Big Book of Science Fiction (30 page)

“It is such nice coin,” Greenbush
sighed.

“If I tried to take something
with me?” Jed asked.

“It just wouldn’t go, gesell. You
would go and it would stay.”

Jed thought of another question.
He turned to Greenbush. “Before I go, tell me. Where are the HUC’s kept?”

“In refrigerated underground
vault at place called Fort Knox.”

“Come on, come on, you. Just walk
straight ahead through coil. Don’t hurry. Push door open and go out onto
street.”

~ * ~

Jed
stood, faintly dizzy, on the afternoon sidewalk of Wall Street in Manhattan. A
woman bounced off him, snarled, “Fa godsake, ahya goin’ uh comin’!” Late papers
were tossed off a truck onto the corner. Jed tiptoed over, looked cautiously
and saw that the date was Tuesday, June 14th, 1949.

The further the subway took him
uptown, the more the keen reality of the three quarters of an hour in the bank
faded. By the time he reached his own office, sat down behind his familiar
desk, it had become like a fevered dream.

Overwork. That was it. Brain
fever. Probably wandered around in a daze. Better take it easy. Might fade off
into a world of the imagination and never come back. Skip the book for a month.
Start dating Helen again. Relax.

He grinned slowly, content with
his decision. “HUC’s, indeed!” he said.

Date Helen tonight. Better call
her now. Suddenly he remembered that he hadn’t cashed a check, and he couldn’t
take Helen far on a dollar.

He found the check in his pocket,
glanced at it, and then found himself sitting rigid in the chair. Without
taking his eyes from the check, he pulled open the desk drawer, took out the
manuscript entitled, “Probable Bases of Future Monetary Systems,” tore it in
half and dropped it in the wastebasket.

His breath whistled in pinched
nostrils. He heard, in his memory, a voice saying, “You would go and it would
stay.”

The check was properly made out
for twenty dollars. But he had used the ink supplied by the bank. The check
looked as though it had been written with a dull knife. The brown desk top
showed up through the fragile lace of his signature.

<>

~ * ~

SANITY

by Fritz Leiber, Jr.

“COME
in, Phy, and make yourself comfortable.”

The mellow voice—and the suddenly
dilating doorway— caught the general secretary of the World playing with a blob
of greenish gasoid, squeezing it in his fist and watching it ooze between his
fingers in spatulate tendrils that did not dissipate. Slowly, crookedly, he
turned his head. World Manager Carrsbury became aware of a gaze that was at
once oafish, sly, vacuous. Abruptly the expression was replaced by a nervous
smile. The thin man straightened himself, as much as his habitually drooping
shoulders would permit, hastily entered, and sat down on the extreme edge of a
pneumatically form-fitting chair.

He embarrassedly fumbled the blob
of gasoid, looking around for a convenient disposal vent or a crevice in the
upholstery. Finding none, he stuffed it hurriedly into his pocket. Then he
repressed his fidgetings by clasping his hands resolutely together, and sat
with downcast eyes.

“How are you feeling, old man?”
Carrsbury asked in a voice that was warm with a benign friendliness.

The general secretary did not
look up.

“Anything bothering you, Phy?”
Carrsbury continued solicitously. “Do you feel a bit unhappy, or dissatisfied,
about your . . . er . . . transfer, now that the moment has arrived?”

Still the general secretary did
not respond. Carrsbury leaned forward across the dully silver, semi-circular
desk and, in his most winning tones, urged, “Come on, old fellow, tell me all
about it.”

The general secretary did not
lift his head, but he rolled up his strange, distant eyes until they were fixed
directly on Carrsbury. He shivered a little, his body seemed to contract, and
his bloodless hands tightened their interlocking grip.

“I know,” he said in a low,
effortless voice. “You think I’m insane.”

Carrsbury sat back, forcing his
brows to assume a baffled frown under the mane of silvery hair.

“Oh, you needn’t pretend to be
puzzled,” Phy continued, swiftly now that he had broken the ice. “You know what
that word means as well as I do. Better—even though we both had to do
historical research to find out.”

“Insane,” he repeated dreamily,
his gaze wavering. “Significant departure from the norm. Inability to conform
to basic conventions underlying all human conduct.”

“Nonsense!” said Carrsbury,
rallying and putting on his warmest and most compelling smile. “I haven’t the
slightest idea of what you’re talking about. That you’re a little tired, a
little strained, a little distraught—that’s quite understandable, considering
the burden you’ve been carrying, and a little rest will be just the thing to
fix you up, a nice long vacation away from all this. But as for your being . .
. why, ridiculous!”

“No,” said Phy, his gaze pinning
Carrsbury. “You think I’m insane. You think all my colleagues in the World
Management Service are insane. That’s why you’re having us replaced with those
men you’ve been training for ten years in your Institute of Political
Leadership—ever since, with my help and connivance, you became World manager.”

Carrsbury retreated before the
finality of the statement. For the first time his smile became a bit uncertain.
He started to say something, then hesitated and looked at Phy, as if half
hoping he would go on.

But that individual was once
again staring rigidly at the floor.

Carrsbury leaned back, thinking.
When he spoke it was in a more natural voice, much less consciously soothing
and fatherly.

“Well, all right, Phy. But look
here, tell me something, honestly. Won’t you—and the others—be a lot happier
when you’ve been relieved of all your responsibilities?”

Phy nodded somberly. “Yes,” he
said, “we will . . . but”— his face became strained—”you see—”

“But—?” Carrsbury
prompted. „

Phy swallowed hard. He seemed
unable to go on. He had gradually slumped toward one side of the chair, and the
pressure had caused the green gasoid to ooze from his pocket. His long fingers
crept over and kneaded it fretfully.

Carrsbury stood up and came
around the desk. His sympathetic frown, from which perplexity had ebbed, was
not quite genuine.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell
you all about it now, Phy,” he said simply. “In a queer sort of way I owe it
all to you. And there isn’t any point now in keeping it a secret . . . there
isn’t any danger—”

“Yes,” Phy agreed with a quick
bitter smile, “you haven’t been in any danger of a
coup d’état
for some
years now. If ever we should have revolted, there’d have been”—his gaze shifted
to a point in the opposite wall where a faint vertical crease indicated the
presence of a doorway—”your secret police.”

Carrsbury started. He hadn’t
thought Phy had known. Disturbingly, there loomed in his mind a phrase:
the
cunning of the insane.
But only for a moment. Friendly complacency flooded
back. He went behind Phy’s chair and rested his hands on the sloping shoulders.

“You know, I’ve always had a
special feeling toward you, Phy,” he said, “and not only because your whims
made it a lot easier for me to become World manager. I’ve always felt that you
were different from the others, that there were times when—” He hesitated.

Phy squirmed a little under the
friendly hands. “When I had my moments of sanity?” he finished flatly.

“Like now,” said Carrsbury
softly, after a nod the other could not see. “I’ve always felt that sometimes,
in a kind of twisted, unrealistic way, you
understood.
And that has
meant a lot to me. I’ve been alone, Phy, dreadfully alone, for ten whole years.
No companionship anywhere, not even among the men I’ve been training in the
Institute of Political Leadership—for I’ve had to play a part with them too,
keep them in ignorance of certain facts, for fear they would try to seize power
over my head before they were sufficiently prepared. No companionship anywhere,
except for my hopes—and for occasional moments with you. Now that it’s over and
a new regime is beginning for us both, I can tell you that. And I’m glad.”

There was a silence. Then—Phy did
not look around, but one lean hand crept up and touched Carrsbury’s. Carrsbury
cleared his throat. Strange, he thought, that there could be even a momentary
rapport like this between the sane and the insane. But it was so.

He disengaged his hands, strode
rapidly back to his desk, turned.

“I’m a throwback, Phy,” he began
in a new, unused, eager voice. “A throwback to a time when human mentality was
far sounder. Whether my case was due chiefly to heredity, or to certain unusual
accidents of environment, or to both, is unimportant. The point is that a
person had been born who was in a position to criticize the present state of
mankind in the light of the past, to diagnose its condition, and to begin its
cure. For a long time I refused to face the facts, but finally my
researches—especially those in the literature of the twentieth century—left me
no alternative. The mentality of mankind had become—aberrant. Only certain
technological advances, which had resulted in making the business of living
infinitely easier and simpler, and the fact that war had been ended with the
creation of the present world state, were staving off the inevitable breakdown
of civilization. But only staving it off—delaying it. The great masses of
mankind had become what would once have been called hopelessly neurotic. Their
leaders had become . . . you said it first, Phy . . . insane. Incidentally,
this latter phenomenon—the drift of psychological aberrants toward
leadership—has been noted in all ages.”

He paused. Was he mistaken, or
was Phy. following his words with indications of a greater mental clarity that
he had ever noted before, even in the relatively nonviolent World secretary?
Perhaps—he had often dreamed wistfully of the possibility—there was still a
chance of saving Phy. Perhaps, if he just explained to him clearly and calmly—

“In my historical studies,” he
continued, “I soon came to the conclusion that the crucial period was that of
the Final Amnesty, concurrent with the founding of the present world state. We
are taught that at that time there were released from confinement millions of
political prisoners—and millions of others. Just who were those others? To this
question, our present histories gave only vague and platitudinous answers. The
semantic difficulties I encountered were exceedingly obstinate. But I kept hammering
away. Why, I asked myself, have such words as insanity, lunacy, madness,
psychosis, disappeared from our vocabulary—and the concepts behind them from
our thought? Why has the subject ‘abnormal psychology’ disappeared from the
curricula of our schools? Of greater significance, why is our modern psychology
strikingly similar to the field of abnormal psychology as taught in the
twentieth century, and to that field alone? Why are there no longer, as there
were in the twentieth century, any institutions for the confinement and care of
the psychologically aberrant?”

Phy’s head jerked up. He smiled
twistedly. “Because,” he whispered slyly, “everyone’s insane now.”

The cunning of the insane.
Again that phrase loomed warningly
in Carrsbury’s mind. But only for a moment. He nodded.

“At first I refused to make that
deduction. But gradually I reasoned out the why and wherefore of what had
happened. It wasn’t only that a highly technological civilization had subjected
mankind to a wider and more swiftly-tempoed range of stimulations, conflicting
suggestions, mental strains, emotional wrenchings. In the literature of
twentieth century psychiatry there are observations on a kind of psychosis that
results from success. An unbalanced individual keeps going so long as he is
fighting something, struggling toward a goal. He reaches his goal—and goes to
pieces. His repressed confusions come to the surface, he realizes that he doesn’t
know what he wants at all, his energies hitherto engaged in combatting
something outside himself are turned against himself, he is destroyed. Well,
when war was finally outlawed, when the whole world became one unified state,
when social inequality was abolished . . . you see what I’m driving at?”