Vincent King
Benevolent Big Brother can be just as big a tyrant as his Orwellian counterpart. Life under the influence of a Happiness Generator could be a strong deterrent to progress of any kind.
* * * *
X knew he had to find the pliers. He’d seen some, he could remember seeing some somewhere. Perhaps a Dealer—he’d forgotten but it didn’t matter, X knew he’d find some, it was necessary. All the time he knew he’d get some somewhere.
It was the Curator’s fault. The Curator put X on to it, on to that Luger. It was the Curator’s own fault.
The day it started X was wandering aimlessly, passing time in the Weapon’s Hall. He moved between the inlaid crossbows—those damascene swords, all patterns and tassels, the glinting beauty, he passed there, admiring the workmanship, all the past excellences. Somehow it was familiar, it was right for him. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps there was something concealed there for him, some meaning if only he could find it.
‘Let me show you these ...’ The Curator was an old man. He had fine grey hair that was combed as if every hair was counted. His moustache was clipped and even, not like the fashion. His eyes were sharp blue. He was perfect, clean and polished, not for use, but like a toy—like one of the soldiers they used to have, or the picture of an astronaut. X could hardly believe that the Curator had spoken to him, he wondered if the old man combed his eyebrows and why he had not seen him before.
The Curator led him to the pistols. X followed down long silent corridors between the great cases, past whispering holiday trippers in their gaudy clothes. The Curator ignored them, X could tell he was being taken somewhere important.
He took X through them all, showed him the engraved barrels, the wheel locks and flint locks, he explained the coming of percussion caps and the rifling of barrels, what proof marks were and the changing shape of bullets, the making of smokeless powders. Last of all he showed X the case with the Luger.
Something in the shape—even on that first day there was a great significance there for X. That tapered barrel, the machined perfection of blued steel, the sculptured quality that was there. It was like a heavy snake, there on the pink velvet, coiled and resting, only waiting for a hand to make it live again.
The first time X was content to stare. To take in the shapes of the mechanism, to look at the checkering on the grips, to admire that fat butt. Through the weeks he returned every day, the Curator always talked to him, told him all about the Luger. X could hear the excitement in his voice. It was tremendous to know a man like that, out of all the others, a man that was excited and really knew about things. Once the Curator came so quickly from his lunch that there were still crumbs on his moustache and X had to smile as he listened to the words he spoke.
‘Pistole Parabellum Model 1900 ...’ the Curator indicated the case. ‘Pistol for war ... Borcharte-Luger Parabellum ... that was the first one. A service weapon, as they used to say. Not a toy for range practice. A barrel length of four and five-eighths inches in the standard model—7.65 mm calibre, eight-round magazine, weighed one pound thirteen ounces...’
‘Why?’ said X. ‘There were later designs. Tell me what makes it so good?’
‘A natural weapon, the most famous in its time. The weight in the right place, wieldy, wonderful, instinctive pointing. With it you shot where you looked. No tools to take it down, the only screws held the butt plates ... and the firing pin.
‘Quality. Real quality. Early twentieth-century engineering at its finest, a great example of their art. On firing the toggle-joint lever mechanism is locked while the bullet is in the barrel—no gases wasted. You see, the used case was ejected and a fresh round brought into the barrel, the toggle locked and the weapon cocked and ready to fire again—an automatic pistol. Very powerful and effective.’
‘Efficient ...’ murmured X. A fine thing beautiful—he recognised that. He could tell just by looking.
The Curator fell silent. He seemed lost in contemplation of the Luger and X could understand it. He had already begun to love the pistol, to want it for himself, to possess it.
He didn’t ask himself why. At first it didn’t matter, the Luger was just desirable—only a beautiful and well-made thing the reason he could talk to the Curator. Every day X hurried to look at the Luger and listen to his friend the Curator.
It was the Curator’s fault. A gun was for killing—a pistol had that one purpose. Even antique guns were illegal, there were penalties for having any weapon. Even being too interested in something like the Luger might attract the attention of the Generator. As the days went by it got more risky to look at the pistol, but X found he had to go, he was fascinated and he went as often as he dared.
His obsession grew and X became more frightened. He would sidle down the corridors, devise new routes through the great Halls to reach the Luger. He scurried through there, looking anxiously in case the lenses began to move. If the Curator wasn’t present X would only permit himself ten seconds in front of the pistol. Sometimes, when he was away from the Weapons Hall, he began to wonder where the weapon was leading him.
‘There is only this one particular Luger left,’ said the Curator. ‘There is only this one 9-mm model, eight-inch barrel, exhibited here with the long holster and shoulder stock, the back sight set on the rear of the barrel, calibrated from one hundred to eight hundred metres ...
‘1914, the year of manufacture. 1914 ad in the old reckoning. The Long Barrelled Model. The stock fits on to the butt. Very accurate, meant for artillery men, machinegun crews, people like that who didn’t want to be encumbered with full-size rifles. No safety in the grip, the thumb catch only.’ There was a cord that looped through the trigger guard and held the weapon on to its mount. Even as the Curator talked X was thinking that he would need pliers. Even then he had gone so far as thinking he would need to cut the cord.
It was mad and X knew it. But he always returned. He would look hungrily, saunter past the Luger, go on thirty yards to the London-made shot guns, then circle back to the magic case where the Luger lay. He seemed to spend his days creeping back to peep in at it.
Shot guns were all right, sporting guns were pretty in their way, but it was the hand guns, the rifled pistols that were the thing. They were for the big job, for killing men. To have that power in your hand! The thought turned X cold. The Luger had come to dominate his life, the sensuous appeal there, the power. It was the Curator’s fault for showing him.
* * * *
On the thirtieth day he gave in and decided he must have the Luger. The idea dominated his imagination, there was singing in his ears and the columns swayed and he knew that he would never be right until he had it in his hand.
He was leaving the Weapons Hall, blinking out into the sun down the broad white steps there. Pigeons scattered and clattered up against the distant trees, the hazy pink and cream mansions over there. It was beautiful and the music was lovely too, it always was like that in the nice part of the Capital.
X’s head rocked, he slipped on the steps, he tried to watch the pigeons. He crossed the square and the Guards eyed him, he struggled to walk as if he’d never thought of the Luger.
One of the pigeons had separated from the flock and circled him as he moved towards the Barrier. X saw it and knew then that the Generator had seen him and that he was being watched. A man learned to notice things like that in the Capital. He realised that he dare not be near the Luger again. Not the way he had been, not for a long time, perhaps not ever. It was like a kick in the stomach.
That was when X really decided he must have it. Perhaps he’d only been admiring it before. To have it—his hackles rose at the thought—to hold it! Even if it was only once and only for the few moments before the Guard came he must have it once before he died, he couldn’t face the thought of not seeing it again. He had a feeling of destiny, that he had to have it whatever he chose to do. It was mad. All the time a part of his mind knew it was mad.
But the weapon meant so much to him. It was so much more than a cunningly shaped steel lump from ancient times. A weapon like that—it was from a time when men had really controlled their destiny, from before the Generator, from before any of the clever machines.
In these days the Generator did everything. Men didn’t decide, men were trapped in an eternal holiday. X thought bitterly how humanity had been usurped and how most people didn’t care.
But the Luger—the Luger! A man loaded it. A man jacked the first round up into the breech ... you decided where that spinning bullet would strike and when! The pistol was a comfort to X, it had controls. A man decided what it would do. It was power!
X passed through the Barrier. There were other things there, he blundered down a row of aeroplanes, then there were the things called motor bicycles all arranged under their transparent domes. X went down the ramp and admired the machines as he passed. They were shaped for men, not the other way about. They were all from that wonderful free era before the Generator when things had been so good. In X’s days you couldn’t breathe without something measuring it.
X admired the machines on the Ramp, but it was the Luger that meant so much to him. He couldn’t love a Spitfire to his chest. There were other things, but they were too big to steal. What he wanted was the Luger, that was the very essence of the good era. He knew he had to have it, the Luger, and he had to have the pliers to cut it free.
He looked up and the pigeon flashed its single eye. When it saw him look up it dropped back and X was able to duck down an alley to his left. The Old Capital crowded right up to the Barrier and a man could really lose himself among the shambles of wooden huts and tenements that filled the once-broad streets.
X didn’t head for his own place. The Generator would have that, the Guard would get him there for sure. There was cheering from down by the river. He knew he would be safer in the crowds so he went that way.
The shouting grew louder above the music. X would have to find a new place before the lights went out, a man didn’t want to move about the Old Capital after dark. The Generator didn’t like it for one thing and anyway someone would probably club you for what you had.
There were banners over the crowd’s heads. X saw splendid costumes move above the people, great epaulets and splendid flowered hats. It was a cavalcade on a path above the river, horses still gave men stature, even in this late age. A man mounted could still kid himself he owned everything even if the race had sold out to the Generator. Even the President could sit up straight on a horse. X moved in the shadows, half seeing what went past.
It was the Generator that ruled, made the Capital what it was. X climbed steps, stood on a balcony there, looking down and thinking of the way things were and the individuality of the ancient Luger. He leaned on the balustrade, rust flaked off, fell on to the people. There were always crowds when the President rode by, but mostly the streets and alleys were empty and wet. There was always cheering when the processions went by, but X thought maybe it was really for the horses. They were splendid above the people, polished and magnificent, it was the men on them that meant nothing.
A black shiny Guard pointed his goggles up at X and waved him down into the crowd. X saw him take the projector off his pack and hurried down.
The World President himself went past. Perhaps five feet tall, but he wore high, golden heels and his horse was taller than the others. Blond hair, more gold there in the torque that twined through it, his make-up was artfully chosen to minimise the slightly bulbous nose and the watery blue eyes. His tunic was white and spangled with small green flowers, the President wore it loose above his skin-tight pants. He smiled all the time from the height of his still, plastic horse as the hovering platform brought him slowly along the river. He came so close that even through the distortions of the dome and masking gauze X could see the wrinkles on the age-marked face.
The procession went past and everybody cheered, X with the rest of them. It was the Generator he hated, not the President. Anyway, the dancers had been good and the music tremendous in that dark place.
The people closed in after the procession, followed it as it went down stream. X was left among the trampled flowers, watching the palm fronds turn slowly on the water as they drifted away. As the lights dimmed the sparkle of the ceremonial helmets disappeared over the grey people. It was almost funny how they liked the President. X was sure they really meant the cheering, he could see that they were disappointed to see the President go. Perhaps it was that he was a bright thing for them, a change—they enjoyed the pageantry, the illusion that at least one man was still high in the order of things.
‘Come, Quick! This way!’ There was a thin man in a long grey coat tugging at X’s elbow. X put his face back into the shadows and looked at him. You had to be careful in the Old Capital.
‘Tools!’ The man leaned in close and hissed the word at X’s ear. It was a Dealer.
Tools were good. X had tried to buy tools before. They were beautiful too, truthful and strong, like the Luger. X took a chance and went with the Dealer.
It was only the criminals who wanted tools. Burglars, but they didn’t have to do it, it was all in fun. Everything was taken care of, people were all fed and given their pleasures. People didn’t even have to live in the Old Capital, not in that decayed and dirty jungle, not since the Happiness Generator organised the world. Everybody could live what the Generator called ‘a full life’, except that there were always those who had to act free. That was why there were still criminals, men did those things for the danger, for the fear, to compete against the Guard and each other, against the Generator itself, so that they could have risk and depend on themselves.
In a way it was a mystery, a contrariness that even the Generator did not fully understand. The bloodymindedness of humanity; it was allowed for, there were laws and a thousand petty regulations for men to break and feel free.
It was why the Old Capital was dangerous. There was rape and murder there between the sparse lights, all the old crimes and the new ones too. Dangerous and dirty, the people diseased and depraved—and it was all a game that they played as if it was real, it was a game the Generator had invented for them. It was crazy, they died and cheated for their game but really they knew it was as false as the President.
X shook his head. Men had always been like that. That quality had put them where they were, brought them up from apes and caves. It was the Generator that had turned it sour when it made the Old Capital. X thought of the Luger and laughed at himself. That was crazy too, loving that thing, deciding to steal it. Everyone was as crazy as he was.
The Dealer pulled him into shadow where the lenses couldn’t reach them. He shot narrow eyes right and left, then opened his coat so X could see the tools looped inside it.
‘Pliers?’ When the man spoke it was from the side of his mouth. He had some good things there. Two sorts of hammer, chisels too, and a saw. He dropped one side of his coat and showed X where the pliers were. One pair was really old, but the others were what X needed.
‘See them,’ X whispered and held out his hand. He’d seen pliers that had been fused closed to be legal.
‘Money.’ The grey man rubbed his fingers together. His eyes flicked left and right over X’s shoulder. It was only fair. X handed over a small piece of platinum he had saved. The Dealer tried it with a cell and a meter and then passed over the pliers. The jaws were okay and so was the cutter. The cylinder was almost half charged. It would do.
‘Five hundred,’ said the Dealer.
X didn’t argue. He paid and put the tool away. When he looked up the Dealer was smiling. He was happy, it wasn’t the money, it was the act of trade that counted, the dealing in illegal things. X grinned, people all had their little games.
When the Dealer was gone X went back with the crowd through the darkness up the ramp to the Barrier. He wasn’t being followed, it was easy, he could always lose surveillance in the Old Capital. The Generator didn’t really mind what happened down there.
The steps up to the Weapons Hall looked clean. There was shade there under the trees and that was welcome in the clear glare of the sun. On the top step X turned and there was nothing unusual. There were only the bright milling people and the occasional Guard moving them on like some black, shiny sheep dog. Nobody even saw X.
He entered and padded silently down the space between the field guns. He loosened his neckpiece, passed old machineguns mounted on iron wheels, X knew them from before and they were on his way.
The tanks were good too. Solid things, steel, the early ones heavily riveted. Male and Female they were labelled— MkIV, Tiger and Centurian, Sherman and Stalin. X moved between the massive bulks, crouched under the lenses. He felt safer among the tanks, there was nothing that could see through them.
He saw himself reflected in long cases. He looked hot. Sweat ran on his forehead, his eyebrows, dribbled down his face but he still felt cold. He looked for people to avoid them but the place was empty. He scurried from case to case, waiting in secret places, hiding from nobody. Tension made his shoulders ache, his heart was beating like a hammer and his eyes were full of tears. The sound of his breathing deafened him, as he drew near the beautiful Luger he began to hold his breath.
Then the Luger was in front of him and it filled all his vision. It was magic, it was all his mind, it was all his thought.
X got his hand on the case and stood flattened against its coolness while he controlled his shaking legs. A mile to the right, where the plasma guns started, a column of sunlight struck down and turned the floating dust to gold. X listened but he could only hear his heart. Even the music had stopped, it was as if the world was waiting for what he would do.
He pulled on his gloves. He had to remember to breathe. He swung his arm and smashed the case with the pliers. It took only two blows and that surprised him. The noise was terrible.
His hand closed on the Luger and he was suddenly amazed that he should have got so far. Somehow he hadn’t expected it... it was as if he hadn’t intended to really do it. The weight of the weapon surprised him too. Its hard touch. Its reality.
X pulled out the Luger as far as he could and closed the cutting part of the pliers on the cord. When he twisted and closed his hand the pressure hissed and the jaws clamped tight. It took three bites and the valve was wide open.
When the cord parted the pliers were exhausted. X dropped them and held the Luger in both hands. It was everything, it filled his world.
‘Stand still !’ X straightened slowly and put his hands up. It was the Curator’s voice, familiar but full of disappointment. ‘You had to have it—you had to steal it!’
X could see him in a hanging wedge of the broken case. He had a Guard projector and his old hands fumbled as he got out his communicator.
‘A thief out of the Old Capital! I thought you were something more. I thought I could call you my friend ...’ X watched the Curator’s lips tremble as he spoke. The Luger was heavy to hold up and X was suddenly sorry for what he had done.
‘Can’t you see that it’s for everyone to look at? An inspiration to help keep up the old values ? Too important for one man to own. How will things ever be better if people like you steal and act like this way in the Old Capital?’
X wanted to answer that he couldn’t help himself, that it was inevitable, a destined thing, that he loved the Luger. The Curator lifted his communicator, his eyes moved to it, he was too close to X.
X whirled and brought his right fist swinging down. The Curator ducked and his foot slipped on the mosaic floor. The shocker bolt smashed more cases behind X and the ozone smell drove him mad. He couldn’t bear to lose the Luger, not now. He could stop at nothing.
He got balance while the Old Man was still slipping. X hit him a big blow with his left fist. He thought how like one of those old boxing films it was except that he was still holding the Luger.
The Curator went down. His skull struck the paving with a wet noise like an egg breaking. He didn’t move and he didn’t make a sound. Blood ran out of his ears.
Fear shook X, elation came too, and then horror. The Curator was his friend. Alarms broke out. Bells and flashing lights filled the Hall.
The blood stopped flowing, the legs straightened and then relaxed. It dawned on X that the Curator wasn’t going to move again. That he was dead and X had killed him. It was against everything. He hadn’t meant to ... it was so sudden, it had all happened by itself. It was a sort of hell.
Sirens came and were getting louder. X saw the brass polished sensor tubes begin to search. People came from somewhere. Not the Guard yet, but holiday people running and screaming and pointing at him. A lens caught him. He saw it twist to focus, then all the sensors twitched towards him.
It was pandemonium. It was puzzling where the people came from. They were all after him. Men, women and children all in their bright holiday clothes. They knew what he’d done and he knew too and that was the worst of it. All the time he could see the Curator’s legs twitch and the bright blood pools on the grey and blue mosaic.
The bronze door was closing. X ran on his slapping feet and dived through the last two feet. The circle closed and he landed sprawling down the steps at the feet of the Guards there.
‘Murder!’ He shouted as he finished rolling. ‘Back there! Right behind me! Killed a man!’ X didn’t know where the words came from but they were there when he needed them and it worked. The Guards paled, it took their minds off X as he slipped through them.
A killing could happen in the Old Capital but in the Nice Part it was something else, they just weren’t used to it. It stopped them, it was so horrible, so personal up there in the light where they could really see it.
The Guard Traveller was on the square. X changed direction and bundled into it. The fans were still running, it lifted off easily and accelerated hard down the street. The pigeons scattered and the power screamed. X didn’t know how he did it. The machine seemed to drive itself. He wasn’t thinking of much, it was all just happening and he’d killed his friend. He clutched the Luger to his chest like a talisman, he was shaking all over and all he could see was the blood on the mosaic.
The Barrier loomed ahead. The Traveller changed to high lift and jumped it like a race horse. Nobody tried to stop them. Nobody even shouted. All the sensors were focused back to the steps where the Guards were being swamped by the escaping people.
Half a mile down it was totally dark and it was raining. The few lights were almost out and there was nothing unusual about that. The Traveller went down at full speed, the spray lashed out behind as the Generator guided it down the dark alleys. X put his head back on the seat, savoured the safe darkness, held on to his Luger and thought of the dead man. He didn’t care what happened, he let the Traveller take him on deeper into the darkness. On to where the Capital was dank and slimy, to where the steel and structures wore beards of slippery moss, deeper and deeper into the forgotten parts. To where there were no people, to where there was no music, to where the lenses were clouded and their brass parts green with decay, to where it seemed no one had been for a thousand years.
X accepted what would happen. He didn’t care if he lived, he let the Traveller and chance take him on to where they liked. In the end they took him out of the Capital and at first he didn’t even notice.
Twenty miles outside the Traveller stopped. The energy exchanger had exhausted slowly, it was not until the first hill slopes that the machine laboured, then lurched and ground to a stop.
It was dark there too. But not with the velvet intensity of the forgotten parts of the Old Capital. There were stars— but X didn’t see them until the Traveller had stopped and it was too late to go back.
He sat up with a jerk. He looked up through the cupola and saw the stars shine in the summer sky. Panic hit him and he screamed. His stomach turned as he recognised the wavering beauty of the heavens and realised that he was in the Outside.
He’d seen the Outside. He knew what was there. He’d looked out from a safe, clean gallery in the Nice Part. He’d seen the red-brown desert, the deep carved water courses, the cracked and eroded surface.
He knew of the death out there. He’d seen the half revealed bones where they lay to wear away in the dusty winds. He knew it was death to breathe the air, death to walk in that place. That in the Outside everything meant death.
X sat shivering in the silence and watched the dawn crack across the sky. He sat and counted his days, regretting the Curator, waiting for the bubble of air in the Traveller to wear out.
The sun rose over distant mountains and X had resigned himself. He sat up, arms folded, still shivering slightly from the cold, reckoning his death the just return for what he had done to his friend.
* * * *
Full daylight came reluctantly to that devil’s landscape. Long ages before there had been neutron bombing and bacteria, napalm and defolients, nerve gas spread wide and thick. They said the anthrax had only lasted a hundred years in the soil, but there were other and worse things than that.
X studied the fantastic shapes, looked at the piled up rocks, the low dunes of mud and dust, caught the sparkle of glass from old broken houses. He heard the wind move on the face of desolation and he could ignore it. He didn’t care much any more, he knew he would soon die.
On the horizon, on the brow, a slender light glint took his eye. A straight thing, the only regularity in all the twisted world. On poles, on regular shining poles there were lenses and antennae sets. They swivelled slightly, each rocking its exact arc as the Generator kept watch over the Capital and its people. There was nothing else moving, only the sterile wind, but later in the morning there were dust devils moving too.
It was the Generator that had built the Capital—made the Fuller for all the people to live in. It had been the Generator’s suggestion, perhaps it had been in the days before it gave orders. It had computed the design, made arrangements so that the Fuller became possible, told the men what to do and how to do it. ‘Safe for ever!’ it had said. ‘Safety and content!’ So then they called it the Happiness Generator.
They must have been mad, thought X. Those great men in those golden days, they must have been mad to even make the attempt, to put themselves so much in the power of the Generator. But the thing had been done and the Generator was given more and more to do, more and still more power. Perhaps, thought X, perhaps the men that decided those things had had a whiff of the gas that made men think they were cats and afraid of mice. Perhaps, in some way, they had been really mad. Perhaps everyone was mad.
X knew the story. He had to admit that the Generator and its Fuller had saved the race from extinction. The Other Side hadn’t had a Generator as good as the Capital. They hadn’t built a Fuller and they’d all been killed.
They said the Others had started the Trouble, but for some reason X wasn’t sure he believed that. One story was that the Generator had computed when the Others would strike and then hit them the day before. There had been a reply, of course, but it was soon over and anyway most of the people were in the Fuller. The poisons had come down like rain, soaked the soil and there was nowhere else to go except the Capital.
After that the old men had realised how dangerous the Generator was. That was when they’d made the President to be its keeper. He was supposed to have power over it, but X didn’t believe that either.
He sat still in the Traveller, looking at the desert, knowing that he would soon die. He dismantled the Luger, hoping perhaps to find out its essence, to find that quality that made it so wonderful for him. He spread the pieces on his lap, counted them, explored their beauty. He thought of the Curator, wondered if the pistol was really worth his death.
He looked down the barrel, saw the rifling bands shine spiral back at him. He saw the dashboard through it, the communicator panel from the Generator, then used the barrel as if it was a telescope to study the slender lens poles on the ridge. It grew hotter as the sun rose. X reassembled the pistol, unfastened his jerkin. He sweated and looked out at the baking rocks. Slowly the heat became unbearable.
Finally it was his bladder that drove him out. He knew he would die anyway if he stayed and he chose to go out and stand up, not to die sitting in a stink of urine. He stuck the Luger in his waistband, took one last deep breath and opened the door.
Glass fragments cracked under X as he stood and swayed. He was surprised when he did not die at once. He decided the surviving contact poisons must act more slowly. His legs were stiff and his head began to pound as he struggled to hold his breath—he turned for one last look at the Fuller. In the Nice Part he saw spectrums where the sun shone through. There were trees, people in bright clothes were brilliant dots there. Safe, thought X, they were safe and they would live and he wouldn’t.
But there was an end to it. The horizon began to spin. X’s breath exploded out. In utter terror he stood and fought, perhaps he lasted a full minute before he had to breathe. He gasped in, then stood waiting for his lungs to sear, for the agony to begin.
Nothing happened. The Fuller towered over him, dominated half the sky. Perhaps he could make it back. He was breathing freely now and still nothing happened. Perhaps he could last a day, or even a week, perhaps with treatment he might live. A little moment of hope came, but really he knew he was doomed. Then, suddenly, he hated the Fuller and all he wanted was to be alone with himself to think what things meant to him.
At least he’d die out of the Fuller. They wouldn’t recirculate his flesh to grow algae. He would assert himself. He’d take his Luger and walk away, get away as far as he could. Walk! He’d leave there running, walking was too slow! Perhaps, with luck, he could get out of its sight. In the end it was a matter of pride. X turned and began to jog towards the hills.
All the way he passed ruins. Buildings and bones, a great rusty field of dust that had once been a road. Endless rivers of rubble and lines of cars were half buried there. They had what was left of seats in them, some had bones too. The lines reached all the way to the Fuller. X hurried past, the only sound was his breathing and the sough of wind in the thin jagged metal. Not everybody had made it to the Fuller, only the chosen had been allowed entry on that last day.
* * * *
It was evening before he got near the hill crest. He drove himself up there, staggering with fatigue. His vision was a red haze. The sun had set and it was cooler and night was coming and he was sure that he was dying. He stumbled and fell to his knees. The sand was warm and he found he could go no further. He slept face down, moaning and making running movements with his legs as he dreamed of the Curator and half felt the Luger digging into his ribs.
In the warm breezes of morning X’s eyes opened and met sand. His mouth was gritty and he ached all over. He lifted his head, sand crumbled off his cheek and down his neck as he sat up. His body was so painful he was sure that he was alive.
He looked back and the Fuller was still there. Twenty miles away, thirty perhaps, still big on the horizon, blue and shadowed against the rising sun. He sighed, stood up. There was still a distance to go, it seemed he still had time to cross the hills and get out of sight.
On the crest X stood amazed. There should have been only clay and dust and bedrock, everybody knew the world was dead except the Capital.
For a moment he thought it was some sort of hallucination—where there should have been desert there was grass. A waving sea shining back blue-green under the cloudless sky. It was like a blow in the guts. Like a blind man he set off down the slope to bathe his feet in that green ocean.
Swallows and larks swooped and fluttered along the slope. The wind felt free there. Slowly it dawned on X that he was not about to die.
Life began suddenly like a knife edge just over the crest away from the Capital. Just there, ten feet into the grass, something made X stop and look up at the slender posts as they curved away in their long perspective. A buzzard came circling slowly down the wind. As it crossed the line a lens looked up and a bar of white light connected it for a moment with the bird. The buzzard puffed smoke and flapped twice before it fell. X stepped on quickly. He guessed the Generator killed anything that moved towards the Capital. There were animal bones all along the line.
Strange thoughts came to X as he travelled the grass. Ideas stirred in his well-taught brain, all the time the Luger nagged in his ribs, worried him with its presence. Clouds began to build in the east.
Night came and he was sitting high on an age-smoothed granite mass, an island in the darkening green, looking back at the Capital and its glow against the sky. The air was sulphurous, heavy and warm, thunder mumbled in the hills and X’s head ached.
Lightning crackled under the massive clouds, an age passed, X watched the storm come nearer. It seemed to touch the Capital, the lightning spidered down across the great Fuller, hit all along the hills.
Rain blotted out the Capital and its glow as if it had never been. X felt the Luger tingle in his hands. He looked down at it and the muzzle glowed with a strange phosphorescence. Giant thunder came and the Luger was pointing at the Capital and he suddenly understood. He was going to shoot the Happiness Generator!
Blast it like a thunderbolt! Cool rain came, cleared the air and X’s headache was gone. That Luger, it was made for something, it had a purpose. It had a function and that was the clue to its meaning.
X felt the weight of it. Felt the power of the thing come jarring up his arm as surely as if he’d fired it. It was clear. He’d always meant to shoot the Generator, he was always meant to shoot it—that was why he’d loved the Luger.
Now he understood, it was reasonable. Somehow he hadn’t been able to recognise the purpose inside the Fuller. He knew now, he knew why he’d stolen it, he knew the real reason—he knew now why he’d killed the Curator.
He was going to pump a handful of bullets deep into the guts of the great machine. Find its vital parts and send shots to burst and ricochet through the banks and memory coils, each round taking its two or three hundred metre tunnel of destruction through there. He was going to set the world free, release the people to make their own way in the green and living world.
Now it only remained to find nine rounds of 9-mm ammunition. There’d have been none made for generations, but somehow he was sure there’d be some somewhere. There had to be. He knew he’d have to find some. It wouldn’t take many, just a handful in the right place.
Not enough to kill the machine entirely, just enough to take out its higher parts, the structures that made it so powerful, the ego unit that it had made itself. Just the top ten per cent, like one of those lobotomies it did to people, just enough to take away its ambition, its aggression. Then it would be what it really was. A tool, beautiful like the Luger, a stupid efficient servant, uncreative and safe. A thing to serve men, their creature to organise their days and do their small things.
X sat on his great rock and watched the Capital reappear as the storm passed. The rain had soaked him, his clothes had begun to fall to pieces but it was an hour before he felt cold and had to move. He was weak and hungry, exhausted, he felt as if he might die anyway.
X turned from the Capital and clambered down the bald granite. In the grass he looked again and the Fuller itself had disappeared. He began to stumble through the grass, he had to find food quickly. He knew what a great thing he had to do, he was sane now and knew how weak he was. He slowly became aware of a light ahead of him. Not blue-white like the Fuller, but a small orange square against the green darkness.
He had no idea how long he had walked. He staggered into a shallow winding valley, thick with trees and misty into the distance. He followed a small path, tripped on roots, blundered against bushes as he watched the orange light appear and disappear through the dripping trees.
Near the house there was the sound of water and a dog began to bark. X made sure the Luger was hidden and stood waiting while a man came out with a lantern. He held the dog by the loose skin of its neck and raised the lantern with his other hand. The dog was very big, a sort of Alsatian, and it threatened X with murder.
X tried to say he meant to hurt no one. He stood very still while the dog sniffed him over between its barks and growls. The man held his light close and all X could see were the moths that danced around it.
‘You’re drunk...’ The man laughed at X as if he was really amused. It was a nice sound. ‘The dog won’t hurt you, unless I tell it!’ His voice changed, filled with concern when he saw X’s condition. ‘You look bad. You look too weak to hurt...” X didn’t know whether to be glad or not and he didn’t care as he pitched forward into the man’s arms.
‘He could sleep in the shed. Bring him in first.’ A woman came out of the shadows. She held a shot gun and she stayed just inside the circle of light. She took no chances and there was the dog, and that worried X much more than the gun.
The man got an arm under X’s shoulders and helped him towards the house. They paddled across the shallow stream and into the brighter light which came from the door. Inside the dog started its clamour but when the man put X into a chair it fell silent.
They bathed X’s cuts and bruises, wrapped him in blankets and the man gave him whiskey from a pottery cup. The woman brought cheese and coffee and when X saw her stand by the light to cut bread she was beautiful. About thirty-five, slim but stronger looking than any man X had ever seen in the Capital. Her voice was lovely too, low and like violins. Her skin was brown and her voice was as soft as her skin.
‘You’ve been hungry.’ The man watched X eat, poured more whiskey into his coffee. ‘You’ll understand about the guns?’ X saw the man had a sub-machinegun handy. ‘My Sten gun, I mean. It’s lonely out here ... people are always hungry...’
X nodded, his mouth too full of cheese to speak. The man laughed again. He had red lips behind his black beard and X was surprised to realise that they weren’t painted.
‘You’re from the dome ?’ X nodded again. ‘What’s it like in there now?’
‘What are they wearing?’ The woman turned from the fire. She smiled and X told her all he knew. Then he saw she didn’t really care and only asked to be polite.
They had a good house there. The walls were three feet thick and made of stone and clay ... the fire was warm and there were no lenses. X talked freely, told them everything they asked. He’d never been in a better place.
‘Capital hasn’t changed...’ said the man. He gave X a cheroot. ‘Take the smoke right in,’ he said as he lit it. ‘Hold it in your lungs—it’ll do you good.’
‘It hasn’t changed in a thousand years,’ said the woman. ‘What would change it now?’
‘Why not? Why shouldn’t things get better if men make them?’ X felt good. Full of food and confidence. There was a warmth in him, a glow of safety. ‘A man could change it.’
‘She’s right.’ The man brought another bottle. ‘The machine won’t let anything change.’
‘I’ve seen it—even the Generator is trying to cure the desert. I’ve seen aircraft spraying neutralises ... from a gallery in the Nice Part. Decontamination ... they’ve ploughed places, planted them. It’ll work one day ...’ It was all right, X knew everything was for the best. The man laughed and the woman smiled.
‘You know the Generator better than that. What it sows is poison, all it ever sprayed is herbicide. The machine needs that desert, it could control the people anyway, but it’s easier when they think there’s nowhere else to go. They’re happy then.’ There was a silence while X realised why they’d laughed at him.
‘I’m going to kill the Generator!’ X spoke out of anger, he hadn’t meant to tell them. More than anything he wanted their respect. ‘I can change things! I’m going to.’ They took it seriously, they stopped laughing. There was another long silence and the man looked thoughtful.
‘It’s bad in the dome? The crowding? That why you came out?’
‘More sad.’ X took a long pull on his cheroot, he found he had to tell them everything. ‘I ... I killed a man. A friend ... an accident, I think. But I wasn’t happy there anyway ...’
‘It’ll get better in there.’ The woman looked at X with her big serious eyes. ‘Let it be, let it get better like out here, slowly. Naturally. It’d be dangerous just to stop the Generator. Think of what would happen to all those people. Joe, tell him!’
‘Yes, look at the hell they spilled out here. Even then it didn’t kill everything—seeds can survive for millennia and still germinate. I suppose a lot of the bacteria got sterilised in the radiation bombing. I suppose the main attacks were on the dome—it asked for it, just being there. Anyway, things were bad but it all came back. Better to do things slow, organically, without violence.’
‘My grandfather came out of the Capital,’ said the woman. ‘Joe’s too. People come out all the time. One day they’ll all be out and then the machine will stop because there’s just nothing else for it to go on for ...’
‘That’s why it keeps the people in.’ X saw how it was. Perhaps it was the whiskey, he was seeing things very clearly right then. ‘It’s a big prison. It keeps the people so it’s got a reason to keep going. It diminishes human dignity. It’s got to go!’
‘Christ! Is there any of that left?’ The man spat in the fire. ‘Those people could get out any time. Like you. Anybody can get out if he tries. Let them be, they’re happy in there, that’s why they stay. It’s safe! That’s why it’s called the Happiness Generator. They don’t want to be free, it’s too hard!’
‘Then why are people always running from it ? If it’s like she said, why call it the Happiness Generator?’
‘Because they’re alive and they think everyone else is dead.’ The man stirred the fire. ‘That’s happiness, that’s the best you can expect. Everybody doesn’t have to be dead either. But they were. The bombs, the strikes were designed to kill people, crops, almost nothing else.’ He laughed again. ‘Do you know they had a strain of foot and mouth that only attacked humans?’
‘You said the Generator made the desert. Not the Others ?’ X helped himself to more whiskey, took another of the cheroots. ‘It’s got to go. Doing that!’
‘Maybe there were Others. But it was their Generator that really did it. They might have called it something else, but it was the same thing really. You can’t distinguish between them, not really.’ The man paused, ran his hand through his hair. ‘Look, it did what it thought best. Everything’s easier in the Capital. I just keep thinking of what’ll happen in the dome if you take out the Generator.’
‘You’re free.’ X finished his whiskey. ‘Why not everyone else?’ There was silence again. The woman sighed. ‘Anyway, I’ve got to do it. I killed the Curator to do it. He was my friend. I’ve got to do it for him, or else it’ll have been for nothing. I’ve got a destiny to do something—I’ve got this talent for violence.’
‘How? How will you even get near the Generator?’
‘I’ll find a way. There’ll be a way ...” X knew there was, there had to be. It was certain that there was a way. ‘I know what I’ll do when I get there.’
The man changed the subject. He told X how he herded a few sheep and got a little gold from the stream by electrolysis. He told how he only met other people when he went to what he called ‘the town’.
‘These things ... the oil for your lamps, tobacco, coffee, the manufactured stuff. They make them still ?’
‘Everything wasn’t lost in the Trouble. A lot of machinery left. There aren’t the people, that’s all. Most things are made these days. That’s why I bother with the gold.’
‘I’ve got this.’ X put his Luger on the table.
The weapon had a slight gold sheen in the lamp light. The man handled it, inclined his head and looked at X. Then he laid it back on the table.
It was still beautiful. X studied it too. It was almost like seeing it for the first time, he was never more aware of it. He looked up and saw the woman staring at him.
‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ She wasn’t smiling at all. ‘That thing’s too important to you!’
‘I loved it.’ X told them the whole story, how the Curator had shown the Luger to him, how it had seemed to lead him on and on until he had to kill the Generator. ‘I told you a friend died for it. While I think there’s a reason for it all I know I’m not mad ...’
‘Shoot the Generator?’ The man looked puzzled.
‘Are you sure?’ the woman was frowning. ‘Guns are for killing people. How can you hurt something like the Generator?’
‘Bullets ... that’s ... it’s got to be done like that. The gun—it’s from the good era before the Generator, from before the Capital.’ X wanted desperately to convince the quiet woman. To make her see he was right and how important it all was. ‘Because I killed the Curator for it...’
‘It’ll be bad if the machine goes—but you can’t hurt it. You won’t get near it.’
‘Everything has led me this way. I’ve got no choice. I’ll get there and I’ll do it.’
Nobody said anything. Later the man showed X where he could sleep. In the morning he came back and gave X bread and a flask of water with whiskey in it.
‘She doesn’t want you around,’ he said. ‘I’ll walk a little way with you. She wants me to see you clear, doesn’t want any part of what you might do.’
They followed the stream down through the valley and the sunlit trees. X could see the man felt bad about what he had to do. At last they stopped and the man turned to face him.
‘We’re near the dome here. She’s frightened—so am I. You’ve only got to think ...”
‘There is one thing,’ said X. ‘9-mm ammunition. I need ammunition for this.’ He slapped the Luger. ‘Where do you get your manufactured stuff?’
The man slung his Sten gun and looked back. They were out of sight of the house, he satisfied himself that no one was watching. He passed X a small leather purse.
‘9-mm Parabellum. Calibre 354 ... it’s what you need.’
‘How? How old?’ X hefted the bag. It was heavy. He felt the cartridges move against each other. He couldn’t believe his luck. He tipped the heavy little brass cylinders on to his palm.
9-mm. Nine rounds. Lucky numbers. It was destiny ... fate. Everything worked for him as if he was on rails.
‘Fresh enough. A year maybe. They’re for this.’ The man held up his Sten. ‘Good cordite. We make the Sten. Simple, effective, easy. Same size as your Luger.’ He looked up into X’s face. ‘Lucky ... I suppose ...’
X pushed in the catch and sprang the magazine out into his hand. He put the pistol carefully on the ground, stood up and moving down the magazine spring the way the Curator had told him, began to slip in the rounds.
‘I wanted to help you.’ The man watched him work. ‘I needed to, I suppose. Somebody’s got to do something about that Generator. I had to help you.’
X pushed in the magazine and heard the catch slip into place. Eight rounds in there made it much heavier. It felt stronger too, the fat butt sat even better in his hand. More potent, different from before. It was the ammunition, the Luger had validity now. It wasn’t only the weight, X felt the power spread into him, warm his hand and arm. He felt really good.
‘I ... I’m still not sure she’s wrong. It would be hell for those people in there, if the Generator goes.’ The man laughed shortly. ‘An end of the Happiness ...’
X pulled back the toggle joint until the breech block was behind the first cartridge and let go. The mechanism sprang forward and the first round was in the barrel and the weapon ready to fire. He put on the safety catch. He held the Luger by his side, the heavy barrel reached below his knee and the power of it was wonderful. He began to listen to what the man was saying.
‘Don’t go back by the house. I don’t want her to guess. The Capital is that way. Go over the hill.’
X nodded. He thanked the man. He held the pistol in one hand and the leather purse with the spare cartridge in the other. He started up through the trees.
At the top he looked back. The man was still in sight, looking back up at him. He looked small to X, smaller than before. Perhaps it was that he had no great aim, no fate. Maybe, thought X, maybe it was his one important thing, all he had to do was supply that ammunition. Now that was done and there was nothing else for him. X waved back and crossed out of the valley on to the grassy plain. The hills loomed ahead and the Capital was beyond them. The ring of lenses topped the crest. All day X listened to his legs swish through the grass and watched those sensors flash and move in the sun.
The Generator killed buzzards for crossing and coming too close. X felt the weight of the Luger and was sure that he would get through, but later in the afternoon he began to wonder how. He watched the clouds build over the desert to the east and as the air became still and hot he became steadily more worried.
Evening found him crawling up a rocky water course into the hills. Soon it was dark and the storm had come again. Muddy waters flooded down and X crawled on through them.
In a lightning flash he saw the slender metal pole directly ahead. The sensors moved, shone wet up there against the driving rain. He marked the position and when he could see in the darkness he found the pole again, silhouetted against the glow from the Capital.
X brought up the Luger with both hands. He estimated the range and set the sight. He lay on his belly, spread his legs and pulled off the safety catch. He aimed carefully at the shifting eye. As he took the first pressure on the trigger lightning came again.
Violent energy lashed down from three hundred feet above. It was as if it came over his left shoulder, the thunderclap was instantaneous. The ground heaved and the pole was a yellow after image straight down below the jagged shape of the lightning.
He lowered the Luger. There was nothing he could add to that destruction. Sparks moved about the control box, played up and down the split and melted pole. A high pitched humming vibrated in the ground, insulation burned a moment with a guttering red flame and then went out in the rain. X put on the safety catch and walked out into the desert. Everything worked out for him, always. Fate was wonderful.
In the darknesses between the storm flashes, in the engulfing thunder, X stumbled down the sodden slopes. He hid all the way, timed his dashes in the roaring wind, ran in the obliteration of the rain.
The Capital loomed out of the murk. The lights were blue and grey, the structures invisible except when parts were lit by lightning. Opal, it was like a great jewel set above the hidden landscape. Lightning splayed and reflected on the wet surfaces and a dozen bolts struck in the ten miles of twisted desert in front of X. The earth rocked in the energy of the storm.
X stumbled into the rust river of the old cars. He crawled through, partly to hide, but also to escape the stunning rain. He mingled with the bones there, his weight cracked the brittle plastics, he tangled in discoloured rags of clothing, crumbled the paper-thin rust as the rain drummed on what was left of the metal. The last shreds of his own clothes washed off and he crawled, scratched and naked, clutching the Luger, the purse with the one cartridge hung around his neck, sometimes through and sometimes beside the old cars.
The storm ended at dawn. X reached the end of the cars, let the sun warm him as he lay a hundred yards from the great curve of the Fuller. He dismantled the Luger and carefully cleaned the working parts. A few grains of sand could jam the action. He wiped the cartridges and reloaded the magazine, wished he had a little oil. He thought of food and wondered if he dare drink water from the puddle in front of him, the provisions the man had given him were long since gone.
By mid-morning the sun had disappeared and X was in the shadow of the Capital. He got up, half crouched and drove his stiff legs to where the great wall reached the earth. Blank concrete rose a hundred feet up before the Fuller began and X felt safe there. Water running off the great catchment had worn a deep ditch there. X climbed in, ten feet below ground level, his feet splashing in pools of clear rain water, he felt safer than ever. He followed the great perimeter around, it was two miles before he found the entrance.
The port was set at X’s eye level, five feet above the floor of the gully. He stood back a little and saw the door was raised. It was enormous. Fifty yards wide, but only open a few inches. X hesitated, then, pushing the Luger in front, climbed up and struggled into the darkness.
Light glowed a hundred feet in front. When he had the courage X walked that way, the flapping noises of his feet echoed back from high ceilings and distant walls.
Jets of water sprayed from the darkness, caught and held him. Hot soapy water, detergents sprayed the imaginary contamination from his body. Radiations came to kill the bacteria. In that hard dull light X scrambled across the slippery floor. The jets followed him, he spat soapiness and the water came clean, washed him pure and stopped the smarting of his cuts. He fought on, when he fell near the far door the water changed to warm air and dried him.
New and fresh clean, X stood under the small light he had first seen by the far wall. The strip of light where he had crawled in disappeared with a moan and a clang. Somehow he still had the Luger. He leaned on the wall and remembered to hold the weapon barrel down to clear the water out. The wall groaned and then whined up. X pulled off the safety catch and crouched through there.
‘So it was you! So you got it...’ The Dealer came stepping out of the half darkness. X pointed the Luger towards him and looked him up and down. It was surprising to meet him there—there shouldn’t have been anyone in the darkness under the Old Capital. Not in that unused place.
‘The Luger, I mean.’ The Dealer still came forward. His coat swung heavily from the tools hung inside it. ‘I guessed ... I knew why you wanted those pliers when I heard about the Luger.’
‘Why are you here?’ X was still suspicious. It seemed so strange to meet the Dealer again.
‘Me? I’m often here.’ He turned, waved his hand at the dark shapes that surrounded them. His coat flared as he turned back. ‘Things. Down here ... tools. Things.’
X’s eyes were used to the half light. Now when he looked he could see big machines ranked away into the darkness.
‘Agricultural machines ... harvesters,’ said the Dealer. ‘I believe that’s what they are. From when they thought we might be able to go out again one day. Just junk now, until that happens. Like the museum stuff upstairs.’
X saw the tool box strapped outside of the nearest machine had been broken open. Anti-corrosive padding was hanging out, a ball of the stuff was screwed up on the floor. The Dealer followed his eyes and laughed.
‘Where do you think my tools come from? I know where to find anything.’
‘What about the Generator? Where’s that?’
‘Everywhere...’ The Dealer stopped laughing. ‘All through ... it sees everything. Scans it.’
‘It didn’t see me. Where are the central parts ? Where are the parts it made itself?’
‘That Luger ?’ The Dealer didn’t want to answer X’s question. ‘You find ammunition with it ? I might be able...’
‘I’ve been Outside.’ X watched the Dealer closely. The man’s jaw dropped. He stepped back, he looked really surprised.
‘Outside! You ... you’re not dead ? How long ... ?’
‘Four days.’ It was X’s turn to grin. ‘I’ve got a surprise for everybody. Twenty miles out the desert stops, only you can’t see that for the hills. Green then ... green grass. Further on there are trees. Trees and people, they make things, they even make ammunition that fits Lugers. Where’s the Generator?’
‘Up.’ The Dealer answered without thinking. ‘Beyond the Nice Part ... You ... you’re not going to do anything desperate?’ He looked at the Luger and back to X’s face. ‘Now look! You can’t!’
‘Tell me how I get there.’
‘I’m not saying! It’s watching now! There were alarms before you came in. You haven’t got the money to get me to tell you that!’
‘I only need a bullet,’ said X slowly. ‘In your right knee cap. You’ll never walk straight again. If that doesn’t do there’s still your left...’
‘All right! But the Happiness Generator! Taking that on! Just think!’
‘That’s me, not you. I’ve got to do it. Anyway, it deserves it.’ X brought up the Luger. ‘This thing won’t just smash your knee. Might even take your leg off ... very powerful...’
‘All right! There’s a lift—this way.’ He led off. X kept out of reach and followed. As he went he took an overall from one of the tractors and slipped it on.
The lift had white walls. X drove the Dealer in and made him operate the controls.
For a full five minutes the lift ground up through the darkness and many levels of the Old Capital. Then they plunged into the sunlight and music of the Nice Part. X held his Luger on the trembling Dealer and stole glances out of the window to his left. He spotted the Weapons’ Hall far down there and saw Guard Travellers moving on the roads and ramps. The people were brilliant in their holiday clothes, but it was always holiday under the Happiness Generator. It was a kind of innocence, a sort of Eden to live in the Capital. X knew what he intended was right, a virtuous thing that he owed the dead Curator. He would unleash humanity to do great things again, it couldn’t be bad but he knew he would get no thanks.
Then suddenly they were high through the sky and the lift had stopped. X opened the door and they were in a jungle. There was water underfoot, the air was humid, water beads flashed and all he could see was green-yellow flickering ferns and small dashes of clear blue sky beyond them. He was dazzled, he walked on the way he had to go in that flashing light-show jungle.
X shoved the Dealer on in front with the long barrel of the Luger. They burst through thorny bushes on to white tropical sand that hurt their eyes with its glare. A turtle watched them stonily, blue ocean stretched away beyond waves breaking on the reef, warships, low and grey, lay out there. More museum pieces, thought X, just anchored there.
‘The Happiness Generator? It’s here?’ He could see no sign of anything that fitted, there was nothing that he could identify. ‘What is this place? How is it done?’
‘The President’s. He lives here. It’s for him. His secret garden, he never leaves. The Generator’s here too, or the part you want anyway.’
‘All for him ? He lives here ? But I’ve seen him—he lives among his people, shows himself to them!’
‘Dolls.’ The Dealer grinned suddenly. ‘He wouldn’t live like the people. Not where they are. They wouldn’t risk him down there. Androids ... dummies. That way he can be in more places.’ He looked hard at X and then went on. ‘You don’t have to believe it, but it’s the President that really gives the Happiness Generator its orders! It really is!
The President—he lives for ever. You don’t have to believe that either, but it’s true! Medicine, you know. Surgery. The Generator sees to all that...’
X found himself believing it. It suddenly seemed right, as if he’d been led up to it all along, as if he’d always known it. A pistol, even a Luger, could kill a man, but what could it do to a Generator? It fitted and anyway, no machine could hurt the Race like it had, not unless there was a man behind it.
‘He was the President when the Fuller was made. Power. That’s what he lived for—lives for. A politician, elected in the first place, he’d do anything to go on for ever!’
It was true! X was sure. He saw it, he saw the pattern. The Capital had to go on to support the President, he was the one that needed the people to suppress and rule, X had heard of politicians. It was mad, but it was a human’s madness. It made sense, in a crazy way, X knew it made sense.
‘It’s the President you want to shoot. Not the Generator!’ The Dealer turned to face X. ‘There! I’ve said it! If they catch me they’ll kill me, but you’ll probably do that anyway. At least we’ll die for the right thing!’ He laughed again. ‘I know because my family always dealt in things— things like information. Got a good living ... fun too—but this big thing I’ve told you for nothing!’
‘You go,’ said X. ‘Your life, I’ll give you that.’ He had to find time to think.
‘Good luck!’ The Dealer backed off the way they’d come. ‘They’ll get me for sure: That Luger—you make it count!’
X heard the lift door open. It was too quick. The Dealer could never have crossed a mile of fern jungle. ‘You remember !’ The Dealer’s voice came back loud and clear. ‘It’s illusions—all false. Remember it’s the President’s place, you know what he is. It’s made of deceptions, built of them, one on the other for a thousand years.’
X heard the door close and the lift whirr down and it couldn’t have been twenty feet away. He shook his head and turned to look up the beach. There were buildings there perhaps two miles away, hazy in the distance. He pushed the Luger inside his overall and began walking in the hot sun. When he looked back the fern jungle was as far away as the buildings had been. There were more and bigger ships anchored in close to the shore, all hazed and foreshortened in a funny perspective that he didn’t quite understand. From the ferns to the buildings had taken one and a half minutes and he didn’t understand that either. Simultaneously he appeared, standing, bright light and puzzled in two million screens throughout the Capital.
Two and a half million viewers saw him scratch his head, half draw his Luger and then push it back. The screens cut to a close-up of his sweaty face, the people saw his eyes narrow as he glanced up at the sun. Some of them even noticed him.
The screens cut to the figure of the President as he poured the last vapouring liquid hydrogen from a heavy, insulated container into the giant refrigerator. He threw down his thick gloves and made a little bow towards the lenses. The screens played applause and cut briefly to a shot of the Curator android lying on his back with his chest open. Minimal lights flickered a dim pattern in the dark cave of the thorax. The Generator showed X’s sweaty, worried face and played raucous laughter to its audience.
X rounded the first building. A full size steam-engine confronted him, a figure stood in its shadow. X hesitated, then drove himself out into the open for the sake of the Curator, he reached out the Luger and crept towards the man’s broad back.
The screens flicked and the President’s face filled them all. He smiled, gestured with his long pointer towards the complicated display behind him. He cleared his throat and began to speak.
‘Don’t make a sound!’ X reached the man and pushed the Luger into the neck under the tricorn hat. Turn slowly. This is a pistol!’
The man didn’t move. X shoved harder on the Luger. The man fell forward. Hit the ground with a small flurry of dust and X nearly screamed. It was like the Curator all over again. Three and a half million viewers caught the expression on his face and joined in the laughter. Perhaps it was going to be a good evening after all. A comedy, perhaps. The Generator, pleased with the effect, played the sequence five more times.
X felt for the pulse at the man’s neck. There was nothing, the flesh was ice cold. X eased past the engine to where a Wright Flyer stood wilting in the sun. Two men were there, with leather jackets and caps worn back to front. As X went the android model of Newcomen flicked an eye open and watched him go.
‘This evening,’ said the President, ‘continuing my series on Technology ...’ The viewers relaxed. Perhaps there would be more jokes later.
The screens showed the Newcomen android being laid on to a test stand alongside the Dealer and the Curator.
‘In the fission bomb,’ the President smiled at his people, ‘the Uranium 235 or Plutonium 239, or a mixture, were divided and enclosed in a heavy case. They were then driven together by a conventional explosive. The masses were so held together long enough for fission to take place.
‘In the bomb named “Thin Man” for example, two pieces of Uranium 235 were set at opposite ends of a tube and driven together, rather like two bullets fired from opposite ends of the same barrel. In “Fat Man”, on the other hand ...’
X pushed over the Wright brothers and the people laughed again. He ignored the Victorian electrical machinery with its waxed linen wrapped wires and moved quickly past the test beds with the turbo jets. The androids watched him go. When the audience lost interest the Generator switched them back to the President.
‘... 5.30 in the morning, July 16th, 1945, in the old reckoning ... at a place called Alamogordo in New Mexico...’ The President consulted his notes. ‘In what was then the United States of America. Shortly other devices were exploded elsewhere, our forefathers wasted little time ...
‘In a fission bomb only 0.1 per cent of the matter present is made into energy. In the fusion bomb 0.5 per cent is released. A vast improvement. With the fission bomb the temperature necessary for fusion became possible. It was possible and it was done.’ The President turned and indicated the corrugated iron building that had appeared behind him on the screens. ‘Here we have a reconstruction of a fusion bomb.’ The Generator flashed the characters ‘T minus 2-10’ on to the four million screens.
X stumbled over heavy cables that led from diesel generators to the iron building. A trace of white vapour escaped from a tall chimney. As he got near a blast of hot air flapped his overall. He reached the door and hesitated there.
‘In fact this is a more advanced design than the first thermonuclear weapon.’ The President, inside now, tapped his pointer on the frost-caked drum that almost filled the hut. The lenses zoomed in closer than ever. ‘At the heart— invisible, I’m afraid—is a simple fission bomb. All around is liquid hydrogen, almost at absolute zero to provide a dense mass. The outer container is several tons of Uranium 238—which is not normally fissionable, there is no critical mass—the small cables leads to the TNT charge which is to initiate the central bomb. In the trees to your left I have a switch ...” He walked out of one door as X entered at the other. T minus 2.00’ said the Generator’s numbers on the four and a half million screens that were now activated.
The light flashed on the President’s diamond cuffs, his throat ruffles were swan white and pink against the vegetation.
X edged through the narrow space between the bomb and the corrugated wall. Suddenly everything was very urgent and he didn’t know why. The screens cut from the striding President to X and back again. The Generator began a commentary, drumming up the tension until the people stopped laughing at X’s contortions and sat up on the edges of their six million identical stools.
‘Will the President be in time ? Will he see the assassin, X? T minus 1.90 ... 1.89 ...’
X got into the sunshine in time to see the President reach the trees. He ran that way. Past a jet fighter, past the combustion chambers of a Saturn five, past dummies, a small house with people in it—past assorted crucifixes arranged to test effects and resistances to radiation and blast. He skirted a Lunar Module, frightened a herd of tethered goats and burst through the bushes to confront the blank stare of the President’s sun goggles.
‘The initiating conventional explosive is detonated with a normal electric detonator. The system is in triplicate to avoid mishaps.’
‘Will he be in time? Will he do it? Will the Capital be destroyed? T minus 1.01 ... 1.00 ...’
The President smiled at something over X’s shoulder. X looked that way and the trees and bushes were hung with lenses and receptors. He turned and saw the President begin to walk leisurely towards a large switch that was screwed to the trunk of one of the ferns.
‘T minus .68!’ said the Generator.
‘Stop!’ Yelled X.
‘Yes?’ The President turned to face him. ‘You mustn’t hold up my programme.’ He turned to the lenses. ‘Are the fishing boats in position? The fishermen?’ He turned back to X. ‘You’ve got to do things right.’
‘Kill !’ screamed the Generator. ‘T minus 0.56 ... 0.55...’
‘You’re mad!’ said X coldly. ‘Fancy making a thing like that! Making that damned bomb again! Even if it’s a dummy...’
‘It’s a real...’ The President laughed at him. He started walking again, towards the trunk with the switch. ‘Where’d be the point if it wasn’t real?’
‘For God’s sake! Why make a thing like that?’
‘Power.’ The President began to giggle. ‘Because I could! It’s exactly as it must have been! Look at the ships!’
‘I’m going to kill you.’ X spoke with gravity. The viewers writhed a little on their seats, giggled uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry ... I really have to do it... I’m sorry.’ One or two in the audience began to cry.
‘Now X! Now! Don’t let him reach the switch! T minus 0.30 ... 0.29.’
X pushed off the safety catch, brought up the Luger. He aimed at the President’s head. The close-ups on the screens flickered from one face to the other.
‘No!’ The President held out a hand as if to stop the bullet. ‘Please not yet—I haven’t finished!’
The close up showed flame spit from the Luger. The viewers saw the toggle fly back and caught the cartridge case twinkle high into the airy sunshine.
X’s weak wrist jerked up. Perhaps an earlier man could have held the recoil, but not X. The bullet went smashing into the foliage five feet over the President’s head.
‘Missed !’ The Generator was shrieking now. ‘You missed ! Again ! Quick! T minus 0.15 ... 0.14 ...’
‘No! Time...’ The President whimpered. ‘Give me ten seconds...’ He began to run for the switch. X fired and missed again. It was a moving target. Firing the Luger wasn’t what he’d thought it would be. He fired again and again and his arm felt as if it had been broken.
‘Low! Aim low ! T minus 0.9... Please hurry!’ For the first time the Generator sounded really worried. The people sat up and watched the President’s heels kick dirt as he ran. They saw the fern fronds come falling down as X’s bullets chopped into them, they gnawed their knuckles as whole sections of jungle blotted out and became different. They roared with laughter as the President ducked and bobbed, at X’s antics as he tried to draw a bead.
Then the President reached the trunk with the switch.
‘Please! T minus 0.5 ... 0.4 ... 0.3 ...’
X’s seventh bullet took the President in the small of the back. He crashed down, knocked flat, back broken and pelvis smashed. He screamed in agony, then moaned with despair when his clawing fingers couldn’t reach the red lever of the switch.
‘T!’ said the Generator. ‘T-time ... thank goodness!’
X went to the President. Put the Luger to the weeping head.
‘No...’ the President waved the gun away. ‘It doesn’t matter ... I’m finished, save it...’ For some reason X took his last cartridge and loaded it into the empty magazine. That gave him two rounds. Somehow he felt he might need them.
‘You must understand ...’ The President was weakening. ‘That bomb—it wasn’t as powerful as I said—but it can blow the Fuller open ... open like an egg for breakfast. It’s the only thing that could touch it, took me six hundred-years to lead up to it, to get the parts and fool the Generator. You spoiled it! Pretended I was mad. Got to destroy the Generator ... you ... you pull the switch ...’
‘Too late,’ said the Generator. ‘Much too late ... yet something ... something not right! All right then ... past T-time. Something ... dismantle the bomb!’
The viewers laughed to see the President die. They laughed at X’s puzzled face when he stood up. It had been a good evening. They laughed even more at his blank astonishment in his new surroundings.
All the woods, the beaches and the ships, they were all gone. Aluminium, everything was made of aluminium, built for lightness in that high part of the Fuller. X found himself at the dead centre, two hundred feet above him the great arches of the main structure met at the apex of the Capital. Around him the floor curved up. Ten feet away, set on a low, circular balcony, about eye level, nine machined alloy boxes ringed him round. They were quite plain, unmarked, uncoded for any human recognition.
X stood in the pit of the place, in the only clear space, holding his Luger, the President dead at his feet, looking up at the boxes. It was wonderful. Altogether they were no more than eighteen cubic feet and all the Generator, all that great thing was contained in those grey boxes.
Directly in front of him the President’s red switch remained. No longer mounted on a tree, but roughly screwed to one of the boxes. X turned quickly and the bomb hut was still there too. Much smaller than before, but it was there and the President had been telling the truth. X yanked down the switch and nothing happened.
‘I told you it was too late,’ said the Generator, “but something is still wrong and I can’t think of it.’
There was a crash from the bomb hut. One side fell down in a flurry of the loose sand that was lightly scattered on the floor. The Curator and Newcomen came out carrying a chunk of the outer casing. White vapour boiled out with them, the steady pulse of the diesels stopped abruptly and the refrigerator cut out. The Dealer came out next with half of the Uranium from the inner bomb, then came the Joe android with the rest. The Wright brothers brought out the rest of the case and last of all came the Woman, frost on her face and arms, with the TNT charge, the detonator leads still dangling.
‘See...’ said the Generator. ‘But I wish I knew what was the matter ... I... I feel so stupid...’
X saw where his last bullet had gone right through the President. Beyond that it had splattered blood and bone fragments on the box below the switch, there was also a small dented hole where the bullet had gone in.
When X looked the bullet had broken up inside and torn multiple tracks through and out the other side. There was a little smoke and small sparks played in the darkness. There were eight more of the boxes and six of them had been hit. The holes in the fronts were small, but at the backs the exits were enormous.
‘See ...’ said the Generator. ‘You see I’ve dismantled the bomb ... I told you it was after T... You can’t... you can’t hurt me ...?’
The androids walked off in different directions. X nodded and advanced on the two remaining boxes. His pistol was very powerful, it would do all that was wanted.
He put the Luger’s muzzle six inches from the first box. He chose a point three inches from the bottom, angled the pistol slightly up and fired. The bullet entered two inches below the centre, travelled upwards through the box, shattered and smashed off the far side. One half of what remained of the Generator’s central system died. X adjusted his aim for the last box and hit it dead centre.
He hefted the Luger and left it, warm and still smoking on the last box. A man didn’t need a hydrogen bomb to settle his differences with anybody, let alone a machine. He still admired the gun, but he didn’t want it any more. It was finished. He turned on his heel and stepped into the lift.
‘So once again your happiness generator triumphs !’ The people settled down again, relaxed. The last few minutes had been very exciting, but they were glad it was over. It had only been a drama after all, not real, just another entertainment. ‘The treacherous President has been killed by our agent, X. We chose him to serve us for that purpose. We brought him through, we planned all his thoughts and what he considered to be his decisions. Even while the evil President scraped together parts and materials for his diabolical bomb, even then we had the dupe X moving always towards him, never suspecting that we had armed him. Or why—believing in his destiny—that he would kill us!’ As the screens spoke the people laughed. The funnier moments were shown again and again, that night the whole Capital rocked with their laughter.
‘Relax ... our people. We, your Happiness Generator will attend to every little thing. Remember the desert outside ... trust us for your Happiness!
‘Right now—’It’s Tombola! From the Empress Hall in the Nice Part! And this week—a special—this week the winner becomes The World President! So watch those happy numbers!’
The audience studied the symbols flicker on their screens. The Generator was warm and human and understood, it was confident, everything was wonderful. The screens didn’t actually go blank for quite a long time, the Generator had always prepared far enough ahead, but long before its voice finished the people had begun to wonder why the lights were dimming and why there was no water. Then, a little after, they were wondering why there were no more reassuring words, no new games, no more music. The screaming began in the vast, dead Capital.
By then X was well established in his wooded valley. The farm was real enough and he was fully happy when the dog came to love him and stopped barking when he stood up. He panned a little gold for his whiskey and cheroots and when the dazed people began to come puzzled from the Fuller he was able to help them.