The Randall Garrett Megapack Page 19

  “Due to atmospheric disturbances, the ship’s landing was several hundred miles from the point the commander had originally picked…” and “…the ship simply wasn’t built for atmospheric navigation.”

  The adverse winds which drove Pizarro’s ships off course were certainly “atmospheric disturbances,” and I defy anyone to prove that a Sixteenth Century Spanish galleon was built for atmospheric navigation.

  And I insist that using the term “carrier” instead of “horse,” while misleading, is not inaccurate. However, I would like to know just what sort of picture the term conjured up in the reader’s mind. In Chapter Ten, in the battle scene, you’ll find the following:

  “The combination [of attackers from both sides], plus the fact that the heavy armor was a little unwieldy, overbalanced him [the commander]. He toppled to the ground with a clash of steel as he and the carrier parted company.

  “Without a human hand at its controls, the carrier automatically moved away from the mass of struggling fighters and came to a halt well away from the battle.”

  To be perfectly honest, it’s somewhat of a strain on my mind to imagine anyone building a robot-controlled machine as good as all that, and then giving the drive such poor protection that he can fall off of it.

  One of the great screams from my critics has been occasioned by the fact that I referred several times to the Spaniards as “Earthmen.” I can’t see why. In order not to confuse the reader, I invariably referred to them as the “invading Earthmen,” so as to make a clear distinction between them and the native Earthmen, or Incas, who were native to Peru. If this be treachery, then make the most of it.

  In other words, I contend that I simply did what any other good detective story writer tries to do—mislead the reader without lying to him. Agatha Christie’s “The Murder of Roger Ackroyd,” for instance, uses the device of telling the story from the murderer’s viewpoint, in the first person, without revealing that he is the murderer. Likewise, John Dickson Carr, in his “Nine Wrong Answers” finds himself forced to deny that he has lied to the reader, although he admits that one of his characters certainly lied. Both Carr and Christie told the absolute truth—within the framework of the story—and left it to the reader to delude himself.

  It all depends on the viewpoint. The statement, “We all liked Father Goodheart very much” means one thing when said by a member of his old parish in the United States, which he left to become a missionary. It means something else again when uttered by a member of the tribe of cannibals which the good Father attempted unsuccessfully to convert.

  Similarly, such terms as “the gulf between the worlds,” “the new world,” and “the known universe” have one meaning to a science-fictioneer, and another to a historian. Semantics, anyone?

  In Chapter Ten, right at the beginning, there is a conversation between Commander Frank and Frater Vincent, and “agent of the Assembly” (read: priest). If the reader will go back over that section, keeping in mind the fact that what they are “actually” talking about are the Catholic Church and the Christian religion as seen from the viewpoint of a couple of fanatically devout Sixteenth Century Spaniards, he will understand the method I used in presenting the whole story.

  Let me quote:

  “Mentally, the commander went through the symbol-patterns that he had learned as a child—the symbol-patterns that brought him into direct contact with the Ultimate Power, the Power that controlled not only the spinning of atoms and the whirling of electrons in their orbits, but the workings of probability itself.”

  Obviously, he is reciting the Pater Noster and the Ave Maria. The rest of the sentence is self-explanatory.

  So is the following:

  “Once indoctrinated into the teachings of the Universal Assembly, any man could tap that power to a greater or lesser degree, depending on his mental control and ethical attitude. At the top level, a first-class adept could utilize that Power for telepathy, psychokinesis, levitation, teleportation, and other powers that the commander only vaguely understood.”

  It doesn’t matter whether you believe in the miracles attributed to many of the Saints; Pizarro certainly did. His faith in that Power was as certain as the modern faith in the power of the atomic bomb.

  As a matter of fact, it was very probably that hard, unyielding Faith which made the Sixteenth Century Spaniard the almost superhuman being that he was. Only Spain of the Sixteenth Century could have produced the Conquistadors or such a man as St. Ignatius Loyola, whose learned, devout, and fanatically militant Society of Jesus struck fear into the hearts of Protestant and Catholic Princes alike for the next two centuries.

  The regular reader of Astounding may remember that I gave another example of the technique of truthful misdirection in “The Best Policy,” (July, 1957). An Earthman, captured by aliens, finds himself in a position in which he is unable to tell even the smallest lie. But by telling the absolute truth, he convinces the aliens that homo sapiens is a race of super-duper supermen. He does it so well that the aliens surrender without attacking, even before the rest of humanity is aware of their existence.

  The facts in “Despoilers of the Golden Empire” remain. They are facts. Francisco Pizarro and his men—an army of less than two hundred—actually did inflict appalling damage on the Inca armies, even if they were outnumbered ten to one, and with astonishingly few losses of their own. They did it with sheer guts, too; their equipment was not too greatly superior to that of the Peruvians, and by the time they reached the Great Inca himself, none of the Peruvians believed that the invaders were demons or gods. But in the face of the Spaniards’ determined onslaught, they were powerless.

  The assassination scene at the end is almost an exact description of what happened. It did take a dozen men in full armor to kill the armorless Pizarro, and even then it took trickery and treachery to do it.

  Now, just to show how fair I was—to show how I scrupulously refrained from lying—I will show what a sacrifice I made for the sake of truth.

  If you’ll recall, in the story, the dying Pizarro traces the Sign of the Cross on the floor in his own blood, kisses it, and says “Jesus!” before he dies. This is in strict accord with every history on the subject I could find.

  But there is a legend to the effect that his last words were somewhat different. I searched the New York Public Library for days trying to find one single historian who would bear out the legend; I even went so far as to get a librarian who could read Spanish and another whose German is somewhat better than mine to translate articles in foreign historical journals for me. All in vain. But if I could have substantiated the legend, the final scene would have read something like this:

  Clawing at his sword-torn throat, the fearless old soldier brought his hand away coated with the crimson of his own blood. Falling forward, he traced the Sign of the Cross on the stone floor in gleaming scarlet, kissed it, and then glared up at the men who surrounded him, his eyes hard with anger and hate.

  “I’m going to Heaven,” he said, his voice harsh and whispery. “And you, you bastards, can go to Hell!”

  It would have made one hell of an ending—but it had to be sacrificed in the interests of Truth.

  So I rest my case.

  I will even go further than that; I defy anyone to point out a single out-and-out lie in the whole story. G’wan—I dare ya!

  (SECRET ASIDE TO THE READER; J. W. C., Jr., PLEASE DO NOT READ!)

  Ah, but wait! There is a villain in the piece!

  I did not lie to you, no. But you were lied to, all the same.

  By whom?

  By none less than that conniving arch-fiend, John W. Campbell, Jr., that’s who!

  Wasn’t it he who bought the story?

  And wasn’t it he who, with malice aforethought, published it in a package which was plainly labeled Science Fiction?

  And, therefore, didn’t you have every right to think it was science fiction?

  Sure you did!

  I am guilty of nothing more tha
n weakness; my poor, frail sense of ethics collapsed completely at the sight of the bribe he offered me to become a party to the dark conspiracy that sprang from the depths of his own demoniac mind. Ah, well; none of us is perfect, I suppose.

  CUM GRANO SALIS (1959)

  “And that,” said Colonel Fennister glumly, “appears to be that.”

  The pile of glowing coals that had been Storage Shed Number One was still sending up tongues of flame, but they were nothing compared with what they’d been half an hour before.

  “The smoke smells good, anyway,” said Major Grodski, sniffing appreciatively.

  The colonel turned his head and glowered at his adjutant.

  “There are times, Grodski, when your sense of humor is out of place.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the major, still sniffing. “Funny thing for lightning to do, though. Sort of a dirty trick, you might say.”

  “You might,” growled the colonel. He was a short, rather roundish man, who was forever thankful that the Twentieth Century predictions of skin-tight uniforms for the Space Service had never come true. He had round, pleasant, blue eyes, a rather largish nose, and a rumbling basso voice that was a little surprising the first time you heard it, but which seemed to fit perfectly after you knew him better.

  Right at the moment, he was filing data and recommendations in his memory, where they would be instantly available for use when he needed them. Not in a physical file, but in his own mind.

  All right, Colonel Fennister, he thought to himself, just what does this mean—to me? And to the rest?

  The Space Service was not old. Unlike the Air Service, the Land Service, or the Sea Service, it did not have centuries or tradition behind it. But it had something else. It had something that none of the other Services had—Potential.

  In his own mind, Colonel Fennister spelled the word with an uppercase P, and put the word in italics. It was, to him, a more potent word than any other in the Universe.

  Potential.

  Potential!

  Because the Space Service of the United Earth had more potential than any other Service on Earth. How many seas were there for the Sea Service to sail? How much land could the Land Service march over? How many atmospheres were there for the Air Service to conquer?

  Not for any of those questions was there an accurate answer, but for each of those questions, the answer had a limit. But how much space was there for the Space Service to conquer?

  Colonel Fennister was not a proud man. He was not an arrogant man. But he did have a sense of destiny; he did have a feeling that the human race was going somewhere, and he did not intend that that feeling should become totally lost to humanity.

  Potential.

  Definition: Potential; that which has a possibility of coming into existence.

  No, more than that. That which has a—

  He jerked his mind away suddenly from the thoughts which had crowded into his forebrain.

  What were the chances that the first expedition to Alphegar IV would succeed? What were the chances that it would fail?

  And (Fennister grinned grimly to himself) what good did it do to calculate chances after the event had happened?

  Surrounding the compound had been a double-ply, heavy-gauge, woven fence. It was guaranteed to be able to stop a diplodocus in full charge; the electric potential (potential! That word again!) great enough to carbonize anything smaller than a blue whale. No animal on Alphegar IV could possibly get through it.

  And none had.

  Trouble was, no one had thought of being attacked by something immensely greater than a blue whale, especially since there was no animal larger than a small rhino on the whole planet. Who, after all, could have expected an attack by a blind, uncaring colossus—a monster that had already been dying before it made its attack?

  Because no one had thought of the forest.

  The fact that the atmospheric potential—the voltage and even the amperage difference between the low-hanging clouds and the ground below—was immensely greater than that of Earth, that had already been determined. But the compound and the defenses surrounding it had already been compensated for that factor.

  Who could have thought that a single lightning stroke through one of the tremendous, twelve-hundred-foot trees that surrounded the compound could have felled it? Who could have predicted that it would topple toward the compound itself?

  That it would have been burning—that was something that could have been guaranteed, had the idea of the original toppling been considered. Especially after the gigantic wooden life-thing had smashed across the double-ply fence, thereby adding man-made energy to its already powerful bulk and blazing surface.

  But—that it would have fallen across Storage Shed Number One? Was that predictable?

  Fennister shook his head slowly. No. It wasn’t. The accident was simply that—an accident. No one was to blame; no one was responsible.

  Except Fennister. He was responsible. Not for the accident, but for the personnel of the expedition. He was the Military Officer; he was the Man In Charge of Fending Off Attack.

  And he had failed.

  Because that huge, blazing, stricken tree had toppled majestically down from the sky, crashing through its smaller brethren, to come to rest on Storage Shed Number One, thereby totally destroying the majority of the food supply.

  There were eighty-five men on Alphegar IV, and they would have to wait another six months before the relief ship came.

  And they didn’t have food enough to make it, now that their reserve had been destroyed.

  Fennister growled something under his breath.

  “What?” asked Major Grodski, rather surprised at his superior’s tone.

  “I said: ‘Water, water, everywhere—’ that’s what I said.”

  Major Grodski looked around him at the lush forest which surrounded the double-ply fence of the compound.

  “Yeah,” he said. “‘Nor any drop to drink.’ But I wish one of those boards had shrunk—say, maybe, a couple hundred feet.”

  “I’m going back to my quarters,” Fennister said. “I’ll be checking with the civilian personnel. Let me know the total damage, will you?”

  The major nodded. “I’ll let you know, sir. Don’t expect good news.”

  “I won’t,” said Colonel Fennister, as he turned.

  * * * *

  The colonel let his plump bulk sag forward in his chair, and he covered his hands with his eyes. “I can imagine all kinds of catastrophes,” he said, with a kind of hysterical glumness, “but this has them all beat.”

  Dr. Pilar stroked his, short, gray, carefully cultivated beard. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. We could all have been killed.”

  The colonel peeked one out from between the first and second fingers of his right hand. “You think starving to death is cleaner than fire?”

  Pilar shook his head slowly. “Of course not. I’m just not certain that we’ll all die—that’s all.”

  Colonel Fennister dropped his hands to the surface of his metal desk. “I see,” he said dryly. “Where there’s life, there’s hope. Right? All right, I agree with you.” He waved his hand around, in an all-encompassing gesture. “Somewhere out there, we may find food. But don’t you see that this puts us in the Siege Position?”

  Dr. Francis Pilar frowned. His thick salt-and-pepper brows rumpled in a look of puzzlement. “Siege Position? I’m afraid—”

  Fennister gestured with one hand and leaned back in his chair, looking at the scientist across from him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve let my humiliation get the better of me.” He clipped his upper lip between his teeth until his lower incisors were brushed by his crisp, military mustache, and held it there for a moment before he spoke.

  “The Siege Position is one that no military commander of any cerebral magnitude whatever allows himself to get into. It is as old as Mankind, and a great deal stupider. It is the position of a beleaguered group which lacks one simple essential to keep them alive unti
l help comes.

  “A fighting outfit, suppose, has enough ammunition to stand off two more attacks; but they know that there will be reinforcements within four days. Unfortunately, the enemy can attack more than twice before help comes. Help will come too late.

  “Or, it could be that they have enough water to last a week, but help won’t come for a month.

  “You follow me, I’m sure. The point, in so far as it concerns us, is that we have food for about a month, but we won’t get help before six months have passed. We know help is coming, but we won’t be alive to see it.”

  Then his eyes lit up in a kind of half hope. “Unless the native flora—”

  But even before he finished, he could see the look in Dr. Pilar’s eyes.

  * * * *

  Broderick MacNeil was a sick man. The medical officers of the Space Service did not agree with him in toto, but MacNeil was in a position to know more about his own state of health than the doctors, because it was, after all, he himself who was sick.

  Rarely, of course, did he draw the attention of the medical officers to his ever-fluctuating assortment of aches, pains, signs, symptoms, malaises, and malfunctions. After all, it wouldn’t do for him to be released from the Service on a Medical Discharge. No, he would suffer in silence for the sake of his chosen career—which, apparently, was to be a permanent Spaceman 2nd Class.’

  Broderick MacNeil had never seen his medical record, and therefore did not know that, aside from mention of the normal slight defects which every human body possesses, the only note on the records was one which said: “Slight tendency toward hypochondria, compensated for by tendency to immerse self in job at hand. According to psych tests, he can competently handle positions up to Enlisted Space Officer 3rd Class, but positions of ESO/2 and above should be carefully considered. (See Psych Rept. Intelligence Sectn.)”

  But, if MacNeil did not know what the medics thought of him, neither did the medics know what he thought of them. Nor did they know that MacNeil carried a secret supply of his own personal palliatives, purgatives and poly-purpose pills. He kept them carefully concealed in a small section of his space locker, and had labeled them all as various vitamin mixtures, which made them seem perfectly legal, and which was not too dishonest, since many of them were vitamins.