One in 300 (5 page)

 

 

"Well, don't you think I ought to see them?"

 

 

"You're not their pastor."

 

 

"No, but I can give them life in the hereafter."

 

 

"That's almost blasphemous," said Pat. It surprised me. I wouldn't have
credited her with a clear idea of what blasphemy was, and I'd certainly
never have thought she'd be concerned about it.

 

 

"Anyway, I'd like to know what's bothering Sammy," I said. "I'm curious
to see him sober. I wonder what he wants."

 

 

Pat grunted cynically. "He wants a chance to see Mars, of course," she
said. "Now that he's wakened up in a world in which he has only three
days to live, he's coming to crawl on his belly in front of you."

 

 

I didn't like her to speak like that. One moment she had me on the point
of giving her Marjory Powell's place. The next she confirmed my belief
that that would be a mistake.

 

 

Perhaps I took my job too seriously. Perhaps I thought I really was a god.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6

 

 

I'd never have guessed in a hundred years why Sammy Hoggan wanted to see
me. What had happened to him often happens to people after a hard drinking
bout. Suddenly it is all over, they feel like hell, but their brains are
ice-cold and emotionless. I've known scientists in such circumstances
to come up suddenly, disinterestedly, with the answer to problems that
had been bothering them for years.

 

 

He came in, walking carefully, as if his head was balanced on a single
pin. He was a different Sammy. He looked at me, then at Pat, then back
at me.

 

 

"I wonder if I should say what I came to say, he murmured.

 

 

"Let's hear it."

 

 

"Maybe I should keep it to myself, since it doesn't seem to have occurred
to anyone else. But it's a disturbing thought, and you might be able
to settle it for me. If you can't, I think I'll go back to the rye,
for another reason."

 

 

"Everybody's evasive," I complained. "Spit it out."

 

 

"Can I ask you a few questions?" He lowered himself carefully into a chair.
"How long does it take to build a regular spaceship?"

 

 

"Nearly a year.

 

 

"How many people could the regular ships have taken off while there's
still time?"

 

 

"I don't know. A few hundred. About one in five million people. What are
you getting at?"

 

 

"Where's your life ship being built? Have you seen it?"

 

 

It should have been obvious what he was thinking, but I didn't see it.
Pat did. She caught her breath and looked at Sammy with horror.

 

 

"At Detroit. With thousands of others. The whole place has been evacuated
and made into a military reservation. Like Philadelphia and Phoenix and
Birmingham and Berlin and Omsk and Adelaide. But you know about that.
Yes, I've seen the lifeships. They won't be ready until a few hours before
takeoff. No trials. Plenty of them won't get near Mars. Is that what you
mean? It's not publicized, but anyone who knows the first thing about
interplanetary flight can work that out for himself. So?"

 

 

"Suppose only one in five million people had a chance of life. What would
have happened on Earth?"

 

 

"It's not a pleasant thought," I admitted. "That riot yesterday was nothing
to what we'd have had, all day and every day, all over the world. But human
beings are pretty ingenious when the heat's on. It didn't take long to draw
up plans for ships that could be made in eight weeks, when it was really
necessary. So what you're visualizing didn't happen."

 

 

"Yes," said Sammy quietly. "It didn't happen. Because, as you say,
human beings can be pretty ingenious."

 

 

I saw at last what he meant, and laughed. He had had me worried.

 

 

"You mean that knowing what would happen if only one in five million
people could be taken to safety, the high-ups instituted a hoax, to keep
the world quiet," I said. "One in three hundred is different. It's an
appreciable chance. People won't throw it away. They'll be very careful
until they know they've lost it. That's it, isn't it?"

 

 

I laughed again. "If there were any real point in it," I went on,
"I might begin to believe it. But where's the gain? What would it
matter if people all over the world fought and pillaged and looted and
murdered? It'll all be the same when the mercury shoots out of the top
of all the thermometers."

 

 

"There might even be a point," said Sammy. "Who's going in the regular
ships? Groups carefully selected -- not by
pro tem
lieutenants whose
only qualification is that they know one end of a spaceship from the
other. The real ships are taking the essential people, the equipment,
the supplies -- "

 

 

"Naturally, when the lifeships are such a gamble."

 

 

"More natural still if none of the lifeships are expected to arrive.
Perhaps not even to leave Earth. Don't you see what I'm afraid of?
The high-up officials knew that if they told the truth everything would
be chaos. Mobs would destroy the ships that wouldn't take them to
Mars. They'd kill anyone suspected of being chosen to go. When a ship
landed, anywhere, a million people would be swarming around it before
the ports opened.

 

 

"Now see the way it is. The top officials of all governments can carefully,
quietly select the people for the colonies, take them to the spaceports,
and get them aboard the ships. There may be incidents, but people don't go
wild for fear they might lose their chance of a place on a lifeship. See
what a smart, hellish scheme it is? The people who are really going to Mars
can prepare quietly, without being disturbed, while a third of the population
of Earth is occupied building useless lifeships, and the other two thirds
are busy behaving themselves and trying to catch some tinpot lieutenant's
eye."

 

 

Pat was worried. I felt a great respect for her and Sammy. I knew --
I didn't know how, but I knew they were concerned, not for themselves,
for neither expected to go to Mars, but for the duped millions who thought
they had a chance when (according to Sammy's theory) they had none.

 

 

No use to point out that even if it were true there might be something to
be said for that method of ensuring that as many as possible of the right
people should be taken to the new colony. Pat and Sammy were overcome
by the horror of a world kept quiet by a cruel lie. I couldn't see it
quite the same way, though it concerned me more than them.

 

 

I put my arm around Pat's shoulders.

 

 

"I won't argue with your theory, Sammy," I said, "though I could. I'll just
say this. When you got that idea -- had you ever been lower in your life?
Weren't you miserable, in despair, half dead? Would you admit anything
but the blackest, gloomiest thoughts?"

 

 

He grinned wryly. "You may have something there."

 

 

"Then suppose you get yourself feeling a little happier about things,
and then have another look at this idea. It may look a little different."

 

 

"Pat wasn't feeling low," Sammy retorted. "And she seems to think there
might be something in it."

 

 

"Pat thinks there's something in everything. On the surface she refuses to
believe anything. But that often hides romanticism and imagination. And who
said she isn't feeling low? She thinks she's made a mess of her life.
She thinks she has no right to go to Mars. She wishes -- "

 

 

Pat jammed her hand against my mouth, hard. I caught her wrists and
scuffled mildly with her. She seemed to feel better after that.

 

 

Even Sammy almost smiled.

 

 

 

 

 

 

7

 

 

While Sammy was still with us the phone rang. Pat took it. She seemed
determined that everyone should know she was with me -- though what
good that would do her I couldn't see. Quite the reverse. But people
who set a lot of store on being honest and outspoken are often honest
and outspoken when it does no good and a lot of harm.

 

 

The call was for Pat. She listened, slammed down the phone, and turned
to us angrily. "Well, what do you know about that!"

 

 

"Nothing," said Sammy patiently, "until you tell us."

 

 

"That was my aunt. Somebody got into my room last night and destroyed
everything -- clothes, books, furniture, letters. The whole shooting
match. Imagine anyone doing a thing like that!"

 

 

Sammy took the practical view. "Their usefulness has only been shortened
by a day or two, anyway," he remarked. "Why should you care?'

 

 

"But -- "

 

 

"It's just spite," I said. "Why be surprised, Pat? You're cynical about
so many things -- it should be no shock that when people hate you they
take any small revenge they can."

 

 

Pat grinned involuntarily. "No, it isn't really," she admitted. "And as
Sammy says, it hardly matters now. But it's pretty petty, isn't it?"

 

 

"What an odd juxtaposition," Sammy murmured. "Pretty petty. Pretty petty.
Pretty petty."

 

 

Pat said she was going over to have a look around. I offered to take her,
but surprisingly Sammy stood up and said he'd go with her. He put it
neatly, using precisely the words that made any other arrangement impossible.
In fact he cut me out. He must have been feeling a whole lot better than
when he came in and talked despondency.

 

 

There was a knock on the door so soon after they had gone that I thought
they had come back. I threw the door open casually, so sure it was Pat
and Sammy that anyone else would have surprised me.

 

 

But I certainly didn't expect the melodrama of three masked men who
brushed past me and shut the door.

 

 

I wasn't perturbed. Nothing could happen to me. I wouldn't have been so
sure of one stranger, for individuals can be mad enough to kill the only
man who can save them. But three -- they couldn't be as mad as that,
in the same way, all at once.

 

 

"Now what?" I asked. "More particularly, why?"

 

 

They all carried guns. The leader drew his and gestured with it, like
a schoolboy.

 

 

"We mean to go to Mars, Easson," he said, his voice deliberately
muffled. "If you get that clear for a start, we'll understand each
other better."

 

 

"Then you'd better get out before I recognize any of you," I told them.
"Otherwise it's very sure none of you will."

 

 

"One of us is going to stick beside you until takeoff. We figure that'll
make a difference. We -- "

 

 

His talking like a cowboy irritated me. For all I knew they might be kids
playing a game.

 

 

"Get to hell out of here," I told diem, "before I tear your masks off.
What kind of a fool do you think I am?"

 

 

Nobody moved. So I explained the obvious. "If I die, nobody from Simsville
goes to Mars," I said, a little more patiently. "They won't send another
lieutenant now. So that won't help you. If you stick beside me as you say,
it can only last until we get to Detroit, and then we'll be split. You
won't be able to do anything about that. Then I can have you thrown into
a cell somewhere and that's that. If you get me to promise anything --
which would be very easy, for I'll say anything you like -- it will last
only till I know I'm safe. Then the program's as before. Is that clear?"

 

 

I looked from one to another of them. "Okay," I said. "You know where
the door is. You just came in.

 

 

They went. As easily as that. I gave them credit for having realized
before they came that that was probably what would happen. I couldn't
really blame them for trying. I might have been weak enough and stupid
enough to fall in with their plans. But it was a poor effort.

 

 

I'd had enough of my room. I went out to go to Henessy's. I saw the Stowes
out with Jim and waved to them. They waved back tentatively. They belonged
to the small group who still cared a great deal about what people would
think. They didn't want anyone to say they were fawning on me, begging
for what everyone wanted.

 

 

I saw Betty Glessor and Morgan Smith, who haven't been mentioned so far
because I never thought of them. I had exchanged about ten words with
them. But they were next on the list to the Powells.

 

 

That's what it came to in the end. The more I learned about people, the
more likely they were to come off my list. Perhaps Smith was a drinker
and a doper and a sadist and a killer -- I hadn't time to find out.
I didn't know he was any of these things, so I could take him to Mars.

 

 

Tentatively I scratched out the Powells and marked in Smith and Glessor.

 

 

Still looking after them, I almost ran into Leslie. She had no job, now
that school was closed. She grinned. I stopped, having nothing to say,
but no reason to walk past her when she seemed to want to talk.

 

 

"What are you doing?" she asked -- a silly question if ever I heard one.

 

 

"Just killing time," I said.

 

 

"Like me to help you?"

 

 

"If you have any bright ideas."