Big Book of Science Fiction (32 page)

“You see, it wasn’t just that
matter of prohibitory regulations,” Phy launched out hurriedly. “There were
lots of other things that never did work out like your official reports
indicated. Departmental budgets for instance. The reports showed, I know, that
appropriations for Extraterrestrial Research were being regularly slashed.
Actually in your ten years of office, they increased tenfold. Of course, there
was no way for you to know that. You couldn’t be all over the world at once and
see each separate launching of supra-stratospheric rockets.”

The moving light became
stationary. A seam dilated. Carrsbury stepped into the elevator. He debated
sending Hartman back. Poor babbling Phy was no menace. Still—
the cunning of
the insane.
He decided against it, reached out and flipped the control beam
at the sector which would bring them to the hundredth and top floor. The door
snipped softly shut. The cage became a surging darkness in which floor numerals
winked softly. Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three.

“And then there was the Military
Service. You had it sharply curtailed.”

“Of course I did.” Shear
weariness stung Carrsbury into talk. “There’s only one country in the world.
Obviously, the only military requirement is an adequate police force. To say
nothing of the risks involved in putting weapons into the hands of the present
world population.”

“I know,” Phy’s answer came
guiltily from the darkness. “Still, what’s happened is that, unknown to you,
the Military Service has been increased in size, and recently four rocket
squadrons have been added.”

Fifty-seven. Fifty-eight.
Humor him.
“Why?”

“Well, you see we’ve found out
that Earth is being reconnoitered. Maybe from Mars. Maybe hostile. Have to be
prepared. We didn’t tell you . . . well, because we were afraid it might excite
you.”

The voice trailed off. Carrsbury
shut his eyes. How long, he asked himself, how long? He realized with dull
surprise that in the last hour people like Phy, endured for ten years had
become unutterably weary to him. For the moment even the thought of the
conference over which he would soon be presiding, the conference that was to
usher in a sane world, failed to stir him. Reaction to success? To the end of a
ten years’ tension?

“Do you know how many floors
there are in this building?”

Carrsbury was not immediately
conscious of the new note in Phy’s voice, but he reacted to it.

“One hundred,” he replied
promptly.

“Then,” asked Phy, “just where
are we?”

Carr opened his eyes to the
darkness. One hundred twenty-seven, blinked the floor numeral. One hundred
twenty-eight. One hundred twenty-nine.

Something cold dragged at
Carrsbury’s stomach, pulled at his brain. He felt as if his mind were being
slowly and irresistibly twisted. He thought of hidden dimensions, of
unsuspected holes in space. Something remembered from elementary physics danced
through his thoughts: If it were possible for an elevator to keep moving upward
with uniform acceleration, no one inside an elevator could determine whether
the effects they were experiencing were due to acceleration or to
gravity—whether the elevator were standing motionless on some planet or
shooting up at ever-increasing velocity through free space.

One hundred forty-one. One
hundred forty-two.

“Or as if you were rising through
consciousness into an unsuspected realm of mentality lying above,” suggested
Phy in his new voice, with its hint of gentle laughter.

One hundred forty-six. One hundred
forty-seven. It was slowing now. One hundred forty-nine. One hundred fifty. It
had stopped.

This was some trick. The thought
was like cold water in Carrsbury’s face. Some cunning childish trick of Phy’s.
An easy thing to hocus the numerals. Carrsbury groped irascibly about in the
darkness, encountered the slick surface of a holster, Hartman’s gaunt frame.

“Get ready for a surprise,” Phy
warned from close at his elbow.

As Carrsbury turned and grabbed,
bright sunlight drenched him, followed by a griping, heart-stopping spasm of
vertigo.

He, Hartman, and Phy, along with
a few insubstantial bits of furnishings and controls were standing in the air
fifty stories above the hundred-story summit of World Managerial Center.

For a moment he grabbed
frantically at nothing. Then he realized they were not falling and his eyes
began to trace the hint of walls and ceiling and floor and, immediately below
them, the ghost of a shaft.

Phy nodded. “That’s all there is
to it,” he assured Carrsbury casually. “Just another of those charmingly odd
modern notions against which you have legislated so persistently—like our
incomplete staircases and roads to nowhere. The Buildings and Grounds Committee
decided to extend the range of the elevator for sightseeing purposes. The shaft
was made air-transparent to avoid spoiling the form of the original building
and to improve the view. This was achieved so satisfactorily that an electronic
warning system had to be installed for the safety of passing airjets and other
craft. Treating the surfaces of the cage like windows was an obvious detail.”

He paused and looked quizzically
at Carrsbury. “All very simple,” he observed, “but don’t you find a kind of
symbolism in it? For ten years now you’ve been spending most of your life in
that building below. Every day you’ve used this elevator. But not once have you
dreamed of these fifty extra stories. Don’t you think that something of the
same sort may be true of your observations of other aspects of contemporary
social life?”

Carrsbury gaped at him stupidly.

Phy turned to watch the growing
speck of an approaching aircraft. “You might look at it too,” he remarked to
Carrsbury, “for it’s going to transport you to a far happier, more restful
life.”

Carrsbury parted his lips, wet
them. “But—” he said, unsteadily. “But—”

Phy smiled. “That’s right, I didn’t
finish my explanation. Well, you might have gone on being World manager all
your life, in the isolation of your office and your miles of taped official
reports and your occasional confabs with me and the others. Except for your
Institute of Political Leadership and your Ten-Year-Plan. That upset things. Of
course, we were as much interested in it as we were in you. It had definite
possibilities. We hoped it would work out. We would have been glad to retire
from office if it had. But, most fortunately, it didn’t. And that sort of ended
the whole experiment.”

He caught the downward direction
of Carrsbury’s gaze.

“No,” he said, “I’m afraid your
pupils aren’t waiting for you in the conference chamber on the hundredth story.
I’m afraid they’re still in the Institute.” His voice became gently
sympathetic. “And I’m afraid that it’s become . . . well . . . a somewhat
different sort of institute.”

~ * ~

Carrsbury
stood very still, swaying a little. Gradually his thoughts and his will power
were emerging from the waking nightmare that had paralyzed them.
The cunning
of the insane
—he had neglected that trenchant warning. In the very moment
of victory—

No! He had forgotten Hartman!
This was the very emergency for which that counterstroke had been prepared.

He glanced sideways at the chief
member of his secret police. The black giant, unconcerned by their strange
position, was glaring fixedly at Phy as if at some evil magician from whom any
malign impossibility could be expected.

Now Hartman became aware of
Carrsbury’s gaze. He divined his thought.

He drew his dark weapon from its
holster, pointed it unwaveringly at Phy.

His black-bearded lips curled.
From them came a hissing sound. Then, in a loud voice, he cried, “You’re dead,
Phy! I disintegrated you.”

Phy reached over and took the
weapon from his hand.

“That’s another respect in which
you completely miscalculated the modern temperament,” he remarked to Carrsbury,
a shade argumentatively. “All of us have certain subjects on which we’re a
trifle unrealistic. That’s only human nature. Hartman’s was his
suspiciousness—a weakness for ideas involving plots and persecutions. You gave
him the worst sort of job—-one that catered to and encouraged his weaknesses.
In a very short time he became hopelessly unrealistic. Why for years he’s never
realized that he’s been carrying a dummy pistol.”

He passed it to Carrsbury for
inspection.

“But,” he added, “give him the
proper job and he’d function well enough—say something in creation of
exploration or social service. Fitting the man to the job is an art with
infinite possibilities. That’s why we had Morgenstern in Finance—to keep credit
fluctuating in a safe, predictable rhythm. That’s why a euphoric is made a
manager of Extraterrestrial Research—to keep it booming. Why a catatonic is
given Cultural Advancement—to keep it from tripping on its face in its haste to
get ahead.”

He turned away. Dully, Carrsbury
observed that the aircraft was hovering close to the cage and sidling slowly
in.

“But in that case why—” he began
stupidly.

“Why were you made World manager?”
Phy finished easily. “Isn’t that fairly obvious? Haven’t I told you several
times that you did a lot of good, indirectly? You interested us, don’t you see?
In fact, you were practically unique. As you know, it’s our cardinal principle
to let every individual express himself as he wants to. In your case, that
involved letting you become World manager. Taken all in all it worked out very
well. Everyone had a good time, a number of constructive regulations were
promulgated, we learned a lot—oh, we didn’t get everything we hoped for, but
one never does. Unfortunately, in the end, we were forced to discontinue the
experiment.”

The aircraft had made contact.

“You understand, of course, why
that was necessary?” Phy continued hurriedly, as he urged Carrsbury toward the
opening port. “I’m sure you must. It all comes down to a question of sanity.
What is sanity—now, in the twentieth century, any time? Adherence to a norm. Conformity
to certain basic conventions underlying all human conduct. In our age,
departure from the norm has become the norm. Inability to conform has become
the standard of conformity. That’s quite clear, isn’t it? And it enables you to
understand, doesn’t it, your own case and that of your protégés? Over a long
period of years you persisted in adhering to a norm, in conforming to certain
basic conventions. You were completely unable to adapt yourself to the society
around you. You could only pretend—and your protégés wouldn’t have been able to
do even that. Despite our many engaging personal characteristics, there was
obviously only one course of action open to us.”

In the port Carrsbury turned. He
had found his voice at last. It was hoarse, ragged. “You mean that all these
years you’ve just been
humoring
me?”

The port was closing. Phy did not
answer the question.

As the aircraft edged out, he
waved farewell with the blob of green gasoid.

“It’ll be very pleasant where you’re
going,” he shouted encouragingly. “Comfortable quarters, adequate facilities
for exercise, and a complete library of twentieth century literature to while
away your time.” ,

He watched Carrsbury’s rigid
face, staring whitely from the vision port, until the aircraft had diminished
to a speck.

Then he turned away, looked at
his hands, noticed the gasoid, tossed it out the open door of the cage, studied
its flight for a few moments, then flicked the downbeam.

“I’m glad to see the last of that
fellow,” he muttered, more to himself than to Hartman, as they plummeted toward
the roof. “He was beginning to have a very disturbing influence on me. In fact,
I was beginning to fear for my”—his expression became suddenly vacuous—”sanity.”

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