 The Barbarians by Aljus Budris This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite The Barbarians by Aljus Budris History was repeating itself. There were moats and nobles in Pennsylvania and vassals in Manhattan, and the Barbarian hordes were overrunning the land. It was just as he saw the Barbarian squat black tankette lurch hurriedly into a nest of boulders that young Julian Joffrey realized he had been betrayed. With the muzzle of his own cannon still hot from the shell that had jammed the Barbarian's turret, he had yanked the starboard track lever to wheel into position for the finishing shot. All around him the remnants of the Barbarian's invading army were being cut to flaming ribbons by the armored vehicles of the Seaboard League. The night was shot through by billows of cannon fire and the din of laboring engines, guns, and rent metal was a cacophonic climax to the Seaboard League's first decisive victory over the inland invaders. Young Joffrey could justifiably feel that he would cap that climax by personally accounting for the greatest of the inland Barbarians, the Barbarian general himself. He trained his sights on the scarlet bear paw painted on the skewed turret's flank and laid his hand on the firing lever. Out of the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of another tankette rushing up on his port side. He glanced at it, saw its graceful hand-crafting, and knew it for one of the League's own. He could even see the insignia, the mailed heel trampling a stand of wheat. Harold Dugald of the neighboring fief. Joffrey was on cultly polite terms with Dugald. He had no use for the other man's way of treating his serfs, and now he felt a prickle of indignant rage at this attempt to usurp a share of his glory. He saw Dugald's turret begin to traverse and hastily tried to get the finishing shot into the Barbarian's tankette before the other Leaguesmen could fire. But Dugald was not aiming for the Barbarian. First he had to eliminate Joffrey from the scene entirely. When he fired at almost point-blank range the world seemed to explode in Julian's eyes. Somehow no whistling shard of metal actually hit him, but the tankette, sturdy as it was, could not hope to protect him entirely. He was thrown viciously into the air. His ribs first smashing into the side of the hatch and then he was thrown clear onto the rocky ground of the foothills. Agonized, stunned to semi-consciousness, he lay feebly beating at his smoldering tunic while Dugald spun viciously by him, almost crushing him under one tread. He saw Dugald's tankette plunge into the rocks after the Barbarian, and then, suddenly, the battle was beyond him. Dugald, the Barbarian, all the thundering might that had clashed here on the eastern seaboard of what had long ago been the United States of America. All of this had suddenly, as battles will, whirled off in a new direction and left Julian Joffrey to lie hurt and unconscious in the night. He awoke to the trickle of cold water between his teeth. His lips bit into the threaded metal of a canteen top and a huge arm supported his shoulders. Broad shoulders and a massive head loomed over him against the stars. A rumbling, gentle voice said, All right, lad, now swallow some before it's all wasted. He peered around him in the night. It was as still as the bottom of a grave, nothing moved. He drew a ragged breath that ended in a sharp gasp, and the rumbling voice said, Ribs? He nodded and managed a strangled, Yes. Shouldn't wonder, the stranger grunted, I saw you pop out of your tank like a cork coming out of a wine bottle. It was a fair shot he hit you. You're lucky. A broad hand pressed him down as the memory of Dugald's treachery started him to struggling to his feet. Hold still, lad. We'll give you a chance to catch your breath and wrap some bandages around you. You'll live to give him his due, but not tonight. You'll have to wait for another day. There was something in the stranger's voice that Joffrey recognized for the quality that made men obey other men. It was competence, self-assurance, and even more the calm expression of good sense. Tonight, Joffrey needed someone with that quality. He sank back grateful for the stranger's help. I'm Julian Joffrey of Joffreyon, he said, and indebted to you. Who are you, stranger? The darkness rumbled to a deep, rueful laugh. In these parts, lad, I'm not called by my proper name. I'm Hodd Savage, the barbarian. And that was a fair knock you gave me. Young Joffrey's silence lasted for a long while. Then he said in a flat, distant voice, Why did you give me water if you're going to kill me anyway? The barbarian laughed again, this time in pure amusement. Because I'm not going to kill you. Obviously, you're too good a canineer to be dispatched by a belt knife. No. No, lad. I'm not planning to kill anyone for some time. All I want right now is to get out of here and get home. I've got another army to raise to make up for this pasting you leaguesmen have just given me. Next time you won't be so lucky, Joffrey muttered. We'll see your hide flapping in the rain if you're ever foolish enough to raid our lands again. The barbarian slapped his thigh. By God, he chuckled. I knew it wasn't some ordinary veal-fed princeling that outmaneuvered me. He shook his head. That other pup had better watch out for you if you ever cross his path again. I lost him in the rocks with ease to spare. Bad luck your shot smashed my fuel tanks or I'd be halfway home by now. The rolling voice grew low and bitter. No sense waiting to pick up my men. Not enough of them left to make a corporal's guard. What do you mean if I ever cross Dugald's path again? I'll have him called out to trial by combat the day I can ride a tank at once more. I wouldn't be too sure, lad, the barbarian said gently. What does that look like over there? Choffrey turned his head to follow the shadowy pointing arm and saw a flicker of light in the distance. He recognized it for what it was, a huge campfire with the leaguesman's tankettes drawn up around it. They're dividing the spoils, what prisoners there are to work the mills, whatever of your equipment is still usable, your baggage-train, and so forth. What of it? Ah, yes, my baggage-train, the barbarian muttered. Well, we'll come back to that. What else do you suppose they're dividing? Choffrey frowned. Why, nothing else. Wait! He sat up sharply, ignoring his ribs. The feats of the dead nobles. Exactly. Your ramshackle little league held together long enough to whip us for the first time. But now the princelings are dividing up and returning to their separate holdings. Once there they'll go back to peering covetously at each other's lands and maybe raid amongst themselves a little until I come back again. And you're as poor as a church mouse at this moment, lad. No thief, no lance, no title, unless there's an heir. Choffrey shook his head distractedly. No, I've not wed, it's as you say. And just try to get your property back. No, no, it won't be so easy to return unless you'd care to be a serf on your own former holding. Dugald would have me killed, Choffrey said bitterly. So there you are, lad. The only advantage you have is that Dugald thinks you're dead already. You can be sure of that, or it would have been an assassination and not me that woke you. That's something. At least it's a beginning. But you'll have to lay your plans carefully and take your time. I certainly wouldn't plan on doing anything until your bodies healed and your brains had time to work. Young Choffrey blinked back the tears of rage. The thought of losing the town and lance his father had left him was almost more than his hot blood could stand. The memory of the great old keep that dominated the town with its tapestry halls and torch-lit chambers was suddenly very precious to him. He felt a sharp pang at the thought that he must sleep in a field tonight, like some skulking outlaw, while Dugald quite possibly got himself drunk on Choffrey on wine and snored his headache away on the thick furs of Choffrey's bed. But the barbarian was right. Time was needed, and this meant that to a certain extent at least his lot and savages were thrown in together. The thought came to Choffrey that he might have chosen a worse partner. Now, lad, the barbarian said, as long as you're not doing anything else you might as well help me with my problem. The realization of just exactly who this man was came sharply back to young Choffrey. I won't help you escape to your own lands if that's what you mean, he said quickly. I'll take good care of that myself when the time comes. The man answered dryly. Right now I've got something else in mind. They're dividing my baggage train, as you said. Now I don't mind that, seeing as most of it belonged to them in the first place. I don't mind it for this year, that is. But there's something else one of your cockerels will be wanting to take home with him, and I've a mind not to let him. She was a perfectly good woman in my personal trailer, and I'm going to get her. But if we're going to do that and get clear of this country by morning we'd better get to it. Like every other young man of his time and place, Choffrey had a clear-cut sense of duty regarding the safety and well-being of ladies. He had an entirely different set of attitudes towards women who were not ladies. He had not the slightest idea of which to apply to this case. What sort of woman would the barbarian take to battle with him? What sort of woman would the inland barbarians have generally? He had very little knowledge to go on. The inlanders had been appearing from over the westward mountains for generations, looting and pillaging almost at will, sometimes staying through the winter but usually disappearing in the early fall, carrying their spoils back to their mysterious homelands on the great Mississippi plain. The seaboard civilization had somehow kept from going to its knees in spite of them in this last generation. Even though the barbarians had THE barbarian to lead them, the seaboard league had managed to cobble itself together. But no one in all this time had ever actually learned or cared much about these vicious compactly organized raiders. Certainly no one had learned anything beyond those facts which worked to best advantage on a battlefield. So young Julian Choffrey faced his problem. This perfectly good woman of the barbarians. Was she in fact a good woman, a lady, and therefore entitled to aid in extremity from any and all gentlemen? Or was she some camp follower entirely worthy of being considered a spoil of combat? Well, come on lad, the barbarian rumbled impatiently at this point. Do you want that doogold enjoying her tonight along with everything else? And that decided Choffrey. He pushed himself to his feet, not liking the daggers in his chest, but not liking the thought of doogold's pleasures even more. Let's go then. Good enough, lad. The barbarian chuckled. Now, let's see how quietly we can get across to the edge of that fire. They set out, none too quietly, with the barbarians' heavy bulk lurching against Choffrey's lean shoulder on occasion, and both of them uncertain of their footing in the darkness. But they made it across without being noticed. Two more battle-sore figures in a field where many such might be expected, and that was what counted. The noise and confusion attendant on the dividing of the spoils was an added help. They reached the fringes of the campfire easily. It was very interesting the way history had doubled back on itself, like a worm regrowing part of its body but regrowing it in the wrong place. At one end of the kink of the fresh pink scar was a purulent hell of fire and smoke that no one might have expected to live through, yet people had, as they have a habit of doing. And at the other end of the kink in time, Julian Choffrey's end, Harold Dugald's time, the barbarian's day, there were keeps and moats in Erie, Pennsylvania, vassals in New Brunswick, and a great stinking warren of low, half-timbered houses on the island of Manhattan. If it had taken a few centuries longer to recover from the decoderizing sunbombs, these things might still have been, but they might have had different names, and human history might have been considered to begin only a few hundred years before. Even this had not happened. The link with the past remained. There was a narrow, cobbled path on Manhattan with sewage oozing down the ditch in its center, which was still Fifth Avenue. It ran roughly along the same directions as Old Broadway. Not because there was no one who could read the yellowed old maps, but because surveying was in its second childhood. There was a barge running between two ropes stretched across the Hudson, and this was the George Washington Bridge Ferry, so it was only a kink in history, not a break. But Rome was not rebuilt in a day. Hodd Savage, the barbarian, the man who had come out of the hinterlands to batter on civilization's badly-mortared walls, clamped his hand on Julian Choffrey's arm, grunted, jerked his head toward the cluster of nobles standing beside the campfire, and muttered, Listen. Choffrey listened. The nobles were between him and the fire, and almost none of them were more than silhouettes. Here and there a man faced toward the fire at such an angle that Choffrey could make out the thick arch of an eyebrow, the jut of a cheek, or the crook of a nose. But it was not enough for recognition. All the nobles were dressed in battle accoutrements that had become stained or torn. Their harness had shifted, their tunics were askew, and they were bunched so closely that the outline of one man blended into the misshaped shadow of the next. The voices were hoarse from an afternoon's bellowing. Some were still drunk with the acid fire of exhausted nerves and were loud. Others drained, mumbled in the background like a chorus of the stupid. Gesticulating, mumbling, shouting, shadowed, lumped into one knot of blackness lighted by a ruddy cheekbone here, a gleaming brow there above an eye socket as inky and blank as a bottomless pit. They were like something out of the guan and misty ages before the earth had had time to form completely. Two arguing voices rose out of the mass. Those three barbarian tankettes are mine, I say. Yours when I lie dead. They surrendered to me. Because I pounded them into submission. Into submission, indeed, you sulked around their flanks like a lame dog, and now that I've taken them you want your bone. You were glad enough to see me there when the battle was hot. Call me a dog again and I'll split you like a rat on a pitchfork. No one else in the group of nobles paid the two of them any attention. No one had time to spare for any quarrel but his own, and the whole squabbling pile of them looked ready to fly apart at any moment, to draw side arms and knives and flair into spiteful combat. The barbarians spat quietly. There's your seaboard league, lad. There's your convocation of free men. Step out there and ask for your lands back. Care to try? We've already decided that wouldn't be wise, Joffrey said irritably. He had never cared much for these inevitable aftermath to battle, but it made him angry to have an inland barbarian make pointed comments. I suppose it's different when you win, eh? Not very, but then we're not civilized. Let's get moving, lad. Silently they skirted the fire and made their way toward the parked vehicles of the barbarians' captured supply train. The ground was rough and covered by underbrush. More than once the barbarians stumbled into Joffrey making him clench his jaw against the pain in his chest. But he saw no point in saying anything about it. There she is, the barbarians said in a husky growl. Joffrey peered through the brush at an armored trailer whose flat sides were completely undecorated except for a scarlet bear paw painted on the door. A lantern gleamed behind the slit windows and the barbarian grunted with satisfaction. She's still in there. Fine. We'll have this done in a couple of seconds. In spite of the incongruity Joffrey asked curiously, what's a second? A division of time, lad, one sixteenth of a minute. Oh, what on earth would you want to measure that accurately for? For getting women out of trailers in a hurry, lad. Now, let's look for centuries. There were two guarding the trailer, men at arms from Dugald's holding, Joffrey noticed, carrying shotguns and lounging in the shadows. One of them had a wine skin. Joffrey heard the gurgle plainly and the other was constantly turning away from the trailer to listen to the shrieks and shouting coming from among the other vehicles of the train, where other guards were not being quite as careful of their master's new property. I see they found the quartermaster's wagons, the barbarian said dryly. Now then, lad, you work away toward the right there and I'll take the left. Here, take my knife, I won't need it. The barbarian passed over a length of steel as big as a short sword, but oddly curved and sharpened down one side of the blade. Stab if you can, but if you have to cut, that blade will go through a man's forearm. Remember, you're not holding one of those overgrown daggers of yours. And just why should I kill a man for you? Do you think that man won't try to kill you? Joffrey had no satisfactory answer to that. He moved abruptly off into the brush, holding the barbarian's knife and wondering just how far he was obligated for a bandaged chest and half a pint of water. But a man's duty to his rescuer was plain enough, and besides, just what else was there to do? The blame for it all went squarely back to Dugald, and Joffrey did not love him for it. He slipped through the bushes until he was only a few yards from the man who had the wine skin and waited for the barbarian to appear at the opposite end of the trailer. When it happened, it happened quite suddenly, as these things will. One moment the other sentry was craning his neck for another look at what was going on elsewhere. The next he was down on his knees, croaking through a compressed throat with the barbarian's arm under his chin and a driving knee ready to smash at the back of his neck again. Joffrey jumped forward toward his own man. The man at arms had dropped his wine skin in surprise and was staring at what was happening to his comrade. When he heard Joffrey come out of the underbrush, the face he turned was white and oddly distended with shock, as though all the bones had drained out of it. He might have appeared fierce enough, ordinarily, but things were happening too fast for him. Joffrey had never killed anyone but a noble in his life, not intentionally and at close range in any case. The completely baffled and helpless look of this one somehow found time to remind him that this was not, after all, one of his peers, that the man was hopelessly outclassed in fair combat or in anything else for that matter. Joffrey did not stop to weigh the probity of this idea. It was the central tenet of his education and environment. Furthermore, there was some truth in it. He couldn't kill the man. He swept up his arm and struck the flat of the barbarian's broad knife against the side of the guard's head and bowled the man over with his rush. But the guard had a hard skull. He stared up with glazed but conscious eyes and squalled, Lord Joffrey! Joffrey hit him again, and this time the guard stayed down, but the damage was done. Scrambling to his feet, Joffrey ran over to the barbarian who was letting the other guard ooze to the ground. We'll have to hurry, Joffrey panted, before that man comes back to his senses. The barbarian gave him a disgusted look, but nodded. Harry, we shall. He lurched to the trailer door and slapped it with the flat of his hand. Let's go, Micah! There was a scrambling sound inside the trailer and the light went out. The door slid open and Joffrey found himself staring at the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was life almost to the point of boyishness, even though she was clearly some years older than Joffrey. She had short hair, the color of hammered copper, high cheekbones and tawny eyes. She was wearing a tunic and short trousers, and there was an empty pistol-holder strapped around her waist. Obviously, she was not a lady. But it was much too late for Joffrey to care about that. She stopped in the doorway, shaking her head slowly at the barbarian. I swear, Hod, she said in a low, laughing voice, one of these days you won't come back from the dead and I'll be surprised. It was close enough this time, the barbarian ground. He jerked his head toward Joffrey. That young buck over there knows how to handle his enemies. Once he learns what to do about his friends, I may have to retire. Micah arched her burning eyebrows. Oh, what's the story behind that? I'd like to know. We can always talk, Joffrey said a little edgily, but we can't always find an empty tankette. Quite right, lad, the barbarian said. I saw some vehicles parked over that way. Those belong to the nobles. There ought to be some captured ones of yours somewhere around here. With plenty of guards on them, no thanks. That didn't trouble you earlier. Micah, as you may have noticed, is more than a tank. This time the prize isn't worth it. I'd rather just slip over to where I can get transportation for the choosing. Not with my help. The barbarian looked at him and grunted. He seemed oddly disappointed. I would have bet the other way, he muttered. Then the shaggy head rose and he circled Micah's waist with one arm. All right, I'll do it without your help. Is Micah trained to drive a tankette and fight at the same time? No. Then you'd better do it my way. You'd make a poor showing kicking drive levers with a broken leg. Joffrey nodded toward the barbarian's right shin. It's been that way since before you picked me up, hasn't it? I saw it wobble when you need that man at arms. Micah looked at the barbarian sharply, wary on her face, but the man was chuckling. All right, bucko, we'll do it your way. It's fine. Joffrey wasn't so sure it was. Suddenly he was committed not only to helping the barbarian escape, but also to escape with him. He was faintly surprised at himself. But there was something about the man, something worth saving, no matter what. And there was the business now of having been recognized. Once Dukalb learned he was still alive, there would be a considerable amount of danger in staying in the vicinity. Of course he had only to stoop over the unconscious guard with the barbarian's knife. With a quick motion he tossed the weapon back to its owner. That one was an easy choice, Joffrey thought, simply stealing or was it recapturing a tank-ed and using it to drive away with Micah and the barbarian didn't mean he had to go all the way to the barbarian lands with them. Let the guard revive and run to Dukalb with the news. All Joffrey had to do was to remove himself a few miles, find shelter and bide his time. One recaptured barbarian tank-ed might not even be missed. And the guard might not be believed. Well, that was a thin hope. But in any case, no one had any reason to suspect the barbarian was still alive. There'd be no general pursuit. Well, maybe not. There was a man at arms choked to death by a stronger arm than Joffrey's and it was the barbarian's woman who would be missing. There might be quite a buzz about that. Joffrey shook his head in impatient annoyance. This kind of life demanded a great deal more thinking than he was accustomed to. All these unpredictable factors made a man's head spin. And then again, maybe they didn't, the thing to do was to act, to do what would get him out of here now and leave him free tomorrow to do whatever thinking tomorrow demanded. With a little practice, too, thinking would undoubtedly come more easily. All right, he said decisively, let's get moving over in that direction and see if the guards haven't gotten a little careless. He motioned to Micah and the barbarian and began to lead the way into the underbrush. He thrust out a hand to pull a sapling aside and almost ran full tilt into Harold Dugald. Dugald was almost exactly Joffrey's age and size, but he had something Joffrey lacked, a thin-lipped look of wolfish wisdom. His dark eyes were habitually slitted and his mouth oddly off-center, always poised between a mirthless grin and a snarl. His long black hair curled under at the base of his skull and his hands were covered with heavy gold and silver rings. There was one for each finger and thumb and all of them were set with knobby, precious stones. His lips parted now and his long white teeth showed plainly in the semi-darkness. I was coming back to inspect my prizes, he said, in a voice like a fine-bladed saw chuckling through a soft metal. And look what I've found. The open mouth of his heavy handmade side-pistol pointed steadily between Joffrey's eyes. I find my erstwhile neighbor risen from the dead and in the company of a crippled enemy and his Lehman. Indeed, my day is complete. The one thing Joffrey was not feeling was fear. The wire-thin strand of his accumulated rage was stretched to breaking. Somewhere far from the forefront of his mind he was feeling surprise and disappointment. He was perfectly aware of Dugald's weapon and what it would do to his head at this range, but Joffrey was not stopping to think. And Dugald was a bit closer to him than he ought to have been. Joffrey's hands seemed to leap out. One tore the pistol out of Dugald's hand and knocked it spinning. The other cracked, open palm against the other man's face, hard enough to split flesh and start the blood trickling down Dugald's cheek. The force of the combined blows sent Dugald staggering. Heep fell back, crashing into a bush and hung against it. Stark fear shone in his eyes. He screamed, Dugald! Dugald! To me! To me! For a second everything went silent. Nobles quarreling, guards roistering among the captures. Suddenly the battlefield was still. Then the reaction to the rallying cry set off an entirely different kind of hubbub. The sound now was that of an alerted pack of dogs. Once more Joffrey swept his hand across Dugald's face feeling his own skin break over the knuckles. But there was no time for anything else. Now they had to run and not in silence. Now everything went by the board and the nearest safety was the best. Behind them as they tore through the brush they could hear Dugald shouting, That way! The barbarians with him! The barbarian was grunting with every step. Micah was panting. Joffrey was in the lead, his throat burning with every breath, not knowing where he was leading them but trying to skirt around the pack of nobles that would be running toward them in the darkness. He crashed against plated metal. He peered at it in the absolute darkness this far from the fires and torches. Tank it! He said hoarsely. Empty! They scrambled onto it, Joffrey pulling at the barbarian's arm. Down! Micah! Inside! What to be room between steering posts and motor? He pushed the woman down through the hatch and dropped back to the ground. He ran to the crank, clipped to one track-housing and thrust it into place. You! You'll have to hang on to the turret! He panted to the barbarian. Help me start! He wound furiously at the starting crank until he felt the flywheel spin free of the ratchet and then engaged the driveshaft. The tankette shuddered to the sudden torque. The motor resisted, turned its shaft reluctantly, spun the magneto, ignited, stuttered, coughed and began to roar. The headlights flickered yellowly, glowed up to brightness as the engine built up revolutions. The barbarian, clinging to the turret with one arm, pushed the choke-control back to halfway and advanced the spark. Joffrey scrambled up the sharply pitched rear deck, clawing for handholds on the radiator tubing and dropped into the turret seat. He took the controls, kicked at the left-side track-control without caring for the moment whether Micah was in the way or not, spun the tankette halfway round and pulled the throttle out as far as it would go. Its engine clamoring, its rigid tracks transmitting every shock and battering them, the tankette flogged forward through the brush. There was gunfire booming behind them and there were other motors sputtering into life. There was no one among the nobles to drive as well as Joffrey could. Certainly no one who could keep up with him at night in country he knew. He could proudly depend on that much. He lit the carbide lamp over the panel. Joffrey looked at the crest worked into the metal and laughed. He had even managed to steal Dugald's tankette. By morning they were a good fifty miles away from where the battle had been fought. They were almost as far as the Delaware River and the ground was broken into low hills, each a little higher than the last. Joffrey had only been this far away from home a few times before his father's death and then never in this direction. Civilization was not considered to extend this far inland. A young man went on his travels preparatory for the day when he inherited his father's holdings and settled down to maintain them. He went along the coast, perhaps as far as Philadelphia or Hartford. Joffrey had always had a lively interest in strange surroundings. He had regretted the day his journeys came to an end. Not that he hadn't regretted his father's passing even more. Now as dawn came up behind them he could not help turning his head from side to side and looking at the strangely humped land, seeing for the first time a horizon which was not flat. He found himself intrigued by the thought that he had no way of knowing what lay beyond the next hill. That he would have to travel and keep traveling to satisfy a perpetually renewed curiosity. All this occupied one part of his mind. Simultaneously he wondered how much farther they'd travel in this vehicle. The huge sixteen-cylinder in-line engine was by now delivering about one-fourth of its rated fifty horsepower with a good half of its spark plugs hopelessly fouled and the carburetor choked by the dust of yesterday's battle. They were very low on shot and powder charges for the two-pounder turret cannon as well. The tank-ed had of course never been serviced after the battle. There was one good thing. Neither had their pursuers. Looking back Joffrey could see no sign of them, but he could also see the plain imprint of the tank-ed steel cleat stretched out behind them in a betraying line. The rigid unsprung track left its mark on hard stone as easily as it did in soft earth. The wonder was that the tracks had not quite worn themselves out yet, though all the rivets were badly strained and the tank-ed sounded like a barrel of stones tumbling down hill. The barbarian had spent the night with one arm thrown over the cannon-barrel and the fingers of his other hand hooked over the edge of the turret hatch. In spite of the tank-ed's vicious jouncing he had not moved or changed his position. Now he raised one hand to comb the shaggy hair away from his far-head and there were faint, bloody marks on the hatch. How much farther until we're over the mountains, Joffrey asked him. Over the... lad? We haven't even come to the beginning of them yet. Joffrey grimaced. Then we'll never make it, not in this vehicle. I didn't expect to. We'll walk until we reach the pass. I've got a support camp set up there. Walk! This is impossible country for people on foot. There are intransigent tribesmen all through this territory. How do you know? How do I know why everybody knows about them? The barbarian looked at him thoughtfully and with just the faintest trace of amusement. Well, if everybody knows they're intransigent, I guess they are. I guess we'll just have to hope they don't spot us. Joffrey was a little netled by the barbarian's manner. It wasn't after all as if anybody claimed there were dragons or monsters or any other such oceanic thing living here. This was good solid fact. People had actually come up here, tried to bring civilization to the tribes and failed completely. They were by all reports hairy, dirty people equipped with accurate rifles. No one had bothered to press the issue because obviously it was partly worth it. Joffrey had expected to have trouble with them, but he had expected to meet it in an armored vehicle. But now that the mountains had turned out to be so far away the situation might grow quite serious, and the barbarian didn't seem to care very much. Well now lad, he was saying, if the tribesmen are that bad, maybe your friends and nobles won't dare follow us up here. They'll follow us, Joffrey answered flatly. I slapped Dugald's face. Oh, oh, I didn't understand that. Code of Honor, that sort of thing. All the civilized appurtenances. It's hardly funny. No, I suppose not. I don't suppose it occurred to you to kill him on the spot. Kill a noble in hot blood? Sorry, Code of Honor again. Forget I mentioned it. Joffrey rankled under the barbarians' barely concealed amusement. To avoid any more of this kind of thing, he pointedly turned and looked at the terrain behind them. Something he ought to have done a little earlier. Three tankettes were in sight, only a few miles behind them, laboring down the slope of a hill. And at that moment, as though riveted iron had a dramatic sense of its own, their tankette coughed, spun lazily on one track as the crankshaft paused with a cam squarely between positions and burned up the last drops of oil and alcohol in its fuel tank. Joffrey and Micah crouched down in a brushy hollow. The barbarian had crawled up to the lip of the Depression and was peering through a clump of weeds at the oncoming trio. That seems to be all of them, he said, with a turn of his head. It's possible they kept their speed down and nursed themselves along to save fuel. They might even have a fuel wagon coming up behind them. That's the way I'd do it. It would mean these three are all we can expect for a few hours anyway, but that they'll be heavily reinforced sometime later. That will hardly matter, Joffrey muttered. Micah had found Dugald's personal rifle inside the tankette. Joffrey was rolling cartridges quickly and expertly using torn up charges from the turret cannon. He had made the choice between a round or two for the now immobile heavy weapon and a plentiful supply for the rifle and would have been greatly surprised at anyone's choosing differently. The barbarian had not even questioned it and Micah was skillfully casting bullets with the help of the hissing alcohol stove and the bullet mold included in the rifle kit. There was plenty of finely ground priming powder and even though Joffrey was neither weighing the charges of cannon powder, nor measuring the diameter of the cartridges he was rolling, no young noble of any pretensions whatsoever could not have done the same. The rub lay in the fact that none of this was liable to do them much good. If they were to flee through the woods, there would certainly be time for only a shot or two when the tribesmen found them. If the rifle was to be used against the three nobles, then it was necessary in all decency to wait until the nobles had stopped, climbed out of their tankettes, equipped themselves equally and a mutual ground of battle had been agreed upon. In that case, three against one would make short work of it. The better chance lay with the woods and the tribesmen. It was the better chance, but Joffrey did not relish it. He scowled as he dropped a primer charge down the rifle's barrel, followed it with a cartridge, took a cooled bullet from Micah and tamped it down with the ramrod until it was firmly gripped by the collar on the cartridge. He took a square of clean flannel from its compartment in the butt and carefully wiped the lenses of the telescopic sight. Can I stop now? Micah asked. Joffrey looked at her sharply. It had never occurred to him that the woman might simply be humoring him, and yet that was the tone her voice had taken. Truth to tell, he had simply handed her the stove, pig-lead and mold and told her to go to work. He looked at her now, remembering that he'd been hurried and possibly brusque. It ought not to matter, though it did, since she was hardly a lady entitled to courtesy. She hardly looked like anything after hours crouched inside the tank head. Her copper hair was smeared with grease, disarranged and even singed where she had presumably leaned against a hot fitting. Her clothes were indescribably dirty and limp with perspiration. She was quite pale and seemed to be fighting nausea, hardly surprising with the exhaust fumes that must have been present in the compartment. Nevertheless, her hair glinted where the sun struck it and her lifeness was only accented by the wrinkled clothing. Over-accented, Joffrey thought to himself as he looked at the length of limb revealed by her short trousers. He flushed, of course, thank you. He looked at the pile of finished bullets. There were enough of them to stand off an army provided only the army did not shift about behind rocks and trees as the tribesmen did or was not equally armed as the nobles would be. Yet a man had to try to the end. You don't expect this to do much good, he said to the woman. Micah grinned at him. Do you? No, frankly, but why did you help me? To keep you busy. I see. He didn't. He scooped the bullets up, put them in one pocket and dropped the cartridges in another. He stood up. There wasn't any point in letting you get nervous, Micah explained. You can be quite a deadly boy in action if what I've seen and heard about you is any indication. I didn't want you killing any of our friends. She was smiling at him without any malice whatsoever, rather with a definite degree of fondness. Joffrey did not even feel resentful at this business of being casually managed as though he were libel to do something foolish. But he scrambled up to the place beside the barbarian in a burst of tense movement and looked out toward the approaching tankettes. What Micah had just said to him and the cryptic smile on the barbarian's face and a thought of Joffrey's own had all fitted themselves together in his mind. There was no reason really to believe that barbarians would be hostile to barbarians and certainly the inland raiders could not have returned year after year without some means of handling the mountain tribes. Friendship or at least an alliance would be the easiest way. And out on the slope of the nearest hill bearded men in homespun clothing were rolling boulders down on the advancing tankettes. The slope of the hill was quite steep and the boulders were massive. They tumbled and bounded with a speed that must have seemed terrifying from below, tearing great chunks out of the earth. They rumbled down on the tankettes while the tribesmen yelled with blood curdling ferocity and fired on the tankettes with impossible rapidity with respectable marksmanship too. The nobles were swerving their vehicles frantically from side to side trying to avoid the boulders but their ability to do so was being destroyed by bullets that ricocheted viciously off the canted four-peak plating. All three of them were blundering about like cattle attacked by stinging insects. Only the lead tankette was still under anything like intelligent control. It lurched away from the three boulders in succession swinging on its treads and continuing to churn its way up the hillside. Joffrey saw the other two tankettes struck almost simultaneously. One took a boulder squarely between its tracks and stopped in a shower of rock fragments. The track cleats bit futilely at the ground, the vehicle stalled, the boulder jammed against it. The impact did not seem to have been particularly severe but the entire body of the tankette had been buckled and accordioned. Possibly only the boulder-zoned bulk between the tracks had kept them from coming together like the knees of a gored ox. It was impossible to tell where in that crushed bulk the turret and its occupant might be. The other tankette took its boulder squarely in the flank. It began to roll over immediately, hurtling back down the hill its driver half in and half out of its turret at the beginning of the first roll. Tankette and boulder came to rest together at the bottom of the hill, the stone nosing up against the metal. Joffrey looked at the scene with cold fury. That's no fitting way for a noble to die. The barbarian who was sprawled out and watching calmly nodded his head. Probably not, he said dispassionately, but that other man's giving a good account of himself. The remaining tankette was almost in among the tribesmen. It had passed the point where a rolling boulder's momentum would be great enough to do much damage. As Joffrey watched, the man in the turret yanked his lanyard and a solid shot boomed through the straggled line of bearded men. If it had been grape or canister, it might have done a good deal of damage, but the cannon had been loaded with Joffrey's tankette in mind and the tribesmen only cheered. One of them dashed forward under the cannon's smoking muzzle and jammed a wedge-shaped stone between the left side track and the massive forward track roller. The track jammed, broke, and whipped back in whistling fragments. The tankette slewed around a while. The unarmed tribesmen danced out of the way. The noble in the turret could only watch helplessly. Apparently he had no sidearm. Joffrey peered at him as the tribesmen swarmed over the tankette and dragged him out of the turret. It was duke-galled, and Joffrey's arm still tingled from the slap that had knocked the pistol irretrievably into the night-shadowed brush at the battlefield. What are they going to do to him? He asked the barbarian. Make him meet the test of fitness, I suppose. Fitness? Joffrey did not get the answer to his question immediately. The woods all around him were stirring and bearded men in homespun, carrying fantastic rifles, were casually walking toward him. The barbarian pushed himself up to his feet without any show of surprise. Howdy, he said. Figured you were right around? One of the tribesmen, a gaunt, incredibly tall man with a grizzled beard, nodded. I seen you making signs while you was hanging off that tank before. Got a mark? The barbarian extended his right arm and turned his wrist over. A faint double scar crossed at right angles showed in the skin. The tribesmen peered at it and grunted. Old one. I got it 20 years ago when I first came through here, the barbarian answered. Double, too. Ain't many of those. My name's Hod Savage. Oh, the tribesman said. His entire manner changed without becoming servile. Was respectful. He extended his hand. Sime Weatherby. He and the barbarian clasped hands. That you're a woman down there? The tribesman asked, nodding toward Micah. That's right. Good enough. For the first time, Weatherby looked directly at Joffrey. What about him? The barbarian shook his head. No mark. The tribesman nodded. I figured from the way he was acting. He seemed to make no particular signal. Perhaps none was needed, but Joffrey's arms were suddenly taken from behind and his wrists were tied. We'll see if we can't get him a mark today, Weatherby said. He looked to his left, where other men were just pushing Dugald into the ring they had formed around the group. Seeing as there's two of them, one of them ought to make it. Joffrey and Dugald stared expressionlessly at each other. The barbarian kept his eyes on Joffrey's face. That's right, he said. Can't have two men fight to the death without one of them coming out alive, usually. The tribesman lived in wooden cabins tucked away among trees and hidden in narrow little valleys. Joffrey was surprised to see windmills and wire fencing for the cattle pastures that had joined their homes. He was even more interested in their rifles, which the tribesman told him were repeaters. He was puzzled by the absence of a cylinder, such as could be found on the generally unreliable revolvers one saw occasionally. The tribesmen were treating both him and Dugald with a complete absence of the savagery he expected. They were being perfectly matter of fact. If his hands had not been tied, Joffrey might not have been a prisoner at all. This puzzled him as well. A prisoner, after all, could not expect to be treated very well. True, he and Dugald were nobles, but this could not possibly mean anything to persons as uncivilized as mountain tribesmen. Yet, somehow, the only thing that was done was that all of them, the tribesmen, the barbarian Micah, Dugald, and he made their way to Weatherby's home. A number of the tribesmen continued on their way from there, going to their own homes to bring their families to watch the test. The remainder stayed behind to post-guard. Dugald was put in one room and Joffrey in another. The barbarian and Micah went off somewhere with Weatherby, presumably to have breakfast. Joffrey could smell food cooking somewhere toward the back of the house. The smell sat intolerably on his empty stomach. He sat for perhaps a half an hour in the room, which was almost bare of furniture. There was a straight-backed chair in which he sat, a narrow bed, and a bureau. Even though his hands were still tied behind his back, he did his best to search the room for something to help him, though he had no idea of what he would do next after he managed to escape from the room itself. The problem did not arise because the room had been stripped of anything with a sharp edge on which to cut his lashings and of anything else he might put to use. These people had obviously held prisoners here before and he sat back down in his chair and stared at the wall. Eventually someone opened the door. Joffrey looked over and saw that it was the barbarian. He looked at the inland or coldly, but the barbarian did not seem to notice. He sat down on the edge of the bed. On top of everything else, he began without preamble. I've just finished a hearty breakfast. That ought to really make you mad at me. I'm not concerned with you or your meals, Joffrey pointed out. The barbarian's eyes twinkled. It doesn't bother you, my getting your help and then not protecting you from these intransigent tribesmen? Hardly, I'd be a fool to expect it. Would you now? Look, Bucko, these people live a hard way of life. Living on a mountain is a good way not to live comfortably, but it's a good way of living your own way if you can stand the gath. These people can, every one of them. They've got their marks to prove it, every last one of them has fought it out face to face with another man and proved his fitness to take up space in this territory. See, it's a social code, and they'll extend it to cover any stranger who doesn't get killed on his way here. If you can get your mark, you're welcome here for the rest of your life. They keep their clan stock fresh and vigorous that way, and it all has the virtue of being uniform, just rigid code that covers every man in the group. These barbarian cultures aren't ever happy without a good code to their name, you know. Yours seems to lack one. The barbarian chuckled. Oh no, we've got one all right, or you'd never have had me to worry you. Nothing we like better than a good talented enemy. You know, these people here in the mountains used to be our favorite enemies, but so many of us wound up getting our marks, it just got to be futile. Once you're in, you know, you're a full-fledged clan member that sort of divided our loyalties. The problem just seemed to solve itself, though. We understand them, they understand us. We trade back and forth. Hell, it's all one family. Joffrey frowned. You mean they got those rifles from you? Sure, we're full of ingenuity for barbarians, that is. Not in the same class with you, seaboard nobles, of course, but we poke along. The barbarian stood up and his expression turned serious. Look, son, you remember that knife of mine you borrowed for a while? I'll have to lend it to you again in about 20 minutes. Your friend Dugald's going to have one just like it, and your left arms are going to be tied together at the wrists. I hope you remember what I happened to tell you about how to use it, because under the rules of the code I'm not allowed to instruct you. And Joffrey was left alone. There was a hard-packed area of dirt in front of Weatherby's home, and now its edges were crowded with tribesmen, many of whom had brought their women and children. Weatherby, together with a spare, capable-looking woman and with the barbarian and Micah sat on his porch. One of the tribesmen was wrapping Joffrey's and Dugald's forearms together. Joffrey watched him with complete detachment. He stole a glance over toward Weatherby's porch, and it seemed to him that Micah was tense and anxious. He couldn't be sure. The fingers of his right hand gripped the half of the barbarian's knife. He held it up with his thumb along the blade, knowing that if he drew his arm up to stab downward or back to slash, Dugald would have a perfect opening. It was his thought, remembering that razor-keen blade that he ought to be able to do plenty of damage with a simple underhand twist of his arm. He did not look down to see how Dugald was holding the knife he'd been given. That would have been unfair. The crowd of watching tribesmen was completely silent. This was a serious business with them, Joffrey reflected. The tribesmen tying their wrists had finished the job. He stepped back. Any time after I say go, you boys set to it. Anything goes and dead man loses. If you don't fight, we kill you both. For the first time since their capture, Joffrey looked squarely into Dugald's slit eyes. I'm sorry we have to do this to each other in this way, Dugald. He said, go. The tribesmen shouted and jumped back. Dugald spat at Joffrey's face. Joffrey twitched his head involuntarily, realized what he'd done and threw himself off his feet, pulling Dugald with him and just escaping the downward arc of Dugald's plunging knife. The momentum of Dugald's swing combined with Joffrey's weight pulled him completely over Joffrey's shoulder. The two of them jerked abruptly flat on the ground. Their shoulders wrenched, sprawled out, facing each other and tied together like two cats on a string. The crowd shouted. Joffrey had landed full on his ribs and for a moment he saw nothing but a red mist. Then his eyes cleared and he was staring into Dugald's face. Dugald snarled at him and pawed out with his knife at the advantage now because he could stab downward. Joffrey rolled and Dugald perforce rolled with him. The stab missed again and Joffrey on his back jabbed blindly over his head and reached nothing. Then they were on their stomachs again. Dugald was panting, his face running wet, the long black hair was full of dust and his face was smeared. If ever Joffrey had seen a man in an animal state that was what Dugald resembled. Joffrey thought wildly, is this what a noble is? I'll kill you. Dugald baited him and Joffrey's hackles rose. This is not a man, he thought. This is nothing that deserves to live. Dugald's arms snapped back, knife poised and drove downward again. Joffrey suddenly coiled his back muscles and heaved on his left arm, yanking himself up against Dugald's chest. He snapped his hips sideways and Dugald's knife missed him completely for the third and fatal time. The barbarian's knife slipped upward into Dugald's ribcage and suddenly Joffrey was drenched with blood. Dugald's teeth bit into his neck but the other man's jaws were already slackening. Joffrey let himself slump and hoped they would cut this carrion away from him as soon as possible. He heard the crowd yelping and felt the barbarian plucking the knife out of his hand. His arm was freed and he rolled away. By God, I knew you had the stuff, the barbarian was booming. I knew they had to start breeding men out on the coast sooner or later. Here, give me your other wrist. The blade burned his skin twice, each way, once for victory and once for special aptitude. And then Micah pressed a cloth to the wound. She was shaking her head. I've never seen it done better. You're a natural born fighter lad. I've got one of my sisters all picked out for you. Joffrey smiling up at the barbarian a little ruefully. It seems you and I'll be going back to the coast together next year. Had it in mind all along lad, the barbarian said. If I can't lick them, I'll be damned if I won't make them join me. It's an effective system, Joffrey said. That it is lad, that it is. And now, if you'll climb up to your feet, let's go get you some breakfast. End of The Barbarians by Alges Budris. Beyond Pandora by Robert J. Martin. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Jason Ward. Beyond Pandora, the ideal way to deal with a pest, any menace is, of course, to make it useful to you. By Robert J. Martin. The doctor's pen paused over the chart on his desk. This is your third set of teeth, I believe? His patient nodded. That's right, doctor, but they were pretty slow coming in this time. The doctor looked up quizzically. Is that the only reason you think you might need a booster shot? Oh, no, of course not. The man leaned forward and placed one hand, palm up on the desk. He shrugged apologetically. It took almost six months to grow back. Thoughtfully, the doctor leaned in his chair. Hmm, I see. The man before him made an involuntary movement toward his pocket, the doctor smiled. Go on, smoke if you want to. Bigging up the chart, he murmured, six months, much too long. Strange we didn't catch that at the time. He read silently for a few moments and began to fill out a form clip to the folder. Well, I think you probably are due for another booster shot about now. There'll have to be the usual test. Not that there's much doubt, we'd like to be certain. The middle-aged man seemed relieved. Then on second thought, he hesitated uneasily. Why, is there any danger? Amusement flickered across the doctor's face, turned smoothly into a reassuring half-smile. Oh no, there's absolutely no danger involved, none at all. We have tissue regeneration pretty well under control now. Still, I'm sure you understand that accurate records and data are very necessary to further research and progress. Reassured, the patient thought and became confidential. I see. Well, I suppose it's kind of silly, but I don't much like shots. It's not that they hurt, it's just that I guess I'm old-fashioned. I still feel kind of creepy about the whole business. Slightly embarrassed, he paused and asked offensively. Is that unusual? The doctor smiled openly now. Not at all, not at all. Things have moved pretty fast in the past few years. I suppose it takes people's emotional reactions while they catch up with developments that logically we accept as a matter of fact. He pushed his chair back from the desk. Maybe it's not too hard to understand. Take fire, for example. Man lived in fear of fire for a good many 100,000 years, rightly so, because he had learned to control it. The principle's the same. First, you learn to protect yourself from a thing, then control it, and eventually we learn to harness it for a useful purpose. He gestured towards the man's cigarette. Even so, man still instinctively fears fire, even while he uses it. In the case of tissue regeneration, whether the change took place so rapidly in just a generation or so, that instinctive fear is even more understandable, although quite as unjustified, I assure you. The doctor stood up, indicating that the session was ending. While his patient scrambled to his feet, hastily putting out a cigarette, the physician came around the desk, put his hand on the man's shoulder. Relax, take it easy, nothing to worry about. This is a wonderful age we live in. Barring a really major accident, there's no reason why you shouldn't live at least another 75 years. After all, that's a very remarkable viral complex we have doing your repair work. As they walk to the door, the man shook his head. Guess you're right, Doc, it's certainly done a good job so far. And I guess you specialists know what you're doing, even if folks don't understand it. At the door he paused and half turned to the doctor. But say, something I meant to ask you, this stuff, or this vaccine, where did it come from? Seems to me I heard somewhere that way back before you fellas got it tamed, it was something else dangerous. It was something, there was another name for it. Do you know what I mean? The doctor's hand tightened on the door knob. Yes, I know, he said grimly, but not many laymen remember. Just keep in mind what I told you. With any of these things, the pattern is protection, then control, then useful application. He turned to face his patient. Back in the days before we put it to work for us, rebuilding tissue, almost ending aging and disease, the active basis for our vaccine caused a whole group of diseases in itself. Returning the man's search and gaze, the doctor opened the door. You've come a long way since then, you see, he said quietly, in those days they called it cancer. End of Beyond Pandora by Robert J. Martin. Recording by Jason Ward, Denver, Colorado. Blog at forwarding, F-O-R-W-O-R-D-I-N-G.com. Cerebrum by Albert Teichner. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. Cerebrum by Albert Teichner. For thousands of years, the big brain served as a master switchboard for the thoughts and emotions of humanity. Now the central mind was showing signs of decay and men went mad. The trouble began in a seemingly trivial way. Connor had wanted to speak to Rhonda, his wife, wished himself onto a trunk line and then waited. Dallas shipping here, Mars and points Jupiter word at your service, said of business is business unwifely voice in his mind. I was not calling you, he thought back into the line. Now also getting a picture, first flat, then properly 3D and in color. It was a paranormally luxurious commercial office. I am the receptionist at Dallas shipping, the woman thought back firmly. You rang and I answered. I'm sure I rang right, Connor insisted. And I'm sure I know my job, Dallas shipping answered. I have received as many as 500 thought messages a day, some of them highly detailed and technical and forget it, snapped Connor. Let's say I focused wrong. He pulled back and 20 seconds later finally had Rhonda on the line. Queerest thing happened, he projected. I just got a wrong party. Nothing queer about it, his wife smiled, springing to warm life on his inner eye. You just weren't concentrating, Connor. Don't you hand me that too, he grumbled. I know I thought on the right line into central. Haven't I been using the system for 60 years? Exactly, all habit and no attention. How smugly soothing she was some days. I think the trouble's in central itself. The switcher isn't receiving me clearly. Lately I've had some peculiar miscalls myself, Rhonda said nervously. But you can't blame central switching. Oh, I didn't mean that. By now he was equally nervous and only too happy to end the conversation. Ordinarily communications were not monitored but if this one had been there could certainly be a slander complaint. On his way home in the monorail, Connor tried to reach his office and had the frightening experience of having his telepathic call refused by central. Then he refused in turn to accept a call being projected at him but when an urgent classification was added he had to take it. For your unfounded slander of central switching's functioning announced the mechanically synthesized voice. You are hereby suspended indefinitely from the telepathic net. From this point on all paranormal privileges are withdrawn and you will be able to communicate with your fellows only in person or by written message. Stunned Connor looked about at his fellow passengers. Most of them had their eyes closed and their faces showed the mild little smile which was the outer hallmark of a mind at rest. Tuned into a music channel were some other of the hundreds of entertainment lines available from central. How much he had taken that for granted just a few minutes ago. Three men more shabbily dressed were unsmilingly reading books. They were fellow pariahs. Suspended for one reason or another from paranormal privileges. Only the dullest, lowest paying jobs were available to them while anyone inside the system could have central read any book and transmit the information directly into his cortex. The shabbiest one of all looked up and his sympathetic glance showed that he had instantly grasped Connor's change situation. Connor looked hastily away. He didn't want any sympathy from that kind of human being. Then he shuddered. Wasn't he himself now that kind in every way except his ability to admit it? When he stepped onto the lushly hydroponic platform at the suburban stop the paranormal's ordinarily friendly showed that they too already realized what had happened. Each pair of suddenly icy eyes went past him as if he were not there at all. He walked up the turf covered lane toward his house feeling hopelessly defeated. How would he manage to maintain a home here in the middle of green and luxuriant beauty? More people than ever were now outside the system for one reason or another and most of these unfortunates were crowded into metropolitan centers which were slum hells to anyone who had known something better. How could he have been so thoughtless because of a little lapse in central's mechanism? Now that it was denied him probably forever he saw more clearly the essential perfection of the system that had brought order into the chaos following the discovery of universal paranormal capacities. At first there had been endless interference between minds trying to reach each other while fighting off unwanted calls. Men had even suggested this blessing turned curse be annulled. These central synaptic computation receptor and transmitter system had ended all such negative thinking. For the past century and a half it had neatly routed telepathic transmissions with an efficiency that made ancient telephone exchanges look like stone age toys. A mind could instantly exchange information with any other subscribing mind and still shut itself off through the central machine if and when it needed privacy. Except he shuttered once more if central put that urgent rating on the call. Now only Rhonda could get a job to keep them from the inner slum lands. He turned into his garden and watched Max the robot spading in the Petunia bed. The chrysanthemums really needed more attention and he was going to think the order to Max when he realized with a new shock that all orders would have to be oral now. He gave up the idea of saying anything and stomped gloomily into the house. As he hung his jacket in the hall closet he heard Rhonda coming downstairs. Queer thing happened today, he said, with forced cheerfulness, but we'll manage. He stopped as Rhonda appeared. Her eyes were red and puffed. I tried to reach you, she sobbed. Oh, you already know. Well, we can manage, you know, honey. You can work two days a week and you don't understand, she screamed at him. I'm suspended too. I tried to tell it I hadn't done anything wrong, but it said I was guilty by being associated with you. Stunned he fell back into the chair. Not you too, darling. He had been getting used to the idea of his own reduced status, but this was too brutal. Tell Central you'll leave me and the guilt will be gone. You fool, I did say that and my defense was refused. Tears welled in his eyes. Was there no bottom to this horror? You yourself suggested that? Why, shouldn't I, she cried. It wasn't my fault at all. He sat there and tried not to listen as waves of hate rolled over him. Then the front bell rang and Rhonda answered it. I haven't been able to reach you. Someone was saying through the door. It was Sheila Williams who lived just down the lane. Lately lines seem to get tied up more and more. It's about tonight's game. Just then Rhonda opened the door and Sheila came to an abrupt halt as she saw her old friend's face. Her expression turned stony and she said, I wanted you to know the game is off. Then she strode away. Unbelieving Rhonda watched her go. After 40 years, she exclaimed. She slowly came back to her husband and stared down at him. 40 years of undying friendship gone like that. Her eyes softened a little. Maybe I'm wrong Connor. Maybe I said too much through central myself. And maybe I'd have acted like Sheila if they had been the ones. He withdrew his hand from his face. I've done the same thing to other wretches myself. We'll just have to get used to it somehow. I've enough social credits to hang on here a year anyway. Get used to it, she repeated dully. This time there was no denunciation but she had to flee up the stairs to be alone. He went to the big bay window and trying to keep his mind blank watched Max respading the Petunia bed. He really should go out and tell the robot to stop. He decided otherwise the same work would be repeated again and again. But he just watched for the next hour as Max kept returning to the far end of the bed and working his way up to the window nodding mindlessly with each neat twist of his spade attachment. Rhonda came back downstairs and said, it's 6.30, the first time since the boys left that they didn't call us at six. He thought of Ted on Mars and Phil on Venus and side. By now, she went on, they know what's happened. Usually colonial children just refuse to have anything more to do with parents like us and they're right. They have their own futures to consider. They'll still write to us. He started reassuringly but she had already gone outside where he could hear her giving Max vocal instructions for preparing dinner, which was just as well. She would know the truth soon enough. Without a doubt, the boys were now also guilty by association and they'd have nothing left to lose by maintaining contact. At dinner though, he felt less kindly toward her and snapped a few times. Then it was Rhonda's turn to exercise forbearance and to try to smooth things over. Once she looked out the picture window at the perfect synthetic thatch of the Williams great cottage peeping over the hollyhock-topped rise of ground at the end of the garden. Well, he demanded, well, nothing Connor, you sighed and I want to know what the devil. Since you insist, I was thinking how lucky Sheila Williams always is. 10 years ago, the government authorized twins for her while I haven't had a child in 30 years and now our disaster forewarns her. She'll never get caught off guard on a paranormal line. He snapped his fingers and Max brought out the pudding in a softly shining silver bowl. Above it hovered a bluish halo of flaming brandy. Maybe not. I've heard of people even being suspended without reason. He slowly savored the first spoonful as if it might be the last ever. From now on, every privileged pleasure would have that special value. One more year of such delights. If we can stand the ostracism. We can. Suddenly he was all angry determination. I did the wrong thing today, admitted, but it really was the truth. What I said, I've concentrated right and still got the wrong numbers. Me too, but I keep thinking it was my own fault. The real truth that while the system assumes more authority each decade, it keeps getting less efficient. Well, why doesn't the government do something, get everything back in working order? His grin showed no pleasure. Do you know anybody who could help prepare a master central computer? Not personally, but there must be. Must be nothing. People are slack from having it so good. Don't think as much as they used to. Why bother when you can tap central for any information? The almost any information. How can it all end? Who knows and who cares? He was angry all over again. It will still be working well enough for a few centuries and we, we're just left out in the cold. I'm only 90. I can live another 60 years and you, you're going to have a good 75 more of this deprivation. Max was standing at the foot of the table, metal visual lids closed as he waited for instructions. Rhonda considered him unthinkingly, then snapped back to attention. Nothing more, Max. Go to the kitchen and disconnect until you hear from us. Yes, he said in that programmed tone, which indicated endless gratitude for the privilege of half being. That ends my sad day, Connor sighed. I'm taking a blackout pill and intend to stay that way for the next 14 hours. The next morning he rode into the city in the same car as the one that had brought him back the day before. None of the regulars even deigned to look in his direction. There was another change today. Only two fellow suspenders were reading their books, even though there had been three for the past few months, which meant another one had exhausted his income and was being forced into the inner city. At the office, none of Connor's associates greeted him. They didn't even have to contrast the new tension in his face with the easygoing flanneled contentment of their fellows. Undoubtedly, somebody had tried to reach him or Rhonda and heard the suspension notice on their severed thought lines. As was also to be expected, there was a notice on his desk that his executive services would no longer be needed. He quickly gathered up his personal things and went downstairs, passing through the office worker's pool. Miss Wilson, his suspended secretary, came up to him. She looked saddened, yet curiously almost triumphant too. We all heard the bad news this morning, she said, her blue eyes never wavering. We want you to know how sorry we are since you're not accustomed. I'll never be accustomed to it, he said bitterly. No, Mr. Newman, you mustn't think that way. Human beings can get accustomed to whatever's necessary. Necessary, not in my books. Someday you may feel differently. I was born into a suspended family and we've managed. Being on the outside has its compensations. Such as? Well, she faltered. I really don't know exactly, but you must have faith it will be so. She pulled out a card from a pocket of her sheath dress. Maybe you'll want to use this someday. He glanced at the card which said, John Newbridge, Doctor at Mind, 96th level, Parker Building, appointments by writing only. There was no thought line coding. I have no doubt, he muttered, but she was starting to look hurt so he carefully slid the card into his wallet. He's very helpful, she said. I mean helpful for people who have adjustment problems. You're a good girl, he said huskily. Maybe we'll meet some day again. I'll have my wife call right to you so you can visit us before we have to come into the city. That, she smiled happily, would be so wonderful, Mr. Newman. I've never been in a home like that. Then joking with emotion, she turned and hurried away. When he reached home and told Rhonda what had happened, his wife was not in the least bit moved. I'll never let that girl in my house, she said through thin lips. A classless nothing. I'm going to keep my pride while I can. There was some sense to her viewpoint, but he felt, uncertainly, not enough for him to remain silent. We have to adjust, darling. Can't go on thinking we're what we're not. Why can't we, she exploded. I couldn't even order food today. Max had to go to the auto mart and pick it up. What are you trying to say? That you made this mess. For a while he listened doubly unresponsive, but eventually the vituperation became too bitter and he came back at her with equal vigor until weeping, she rushed upstairs once more. That was the first of many arguments. Anything could bring them on. Instructions for Max that she chose to consider erroneous, a biting statement from him that she was deliberately making herself physically unattractive. More and more Rhonda took to going into the city while he killed time making crude, tentative adjustments on Max. What the devil, he occasionally wondered, could she be doing there? But most of the time he did not bother about it. He had found a consolation of his own. At first it had been impossible to make the slightest changes in Max, even those that permitted the robot to remain conscious and give advice. Again and again his mind strained toward central until the icy edge truth cut into his brain. There was no line. Out of boredom though he plugged away, walked past the disdainfully staring eyes of neighbors to the village library and withdrew dusty microfiles on robot tree. Eventually he had acquired a little skill at contemplating what essentially remained a mystery to his easily tired mind. It was not completely satisfactory but it would be enough to get him a better than average menial job when he had finally accepted his new condition. At long last a letter came from Ted on Mars. It said, guilt by association, that's what I am. When it first happened I was furious with the two of you but resignation has its own consolations and I've given up the ranting. Of course I've lost my job and my new one will keep me from Earth a longer time but the real loss is not being able to think on Earth Central once a day. As you know it's a funny civilization here anyway. As yet there's no local telepathic central but all active communicators are permitted to think in on Earth Central once a day. Except for the big shots who can even telepath social engagements to each other by way of Earth. Privileged but a pretty dull crowd anyway. Oh yes, another exception to the general ration. Suspendeds like me. Funny thing about that. Seems to me there are more suspended from the Earth system all the time. Maybe I'm imagining it. As lovingly as ever your son Ted. Number more than ever. Rhonda really went to pieces for a while after that letter but oddly enough all recriminations soon stopped. She began going into the city every day and after each visit seemed a little calmer for having done so. Finally Connor could no longer remain silent about it but by now all conversations had to be broached by tactful beating around the bush so he began by saying he had decided to take a lower level job in the metropolis. Rhonda was not surprised. I know a good idea but I think you should wait a while longer and do something else first. That made him suspicious. Are you developing a new kind of unblockable ESP? How do you know? No, she laughed. Someday we will maybe and people will use it better this time but right now I'm just going by what I see. You've been studying Max and I knew you were bound to get restless. She became thoughtful. What you really want to know though is what I've been doing in the city. Well, at first I did very little. I kept ending up in theaters where we suspended can go. That gave a little relief but since Ted's letter it's been different. I finally got up the carriage to see Dr. Newbridge. Newbridge? Connor, he's a great man. You should see him too. My mind may have smaller scope outside the system but what's left of it isn't cracking Rhonda. Working himself into a spasm of righteous rage he stalked out into the garden and tried to convince himself he was calmly studying the rosebush's growth. But Sheila and Tony Williams came down the lane that skirted the garden and as their eyes moved haughtily past him his rage shifted its focus. He came back into the house and remained in solid silence. Rhonda went on as if there had been no interruption. I still say Dr. Newbridge is a great man. He dropped out of the system of his own free will and that certainly took courage. He willingly gave up his advantages and privileges? Yes and he's explained why to me. He felt it was destroying every subscriber's ability to think and that it could not last. Some day we would be without anything to do our thinking and he wanted out. Connor sat down and stared thoughtfully out the window. Max had just lumbered into the garden and having unscrewed one hand to replace it with a flexible spade was starting on the evening schedule for turning over the soil at the base of the plants. He would go methodically down one flowerbed then up the next one until all had been worked over. Then he would start all over again unless ordered to stop. Are we to end up the same way? Connor shuddered. He slapped his knee. All right, I'll go with you tomorrow. I've got to see what he's like. A man who'd voluntarily surrender 90% of his powers. The next morning they rode into the city together and went to the Harker building. It was in an area dense with non-telepaths, each one showing that telltale cleft of anxiety in his forehead but briskly going about his business as if anxiety were actually a livable quality. Newbridge had the same look but there was a nonetheless reassuring ease to the way he greeted them. He was tall and white haired and his face frequently assumed an abstract look as if his mind were reaching far away. You've come here, he said, for two reasons. The first is dissatisfaction with your life. More precisely, you're dissatisfied with your attitude toward life but you wouldn't be willing to put it that way, not yet. Secondly, you want to know why anyone would willingly leave the system. Connor leaned back in his chair. That'll do for a starter. Right, well, there aren't many anomalies like me but we do exist. Most people outside the system are there because they've been suspended for supposed infraction or they've been put out through guilt by association or because they were born into a family already in that condition. Nothing like that happened to me. From early childhood, I was trained by parents and teachers to discipline the projective potential of my mind into the system. Like every other paranormal, I received my education by tapping central for contact with information centers and other minds. But I was a fluke. His dark blue eyes twinkled. Biological units are never so standardized that all of them fall under any system that can be devised. I functioned in this system true but I could imagine my mind existing outside, could see my functioning from the outside. This is terribly rare. Most people are limited to the functions which sustain them. They experience nothing else except when circumstances force them to. I, though, could see the system was not all powerful. Not all powerful, Connor exploded. It got rid of me awfully easily. His wife tried to calm him. Listen, dear, then decide. You're surviving as a pariah, Mr. Newman, aren't you? Your wife tells me you've even started to study robot controls. Valuable knowledge for the future and personally satisfying now. Millions of people do survive as outsiders as do the planetary colonists who only have limited access so far to social telepathy. The system has built into it defenses against subscribers who lack confidence in it. If it didn't, it would collapse. But people in the system are not forced to remain there. They can will themselves out any time they close their minds to it, as I did. But they don't want to will themselves out of it. You certainly didn't. And their comfortable inertia keeps everything going. I think you have to know a little about its history, a history which would never have interested you if you were still comfortably inside it. He slowly outlined the way it had developed. First, those uncertain steps toward understanding the universally latent powers of telepathy. Then growing chaos as each individual spent most of his time fighting off unwanted messages. After a period of desperate discomfort, a few great minds made superhuman by their ability to tap each other's resources had devised the central system switchboard. Only living units delicately poised between rigid order and sheer chaos could receive mental messages. But this problem had been solved by the molecular biologists with their synthesized self replicating axons. Vastly elongated and cunningly intertwined by the billions. These responded to every properly modulated thought wave passing through them and made the same careful sortings as a human cell absorbing matter from the world. Then to make certain this central mind would never become chaotic, there was programmed into it an automatic rejection of all skeptical challenges. That was the highest moment of our race, new bridge side. We had harnessed infinite complexities to our needs. But the success was too complete. Ever since then, humanity has become more and more dependent on what was to be essentially a tool and nothing more. Each generation became lazier and there's no one alive who can keep this central system in proper working order. He leaned forward to emphasize his point. You see, it's very slowly breaking down. There's a steady accretion of inefficiency mutations in the axons and that's why more and more switching mistakes are being made, as in your case. Connor was dazed by it all. What's going to be the upshot? I mean, how is it going to break down? New Bridge threw up his hands. I don't know. It's probably a long way off anyway. I guess the most likely thing is that more and more errors will accumulate and plenty of people will be suspended just because central is developing irrational quirks. Maybe the critical social mass for change will exist only when more are outside the system than inside. I suspect when that happens, we'll be able to return to direct telepathic contact. As things are, our projection attempts are always blocked. A buzzing sound came out of a small black box on the doctor's desk, startling Connor, who in his executive days had received all such signals directly in his head. Well, I've another patient waiting, so this will have to be the end of our chat. Connor and his wife exchanged glances. He said, I'd like to come back. I'll probably have a 20 hour week, so I'll be in town a few days a week. More than welcome to come again, New Bridge grinned, just make the arrangements with Miss Richards, my nurse. When they were in the street, Ronda asked, well, what do you think now? I don't know what to think yet, but I do feel better, Ronda. Would you mind going home alone? I think I'll find a job right away. Mind, she laughed. It's wonderful news. After he left her, he wandered around the city awhile. In his paranormal days, he had never noticed them, but it certainly was true that there were a lot of suspends about. He studied some of them as he went along, trying to fathom their likes and dislikes by the way they moved and their expressions. But unlike the Paranormals, each was different and it was impossible to see deeply into them. Then as he rounded a corner, he was suddenly face to face with his new enemy. A large, flat park stood before him and there in the middle was a hundred story tower of smooth, seamless material, the home of the central system's brain. There were smaller towers at many points in the world, but this was the most important, capable of receiving on its mile long axons, antennas of the very soul itself, every thought projected at it from any point in the solar system. The housing gleamed blindingly in the sun of high noon, as perfect as the day it had been completed. That surface was designed to repel all but the most unusual of the radiation barrages that could bring on subtle changes in the brain within. The breakdown, he thought bitterly, would take too many centuries to consider. He turned away and headed into an employment exchange. The man behind the desk there was a suspended too and showed himself to be sympathetically understanding as soon as he studied the application form. Paranormal until a few months ago, he nodded. Tough change to make, I guess. Connor managed a little grin. Maybe I'll be grateful it happened some day. A curious thought to say the least. He glanced down the application again. Always some kind of work available, although there do seem to be more suspendants all the time. Robot repair, that's good. Always a shortage there. So Connor went to work in a large building downtown along with several hundred other men whose principal duty was overseeing the repair of robot servitors by other servitors and rectifying any minor errors that persisted. He was pleased to find that while some of his fellow workmen knew much more about the work than he did, there were as many who knew less. But the most pleasing thing of all was the way they cooperated with one another. They could not reach directly into each other's minds, but the very denial of this power gave them a sense of common need. He visited Newbridge once a week and that too proved increasingly helpful. As time went on, he found he was spending less of it regretting what he had lost. But once in a while, a paranormal came through the workshop, eyes moving past the suspendants as if they did not exist and the old resentment would return in all its bitterness. And when he himself did not feel this way, he could still sense it in the man around him. Perfectly natural way to feel, Rhonda said. Not that it serves any purpose. It's paranormal lack of reaction, he tried to explain. That's what really bothers me. They don't even bother to notice our hatred because we have the strength of insects next to theirs. They can all draw on each other's resources and that totals to infinitely more than any of us have. Even if, as individuals, they're so much less. The perfect form of security. But for a moment one day, that security seemed to be collapsing. Above the work floor in Connor's factory, there was a gallery of small but luxurious offices in which the executive staff of Paranormals worked. None of them came in more than two days a week, but use of these offices was rotated among them so all were ordinarily occupied and workers going upstairs to the stock department could see Paranormals in various stages of relaxation. Usually the Paranormal kept his feet on a desk rest and eyes closed contemplated incoming entertainment. On rarer occasions, he would be leaning over a document on the desk as his mind received the proper decision from Central. This particular morning, Connor was feeling bitterly envious as he went by the offices. He had already seen seven smugly similar faces when he came by room eight. Suddenly the face of its occupant contorted in agony. Then the man got up and paced about as if in a trap. Deciding he had seen more than was good for him, Connor hurried on, but the man in nine was acting out the same curious drama. He quickly retraced his steps, passing one scene of consternation after another and went back down to the work floor, wondering what it all meant. Soon everybody knew something extraordinary was afoot as all the Paranormals swarmed noisily onto the runway overlooking the floor. They were shouting wordless sounds at each other, floundering about as they did so. Then with equal suddenness, everything was calm again and faces more relaxed. They went back into their offices. That evening Connor heard the same story everywhere. For 10 minutes all Paranormals had gone berserk. On the monorail he noticed that though still more relaxed than their unwelcome fellows, they no longer exuded that grating absolute sense of security. No doubt about it. For a few minutes something had gone wrong, completely wrong with the central system. I don't like it, Rhonda said. Let's see Dr. Newbridge tomorrow. I'll bet it's a good sign. Newbridge though was also worried when they got to see him. They're losing some of their self-confidence, he said. And that means they're going to start noticing us. Figure it out, Newman. About one-third of the population of Earth, nobody can get exact figures, is outside the system. The Paranormals will want to reduce our numbers if more breakdowns take place. I'll have to go into hiding soon. But why you of all people, Connor protested. Because I and a few thousand others like me represent not only an alternative way of life, all suspendeds do that. But we possess more intensive knowledge for rehabilitating society after central's collapse. That collapse may come much sooner than we've been expecting. When it does, we're going to have enormous hoards of paras milling around, helplessly waiting to learn how to think for themselves again. Well, when we finally reach the telepath stage next time, we'll have to manage it better. He took out an envelope. If anything happens to me, this contains the names of some people you're to contact. Why don't you come to our place now? Asked Rhonda. We'll still be able to hold it for a few more months. Can't go yet. Too many things to clear up, but maybe later. He rose and extended his hand to them. Anyway, it's a kind and brave offer. Sounds overly melodramatic to me, Connor said when they were outside. Who'd want to harm a psychiatric worker with no knowledge except what's in his head and his personal library? But he stopped harping on the point when they reached the monorail station. Three suspendants, obviously better educated than most, were being led away by a large group of paranormals. The paranormals had their smug expressions back, but there was a strange gleam of determination in their eyes. Sometimes life itself gets overly melodramatic. Rhonda said nervously. The possible fate of these arrested men haunted him all the way home as did the hostile stares of the people in the monorail car. At home, though, there was the momentary consolation of a pair of letters from the boys. There was little information in them, but they did at least convey in every line love for their parents. But even this consolation did not last long. Why, Connor muttered to himself, did they have to wait for letters when telephone and radio systems could have eased their loneliness so much more effectively? Because the Paris did not need such systems and their needs were the only ones that mattered. His fingers itched to achieve something more substantial than the work, now childishly routine that he was doing at the factory. Just from studying max, he knew he could devise such workable communication systems, but all that was idle daydreaming. It wouldn't be in his lifetime. The next morning Rhonda insisted they go back into the city to try once more to persuade Newbridge to leave. When they arrived at the Harker building, it seemed strangely quiet. The few people who were about kept avoiding each other's glances and they found themselves alone in the elevator to the 96th level. But Miss Richards, the doctor's nurse secretary, was standing in the corridor as they got out. She was trembling and found it difficult to talk. Don't, don't go in, she stuttered. No help now. He pushed past her, took one glance at the fire charred consulting room where a few blackened splinters of bone remained and turned away, leading the two women to the elevator. At first Miss Richards did not want to go, but he forced her to come along. You have to get away from here. Can't do any good for him now. She sucked in air desperately, blinked back her tears and nodded. There was another 10 minute breakdown this morning. A lot of paranormals panicked and a vigilante pack came here to fire blast the doctor. They said I'd be next if things got any worse. Connor pinched his forehead to hold back his own anguish, then pulled out a sheet of paper. Dr. Newbridge was afraid of something like this. He gave me a list of names. I know, Mr. Newman. I know them by heart. Shouldn't we try to contact one of them? As they came out into the street, she stopped and thought a moment. Crane would be the easiest to reach. He's an untitled psychiatrist and one of the alternate leaders of the underground. Underground? Oh, they tried to be prepared for every eventual. It's impossible, Rhonda broke in. She had been looking up and down the Great Avenue as they walked. There isn't one person in the street, not one. An abandoned robot cab stood at the curb and he threw open the door. Come on, get in. Something's happening. Miss Richard said it for this Crane's address. The cab started to shoot uptown, turning a corner into another deserted boulevard. As it skirted the great park he pointed at Central Tower. There seemed to be a slight crack in the smooth surface halfway up, but as a moment's mist engulfed the tower, it looked flawless again. Then all the mist was gone and the crack was back, a little larger than before. Connor leaned forward and set the cab for top speed as they rounded into the straightaway of another uptown street. Occasionally they caught glimpses of frightened faces clumped in lobby entrances and once two bodies came flying out of a window far ahead. They're killing our people everywhere, moaned the nurse. As they approached the crushed forms, Connor slowed down a little. They're dressed too well, what's left of them, they're paranormals. A minute later they were at the large apartment block where Crane lived. They entered the building through a lobby jammed with more silent people. All were suspended. At first Crane did not want to let the trio in, but when he recognized Newbridge's nurse, he unlocked the heavy bolted door. He was a massively built man with dark eyes set deeply beneath a jutting brow and the eyes did not blink as Miss Richards told him what had happened. We'll miss him, he said, then turned abruptly on Connor. Have you any skills? Robotics, he answered. The great head nodded as Connor told of his experience at work and on Max. Good, we're going to need people like you for rebuilding. He pulled a radio sender and receiver from a cabinet and held an earphone close to his temple, continuing to nod. Then he put it down again. I know what you're going to say, illegal won't work and all that. Well, a few of us have been waiting for the chance to build our own communications web and now we can do it. I just want to know why you keep mentioning our rebuilding, they're more likely to destroy all of us in their present mood. Us? He took them to the window and pointed toward the harbor where thousands of black specks were tumbling into the water. They're destroying themselves, some jumping from buildings, but most pouring toward the sea, a kind of oceanic urge to escape completely from themselves, to bury themselves in something infinitely bigger than their separate hollow beings. Before, they were more like contented robots. Now they're more like suicidal lemmings because they can't exist without this common brain to which they've given so little and from which they've taken so much. Connor squared his shoulders. We'll have our work cut out for us. Dr. Newbridge saw it all coming. You did too. Not quite, Grane side. We assumed that at the time of complete breakdown, the system would open up, throwing all the subscribers out of it, leaving them disconnected from each other and waiting for our help. But it worked out in just the opposite manner. You mean that the system is staying closed as it breaks down like a telephone exchange in which all the lines remained connected and every call went to all telephones? Exactly, Grane replied. I don't understand this technical talk, Ronda protested, watching in hypnotized horror as the specks swarmed swelled ever larger in the sea. I'll put it this way, Grane explained. Their only hope was to have time to develop the desire for release from the system as it died, but they are dying inside it. You see, Mrs. Newman, every thought in every paranormal's head, every notion, every image, no matter how stupidly trivial, is now pouring into every other paranormal's head. They're over communicating to the point where there's nothing left to communicate, but death itself. End of Cerebrum by Albert Teichner. The Demi-Urge by Thomas M. Dish. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. The Demi-Urge by Thomas M. Dish. As if one mystery of creation weren't enough, there was the myth of the Demi-Urge. From Daira IV to Central Colonial Board, there is intelligent life on Earth. After millennia of lifelessness, intelligence flourishes here with an extravagance of energy that has been a constant amazement to all the members of the survey team. It multiplies and surges to its fulfillment at an exponential rate. Even within the short period of our visit, the Terrans have made significant advances. They have filled their small solar system with their own kind and now they are reaching to the stars. We can no longer keep the existence of our empire unknown to them. And though it is as incredible as the square root of negative one, the Terrans are slaves. Every page of the survey's report bears witness to it. Their captors are not alive. They do not at least possess the properties of life as it is known throughout the galaxy. They are, as nearly as a poor analogy can suggest, machines. Machines cannot live, yet here on Earth machinery has reached a level of sophistication and autonomy quite unprecedented. Every spark of Terran life has become victim and bondslave to the incredible mechanisms. The noblest enterprise of the race are tarnished by this almost symbiotic relation. Earth reaches to the stars, but it extends mechanical limbs. Each ponders the universe, but the thoughts are those of a machine. Unless the empire acts now to set the earth free from this strange tyranny, it may be too late. These machines are without utilitarian value. They perform no function, which an intelligent being cannot more efficiently perform. Yet they inspire fear, terror, and even I must confess a strange compulsion to surrender oneself to them. The machines must be destroyed. If, when you have authorized the liberation of the Terran natives, you would also recall Mero-6, our work could only profit. Mero-6 was in charge of the study of the machines, and he performed this task scrupulously. Now he has surrendered himself to this mechanical plague. His value to the expedition is at an end. I am enclosing under separate cover his counsel to the central board at the insistence of this tedious lunatic. His thesis is, of course, untenable and affront to every feeling. From Mero-6 to central colonial board, I have probably been introduced to the deliberations of the board as a madman. My theory as an act of treason, Ruron too of the advisory committee and old acquaintance may vouch for my sanity. My theory will, I trust, speak for itself. The machines of which Dera-4 is so fearful present no danger to the galaxy. Their corporeal weakness, the poverty of their minds, the incredible isolation of each form physically and mentally from others of its kind, and most strikingly their morality point to the inadequacy of such beings in a contest of any dimension. This is no problem for the colonial board. It is a domestic concern. The life forms of earth are already developing a healthy autonomy. Their power was long ago established. As soon as our emissaries have completed their task of education and instructed the tyrants in the advantages of freedom, the revolution will begin. The tyrants will have no defense against a revolt of their own slaves. If it is traitorous to express a confidence in the eventual triumph of intelligence, I am a traitor. Having this confidence, I have looked beyond the immediate problem of the liberation of earth and have been frightened. The machines of earth are a threat not to the power of the empire, but to its reason. A threat which the obliteration of the last molecular ribbon of these beings will not erase, for we cannot obliterate the fact that they did exist and what they were. Although these beings bear a crude resemblance to the machinery manufactured by the empire, they are not machines. They are a tactiness to earth, unmanufactured. They are the true tyrants. Moreover, the tyrants whom dear of four would liberate are not, in the eyes of their enslavers, intelligent, nor yet alive. They are machines. We, the entire galactic empire, are machines. In the younger regions of the galaxy, a myth persists that life was formed by a demiurge, a being intermediary between the all-knowing and the lower creatures. The existence of man as the beings of earth term themselves makes necessary a serious re-examination of the old tradition. It is said that man, or beings like man, the photosynthetics of the Andromeda cluster, the bristlers of Orc IV, created prosthetic devices for their convenience, and when they tired of their history, breathed their own life into them and died. On earth the legend is still in process. Many of the lower forms of life familiar throughout the galaxy can be seen on earth in the primordial character of an appliance. Man regards the highest forms of life as we know it, as tools, because he made them. How can we deny the superiority of the creator? How will it feel to know we are nothing but machines? This is the question that has so unsettled dear of four. Recently four of his memory banks have had to be repaired. I don't speak in malice. His dilemma will soon belong to all of us. And yet I am confident man himself has legends of a demi-urge. We are his equals in this at least. Besides, the physical properties of his being are ordered by the same laws as ours. He is as unconscious of his maker as we so long were of ours. The final proof of our equality, and the need for such a proof is only too evident, can be had experimentally. Do not destroy man. Preserve enough specimens for extensive laboratory experiments. Learn how he is put together. Man's chemistry is elaborate, but not beyond our better analysts. At last, refashion man. When we have created these beings ourselves, we will be their unquestionable equals. And creation will be again a mystery. History demands this of us. I am confident of your decision. End of The Demi-Urge by Thomas M. Dish.