New Writings in SF 20 - [Anthology] Read online

  So what happens, Horstman, if you make a sonic maser and experiment with its output under extremes of temperature and pressure? Are you quite, quite sure there’s no sonic analogue of superconductivity, no such animal as granulated sound, no way in which super-intensity coherent sound can’t be locked in stasis and sealed in glass? You know that somebody can do it and that’s half the battle. All you need to discover is how. Which way do I go for Jericho?

  He stopped as the vision hit him. The intuitive leaps through physics for which he was noted, had transported his thinking suddenly to a new energy level, like the proverbial electron being excited into changing atomic shells in a pumped maser. He was shaking violently as the new concepts clicked into place and automatically he reached for pen and paper to trap the visions in outline formulae. The similarity between Lamb waves and electromagnetic waves in waveguide transmission, acquired a new perspective. The fact that optical laws of reflection and refraction could be applied equally to sound waves, was no longer an interesting coincidence.

  He knew now how to make his sonic laser. And that was only the first step. Given a sonic source of sufficient intensity, he could see how the stasis problem could be approached. And beyond that...

  Instead of pen and paper, his hand touched only a cold, damp sandbag. He returned to the agony of reality like a man broken out of a trance. It was nearly dark, cruelly cold and his guts felt as though tied in knots. The pain in his leg was more than sufficient to make the grey sweat trickle down his neck. Yet the burning conviction that he was on to something fantastically important raced through his brain like an overdose of a stimulating drug. He had to report his conclusions to Maidment, he had to implore the commandos to come and get him out and back to his laboratory where he could prove this new knowledge, formularise it, harness it—make it work.

  He must... The sandbag split open as he pulled the cord-ring and gave him access to the handset. The transmit bulb was glowing as he placed the device before him and began to spill out words.

  His last gesture was to break the cartridge apart, to separate the propellant cylinder from the glass-like projectile. He felt the cool propellant powder flow over his fingers, but his eyes were on the bullet, now scarcely to be seen, but still cold and heavy in his hands. Something was beginning to happen to it. Instinctively he knew he had made a grave mistake. A luminosity appeared, blue, fluorescent, as unknown fire. He dropped it as though it had suddenly grown hot. As its dim cascade of light hit the floor he judged its position to a nicety, heaved the sandbag on top of it, and headed at a gallop for the door.

  And the room broke into thunder ...

  Hands over his agonised ears, he hit the door full-tilt and bruised his forehead severely. He clawed at the latch and fled out into the darkness. Behind him, the scream of a terrifying seven Kilohertz hum built rapidly to an incredible maximum which shattered the ruins of which the room had been a part and was clearly discernible in the vibration of the ground and the shaking of his flesh as he ran.

  He had no object in mind save distance and his eyes and brain were too clouded by pain and panic to choose him a course. Whether he ran against something, or whether somebody rose out of the darkness and hit him, he never knew. But one brilliant galaxy of lights burst across his perception and he dropped into a pit of blackness which had neither stars nor any constellations.

  * * * *

  Maidment

  ‘How is he, Doctor?’ Maidment’s voice lacked the tones of genuine concern.

  The doctor’s ill-concealed anger was abortive as an expression of protest. If Maidment even noticed it, he gave no sign. Whereas Early felt her presence to be an intrusion, Maidment too obviously controlled the situation. Unfortunately, too many people credited Maidment with the value of the face he chose to adopt to meet a particular situation. Since he was an arch liar, most of the people were wrong.

  The doctor, however, was different. He deliberately kept his back to Maidment to underscore his detestation.

  ‘Horstman’s as well as can be expected—after what you’ve done to him. If you want a layman’s list, he’s suffering from concussion, suspected fracture of the skull, a damaged eardrum, slight exposure, extreme malnutrition ... and if we manage to save his leg it’ll be a miracle. Apart from that, he was too susceptible to that damn virus you gave him. You ought to be tried as a criminal. I’d testify.’

  ‘How long will it take you to get him right?’

  ‘Right!’ The doctor nearly shouted the word. ‘Man, he’ll never be right again as long as he lives!’

  ‘Fit enough to return to work, I meant.’ Maidment maintained his infuriating calm.

  Early was never quite sure whether Maidment’s determination not to be impressed was natural, or whether it was a carefully maintained pose. Whatever its origin, it was remarkably effective. The doctor glanced appealingly at Early, as if trying to gauge where her private sympathies lay.

  ‘Give me twelve weeks,’ said the doctor finally. ‘By then I’ll have him as fit as he’s ever going to be. That leg of his is a festering mess. Make no mistake about it, Maidment— you’re responsible. I’ll be sending a report on this to the Medical Directorate and a copy to Command Staff.’

  ‘Do that,’ said Maidment wearily. ‘I can give you four weeks. I want Horstman back at work by then, even if you have to amputate the leg.’

  ‘You want!’ For a moment the doctor appeared in danger of suffering a seizure. ‘Look here, Maidment, what the hell right have you to decide that Horstman’s got to lose a leg?’

  ‘The same right which causes Command to send men out to death by enemy fire. The right of necessity caused by involvement in total war.’ Maidment swung round for one of his classical attacks, his voice scathing. ‘You damn medics are out of touch. You still think that Man’s highest quality is mercy. I tell you it isn’t. Survival is all.’

  The doctor choked on his reply, so Maidment continued.

  ‘Ask Horstman when he comes round. Tell him he’s got to stay here twelve weeks. He’ll go berserk. He’s got a job to do and I doubt if you’re big enough to stop him doing it.’

  ‘You’re insane!’ the doctor shouted finally.

  By that time Maidment was well down the corridor, with Early nearly running to keep up with him. Maidment headed for the Administrators office. His call was brief and direct. He authorised the immediate expenditure of any sum required to provide Horstman with a prosthetic limb. Then he went back to his staff car, apparently unaware of the looks of fear and hatred to which he was treated by the hospital staff.

  Early took the wheel and swung the big car out through the hospital gates and up on to the hill that led towards the moors.

  ‘That was rough!’ she said.

  ‘That’s Tactical Intelligence for you.’ His voice was quieter now, more contemplative. ‘You build up the great lie and then to make it come true you get trapped into living it. Like painting a picture so real you find yourself inhabiting a landscape of your own devising. A sort of do-it-yourself Creation kit. After a while you come to realise that the difference between a lie and a truth is simply the amount of homework you put into the detail. You can make a truth of anything if you put your mind to it.’

  ‘That’s a shabby philosophy.’ Early concentrated on the road, her quick confidence flinging the car round the tortuous bends with a skill that contained an element of inspired foresight.

  ‘My dear Early, survival is the prime requisite for any system of morality—because if you don’t survive, you don’t have anything to be moral about.’

  ‘And you think that justifies what you did to Horstman? If the enemy had been responsible, we’d have called it an atrocity.’

  ‘If the project fails, what I did to Horstman is an atrocity. But if it succeeds, it’ll have been a brilliant piece of Tactical Intelligence. You see, Early, the morality depends not upon the act but upon the outcome.’

  ‘And you don’t have any doubts of its outcome.’ Her voice had an edg
e of sarcasm.

  ‘Naturally I try to manipulate the odds, but it could still go sour,’ said Maidment. ‘Just before we got him out, Horstman indicated he thought he’d made a critical breakthrough. But considering the state of his body chemistry at the time, we don’t yet know how much of what he thought was reality and how much was illusion.’

  ‘I’ve been through his records and case-history pretty thoroughly and I don’t get the impression that he’s the type to have illusions.’

  ‘Normally, no. But he was severely undernourished and in a state involving both stress and shock. When you couple that with the damage to his leg and his reaction to the virus infection, the levels of histamine, adrenaline and sundry toxins in his bloodstream must have been way up. Quite enough to impair his self-critical faculty. Had he claimed to have met an archangel, we couldn’t have been surprised.’

  ‘So we don’t yet know whether all the suffering and effort is wasted?’

  ‘No. And that’s why I called you in. You’re the best Scientific Liaison Officer WarTech’s got and you’re familiar with the field in which Horstman will be working. Also, as a member of Tactical Intelligence, you’ll have all the support you need to ensure that this operation doesn’t snap back in our faces.’

  ‘You must be one of the Devil’s own children!’ said Early savagely. ‘You don’t give a damn about Horstman himself.’

  ‘He’s done his bit of suffering for the Motherland and he’ll probably make a major breakthrough in his own field of sonic physics. If you like, we’ll find him a medal or two. What more could any man ask of life?’

  Early bit her lip hard. ‘So what extra do you want from me?’

  ‘I want you to take Horstman over completely. Shield him, nurse him, encourage him, work with him—do anything you have to in order to make his work a success. Our survival depends on us finding some new weaponry and Horstman’s the boy to come up with something big if he’s handled right. You’re going to handle him, Early—and regardless of what it costs you personally.’

  ‘Is that an order—sir?’

  ‘That’s an order,’ said Maidment. ’There’s a briefing party waiting to fill you in on the background details. Later I want you to go over the actual site and get the feel of the place itself. Authenticity and detail are of prime importance. The one thing which could destroy Horstman would be the suspicion that he’d been tricked and used.’

  ‘Which he has!’

  ‘As you say, Early, he has. Only now I’m making the burden yours. I created the lie—now it’s up to you to turn it into the truth,’

  * * * *

  Early

  The roto-giro dropped her at the edge of the site and Early, trim in her green uniform under the heatless morning sun, made her way to where the local officer had come out of his caravan to meet her.

  ‘Ah! So you’re the one they call Early?’ He consulted his notes, then stiffened. ‘Aren’t you from Maidment’s outfit?’

  ‘That’s right!’ She handed him her pass and her letter of authority. The officer did not say he was impressed, but Early watched the tension go prickling right through him like a slow electric shock.

  He looked her up and down curiously, then shook his head. ‘You don’t look the type,’ was his only comment.

  Freed now from any restrictions formerly imposed in the name of Security, Early was free to roam where she liked, ask any questions of personnel working on the site and generally to seek as much background as she could about the person who would shortly be placed in her charge. True she had already seen the films and videotapes taken by the long-range and concealed infra-red cameras, but if she was to understand Horstman fully she needed first-hand knowledge of the traumatic environment to which he had been exposed. Maidment always insisted on absolute authenticity in Tactical Intelligence, and Maidment, unfortunately, was invariably right. The retreat that never took place had to be firmly authenticated, documented, re-described and built into the pages of history as a fact. Early shrugged. It was all part of the day’s work for a professional liar.

  Her wanderings took her first almost to the centre of the ruined township. Standing in the middle of the ground, she was disturbed to realise how near it was to the actual frontline and just how credible it seemed that the enemy should be allowed to re-take this neck of land for a strategic purpose. The sound of shockfire echoed back and forth between the farther hills and the curious Shockwaves of the hyper-velocity shells high overhead predisposed her mind to think that anything could happen in this accursed spot. It was said to be something to do with the rate of rise-time in the acoustics ...

  About a kilometre east, she found a feature which she recognised from her briefing. A group of captured enemy vehicles were backed up against a line of broken autumn trees. She recognised, too, some of the men who tended the smoking fire in the clearing at the front. The initiated called them Saltz’s private army, a mercenary-guerrilla group whose suicidal tendencies were pointed-up by the fact that the entire force of several hundred men was composed of defected enemy nationals. They engaged in combat using mainly captured enemy equipment and always wore enemy uniforms as a unique gesture of defiance and bravado. A trained military eye could tell them from the genuine enemy by certain details worn secretly on their clothes. Currently these details were absent.

  Self-styled Colonel Saltz was a rogue, a gifted commander and a plausible liar. He was short, fat, irrepressible and indestructible. Both he and his army of mercenaries could be bought for any task which did not conflict with their pagan loyalties and it was an open question as to whether Saltz or Maidment was the more adept at using the other to further their own ends. Certainly payments to Saltz’s private army figured largely in the account books of Tactical Intelligence.

  As Early approached, Saltz was sitting on a broken wall near the fire, holding a whole roast chicken, which ran grease liberally down his bare arms. He was tearing at the flesh of the bird with his singularly strong, white teeth, while at the same time maintaining a continuous flow of voluble discourse which provided intense amusement for his comrades. As soon as he noticed Early, he jumped up, threw the remains of the chicken under the wall and ran towards her grinning a wolfish welcome.

  ‘Early!, Maidment always promised me a bonus. But I didn’t think he would be generous like this.’

  He made to encircle her waist with a greasy arm, but she neatly sidestepped his advance.

  ‘Knock it off, Colonel! This trip is strictly business.’

  ‘With you, Early, it’s always business.’ He pretended to be disappointed. ‘I tell you, you don’t know what it is to live. Come, relax with us! We have wine.’

  ‘Another day,’ said Early. ‘Is that where Horstman got his ammunition?’ She indicated the munitions truck against the hedge.

  Saltz nodded, but there was a frown of disapproval on his face. ‘It was arranged there, just as Maidment said. But I don’t like what we had to do. Many times we make ambush, plant bombs, mix up a skirmish so that no one knows who the enemy really is. Man’s work. But this is the first time we are paid to trick a cripple who cannot help himself. Next time I think Maidment will want us to rob blind babies.’

  ‘Probably!’ said Early. ‘You should be more careful who you accept money from. Some people have nasty habits.’

  He took the point with roguish acumen. Behind the game was a depth of human understanding.

  ‘And you, Early—why do you work for him ?’

  “That’s a long story, Colonel, and most of it’s never been told. Some of it never will be.’

  She passed on round behind the trucks and stood looking at the ammunition boxes. Saltz followed her and hooked the open yellow case towards him. He took out a clip of ammunition and, removing a cartridge from the clip, he broke the bullet free from the propellant case and held it up for her to see. Inside the bullet the veins of some phosphorus compound reacted to the air and atmospheric moisture and developed a slight phosphoritic glow which spread slowly
deeper into the recesses of the glass.

  Having watched the films of Horstman engaged in, a similar activity, Early flinched and almost waited for the coming of the sound she knew would not come. The continuing silence was an anticlimax from which she emerged to find Saltz’s eyes watching hers intently. He knew that the breaking of the cartridge held a far deeper significance for her than it had for him, but she shook her head at his tacit request for explanation. She had to build her life, probably for the next two years, around the maintenance of this fact she knew to be a lie. This required a degree of dedication which Saltz was never likely to comprehend. Nevertheless, it was comforting to know that someone, somewhere, had tried to understand.

  She made her own way back along the road, retracing Horstman’s steps to where his ‘room’ had been, trying to imagine the mixture of fear, anxiety, pain and perplexity with which he had grappled over the selfsame ground. Again and again a little animal cried deep in her mind. The whole piece of scene-setting had been so utterly credible that many better men than the unworldly and academic Horstman would have been deceived. A little piece of history had been altered and presented to Horstman with such force and immediacy and sense of participation that it had all the characteristics of a real event. He would know beyond any reasonable doubt that what he had experienced and learned in those few hours was fact.