late for anything else. Far too late. He could have—should have—saved Corrips.

  In the semi-darkness he accosted Haven bitterly. “Why didn’t you let me go with Thurmond?”

  “Do you think it was easy for Micah and me, boy?” panted the professor brokenly. “You’ll understand some day. Right now we’ve got to get you to a safer place.”

  “But what about Micah?” insisted Alar.

  “He’s dead. We can’t even bury him. Come along, now.”

  They hurried silently to the end of the tunnel, half a mile away, where it opened into a dead-end alley from behind a mass of debris.

  “The nearest Thief rendezvous is six blocks up the street. You know the one?”

  Alar nodded dumbly.

  “I can’t run as fast as you,” continued Haven. “You’ve got to make it alone. You simply must. No questions. Off with you, now.”

  The Thief touched the older man’s bloody sleeve silently, then turned and ran.

  He ran swiftly in the center of the streets, easily, rhythmically, breathing through dilated nostrils. Everywhere were the thin, weary faces of free laborers and clerks returning from the day’s work. Peddlers and beggars, dressed in drab cast-off garments but not yet slaves, clotted the sidewalks.

  Three hundred meters above him twelve or fifteen armed helicopters followed leisurely. He sensed that a three-dimensional net was closing in on him. Road blocks were probably being set up ahead as well as on the side streets.

  He had two squares to go.

  A trio of searchlights stabbed down at him from the darkening skies like an audible chord of doom. To attempt to dodge the beams was futile. Still, explosive shells would follow within seconds and a near hit could kill him.

  Subconsciously he noted that the streets had suddenly become empty. When Thief-hunting, the I.P.’s fired their artillery with fine disregard of careless street dwellers. He would never make the Thief underground station. He must hide now or never.

  With flashing eyes he looked about him, and found what he wanted, an entrance to the slave underworld. It was fifty yards away, and he sprinted toward it frantically.

  Above him, he knew, some thirty narrowed eyes were squinting into gun sights, trigger fingers with cool, unhurried efficiency were squeezing…

  He flung himself into the gutter.

  The shell struck ten feet in front of him. He was up instantly, coughing and stunned, but invisible in the swirling dust clouds. Pieces of brick and cobblestone were falling all about him. Two of the spotlights were roving nervously over the edge of the cloud nearest the underworld entrance. The other was playing rapidly and erratically around the periphery of the cloud. He couldn’t even make the slave entrance. He waited for the spotlight to pass, then dashed for the nearest tenement door.

  The door was boarded and locked. He pounded frantically.

  For the first time he felt—hunted. And with that cornered feeling time slowed down and finally crept. He knew that his senses had simply accelerated. He noted several things. His ears caught the heavy grinding of an armored car churning around the corner on two wheels, with headlights that swept the entire street.

  He saw that the dust had settled
and that two of the ’copter searchlights were combing the area methodically. A third beam had settled motionless on the underground stairway entrance. That beam was the only real obstacle. It was a neat problem in stimulus-response physiology. Stimulus—observer sees object enter white circular field ten feet in diameter. Response—pull trigger before object leaves field.

  Like a frightened deer he leaped between the two converging beams of the armored car and sped toward the brilliantly lighted stairs. He was struck twice by small-arm fire from the car but his armor absorbed it easily. The turret computer would need only milliseconds to train the gun on him. But that was all the time he needed.

  He was in the lighted area of the stairs now, hurtling downward toward the first landing. He had tried desperately to clear all the steps, and he did. He crashed to the concrete platform and immediately stretched out flat as a shell shattered the entrance.

  He was up again instantly, tearing down the remaining flights to the first underground level of the slave city. It would take his pursuers a few seconds to pick their way through that wreck of muck and rubble. He would need the delay.

  He eased out of the stairway cautiously, leaned against the wall and peered about him, sucking in the foul air gratefully. On this level lived the higherclass slaves, those who had sold themselves into bondage for twenty years or less.

  It was time for the night shifts to be leaving the slave compounds, accompanied by bullet-browed squad masters. They would be transported to the fields, mines, mills or wherever the slave contractor ordered them sent. There they would work out the nameless fraction of their lives that they had sold.

  By crossing through these grim work parties he should be able to make his way to the ascending stairs behind the armored car and resume his flight to the Thief hideaway.

  But not a person was moving in the silent substreets.

  The row on row of slave compounds, up and down the narrow streets, were shut up tightly. That could not have been done within a few minutes. It bespoke hours of preparation by Thurmond. It must be that way on every level, even to Hell’s Row, where diseased and manacled wretches labored in eternal gloom. He whirled in alarm. An armored car was rolling through the darkened street toward him.