The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert (80 page)

The colonel came hurrying into the room, crossed to Tiborough, quietly said something.

“You should've warned me!” Tiborough snapped. “I had no idea that…”

The colonel interrupted with a whispered comment.

“These papers … your damned report is
not
clear!” Tiborough said. He looked around at Custer. “I see you're smiling, Mr. Custer. I don't think you'll find much to smile about before long.”

“Senator, this is not a happy smile,” Custer said. “But I told myself several days ago you'd fail to see the implications of this thing.” He tapped the pistol-shaped device he had rested on the table. “I told myself you'd fall back into the old, useless pattern.”

“Is that what you told yourself, really?” Tiborough said.

Wallace, hearing the venom in the senator's voice, moved his chair a few inches farther away from Custer.

Tiborough looked at the laser projector. “Is that thing really disarmed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I order one of my men to take it from you, you will not resist?”

“Which of your men will you trust with it, Senator?” Custer asked.

In the long silence that followed, someone in the press section emitted a nervous guffaw.

“Virtually every man on my ranch has one of these things,” Custer said. “We fell trees with them, cut firewood, make fence posts. Every letter written to me as a result of my patent application has been answered candidly. More than a thousand sets of schematics and instructions on how to build this device have been sent out to varied places in the world.”

“You vicious traitor!” Tiborough rasped.

“You're certainly entitled to your opinion, Senator,” Custer said. “But I warn you I've had time for considerably more concentrated and considerably more painful thought than you've applied to this problem. In my estimation, I had no choice. Every week I waited to make this thing public, every day, every minute, merely raised the odds that humanity would be destroyed by…”

“You said this thing applied to the hearings on the grazing act,” Plowers protested, and there was a plaintive note of complaint in his voice.

“Senator, I told you the truth,” Custer said. “There's no real reason to change the act, now. We intend to go on operating under it—with the agreement of our neighbors and others concerned. People are still going to need food.”

Tiborough glared at him. “You're saying we can't force you to…” He broke off at a disturbance in the doorway. A rope barrier had been stretched there and a line of Marines stood with their backs to it, facing the hall. A mob of people was trying to press through. Press cards were being waved.

“Colonel, I told you to clear that hall!” Tiborough barked.

The colonel ran to the barrier. “Use your bayonets if you have to!” he shouted.

The disturbance subsided at the sound of his voice. More uniformed men could be seen moving in along the barrier. Presently, the noise receded.

Tiborough turned back to Custer. “You make Benedict Arnold look like the greatest friend the United States ever had,” he said.

“Cursing me isn't going to help you,” Custer said. “You are going to have to live with this thing; so you'd better try understanding it.”

“That appears to be simple,” Tiborough said. “All I have to do is send twenty-five cents to the Patent office for the schematics and then write you a letter.”

“The world already was headed toward suicide,” Custer said. “Only fools failed to realize…”

“So you decided to give us a little push,” Tiborough said.

“H. G. Wells warned us,” Custer said. “That's how far back it goes, but nobody listened. ‘Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe,' Wells said. But those were just words. Many scientists have remarked the growth curve on the amount of raw energy becoming available to humans—and the diminishing curve on the number of persons required to use that energy. For a long time now, more and more violent power was being made available to fewer and fewer people. It was only a matter of time until total destruction was put into the hands of single individuals.”

“And you didn't think you could take your government into your confidence.”

“The government already was committed to a political course diametrically opposite the one this device requires,” Custer said. “Virtually every man in the government has a vested interest in not reversing that course.”

“So you set yourself above the government?”

“I'm probably wasting my time,” Custer said, “but I'll try to explain it. Virtually every government in the world is dedicated to manipulating something called the ‘mass man.' That's how governments have stayed in power. But there is no such man. When you elevate the nonexistent ‘mass man' you degrade the individual. And obviously it was only a matter of time until all of us were at the mercy of the individual holding power.”

“You talk like a commie!”

“They'll say I'm a goddamn' capitalist pawn,” Custer said. “Let me ask you, Senator, to visualize a poor radio technician in a South American country. Brazil, for example. He lives a hand-to-mouth existence, ground down by an overbearing, unimaginative, essentially uncouth ruling oligarchy. What is he going to do when this device comes into his hands?”

“Murder, robbery and anarchy.”

“You could be right,” Custer said. “But we might reach an understanding out of ultimate necessity—that each of us must cooperate in maintaining the dignity of all.”

Tiborough stared at him, began to speak musingly: “We'll have to control the essential materials for constructing this thing … and there may be trouble for awhile, but…”

“You're a vicious fool.”

In the cold silence that followed, Custer said: “It was too late to try that ten years ago. I'm telling you this thing can be patchworked out of a wide variety of materials that are already scattered over the earth. It can be made in basements and mud huts, in palaces and shacks. The key item is the crystals, but other crystals will work, too. That's obvious. A patient man can grow crystals … and this world is full of patient men.”

“I'm going to place you under arrest,” Tiborough said. “You have outraged every rule—”

“You're living in a dream world,” Custer said. “I refuse to threaten you, but I'll defend myself from any attempt to oppress or degrade me. If I cannot defend myself, my friends will defend me. No man who understands what this device means will permit his dignity to be taken from him.”

Custer allowed a moment for his words to sink in, then: “And don't twist those words to imply a threat. Refusal to threaten a fellow human is an absolute requirement in the day that has just dawned on us.”

“You haven't changed a thing!” Tiborough raged. “If one man is powerful with that thing, a hundred are…”

“All previous insults aside,” Custer said, “I think you are a highly intelligent man, Senator. I ask you to think long and hard about this device. Use of power is no longer the deciding factor because one man is as powerful as a million. Restraint—
self
-restraint is now the key to survival. Each of us is at the mercy of his neighbor's good will. Each of us, Senator—the man in the palace and the man in the shack. We'd better do all we can to increase that good will—not attempting to buy it, but simply recognizing that individual dignity is the one inalienable right of…”

“Don't you preach at me, you commie traitor!” Tiborough rasped. “You're a living example of…”

“Senator!”

It was one of the TV cameramen in the left rear of the room.

“Let's stop insulting Mr. Custer and hear him out,” the cameraman said.

“Get that man's name,” Tiborough told an aide. “If he…”

“I'm an expert electronic technician, Senator,” the man said. “You can't threaten me now.”

Custer smiled, turned to face Tiborough.

“The revolution begins,” Custer said. He waved a hand as the senator started to whirl away. “Sit down, Senator.”

Wallace, watching the senator obey, saw how the balance of control had changed in this room.

“Ideas are in the wind,” Custer said. “There comes a time for a thing to develop. It comes into being. The spinning jenny came into being because that was its time. It was based on countless ideas that had preceded it.”

“And this is the age of the laser?” Tiborough asked.

“It was bound to come,” Custer said. “But the number of people in the world who're filled with hate and frustration and violence has been growing with terrible speed. You add to that the enormous danger that this might fall into the hands of just one group or nation or…” Custer shrugged. “This is too much power to be confined to one man or group with the hope they'll administer wisely. I didn't dare delay. That's why I spread this thing now and announced it as broadly as I could.”

Tiborough leaned back in his chair, his hands in his lap. His face was pale and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

“We won't make it.”

“I hope you're wrong, Senator,” Custer said. “But the only thing I know for sure is that we'd have had less chance of making it tomorrow than we have today.”

 

THE GM EFFECT

It was a balmy fall evening and as Dr. Valeric Sabantoce seated himself at the long table in Meade Hall's basement seminar room, he thought of how the weather would be sensationalized tomorrow by the newspapers and wire services. They would be sure to remark on the general clemency of the elements, pointing out how Nature's smiling aspect made the night's tragedy so much more horrible.

Sabantoce was a short, rotund man with a wild shock of black hair that looked as though it had never known a comb. His round face with its look of infant innocence invariably led strangers to an incorrect impression—unless they were at once exposed to his ribald wit or caught the weighted stare of his deeply-socketed brown eyes.

Fourteen people sat around the long table now—nine students and five faculty—with Professor Joshua Latchley in the chairman's seat at the head.

“Now that we're all here,” Latchley said, “I can tell you the purpose of tonight's meeting. We are faced with a most terrible decision. We … ahhh—”

Latchley fell silent, chewed at his lower lip. He was conscious of the figure he cut here—a tall, ungainly bald man in thick-lensed glasses … the constant air of apology he wore as though it were a shield. Tonight, he felt that this appearance was a disguise. Who could guess—except Sabantoce, of course—at the daring exposed by this seemingly innocent gathering?

“Don't leave 'em hanging there, Josh,” Sabantoce said.

“Yes … ahh, yes,” Latchley said. “It has occurred to me that Dr. Sabantoce and I have a special demonstration to present here tonight, but before we expose you to that experiment, as it were, perhaps we should recapitulate somewhat.”

Sabantoce, wondering what had diverted Latchley, glanced around the table—saw that they were
not
all there. Dr. Richard Marmon was missing.

Did he suspect and make a break for it?
Sabantoce wondered. He realized then that Latchley was stalling for time while Marmon was being hunted out and brought in here.

Latchley rubbed his shiny pate. He had no desire to be here, he thought. But this had to be done. He knew that outside on the campus the special 9:00
P.M.
hush had fallen over Yankton Technical Institute and this was his favorite hour for strolling—perhaps up to the fresh pond to listen to the frogs and the couples and to think on the etymological derivations of—

He became conscious of restless coughing and shuffling around the table, realized he had permitted his mind to wander. He was infamous for it, Latchley knew. He cleared his throat.
Where the devil was that Marmon? Couldn't they find him?

“As you know,” Latchley said, “we've made no particular efforts to keep our discovery secret, although we've tried to discourage wild speculation and outside discussion. Our intention was to conduct thorough tests before publishing. All of you—both the student … ahh, ‘guinea pigs' and you professors of the faculty committee—have been most cooperative. But inevitably news of what we are doing here has spread—sometimes in a very hysterical and distorted manner.”

“What Professor Latchley is saying,” Sabantoce interrupted, “is that the fat's in the fire.”

Expressions of curiosity appeared on the faces of the students who, up to this moment, had been trying to conceal their boredom. Old Dr. Inkton had a fit of coughing.

“There's an old Malay expression,” Sabantoce said, “that when one plays Bumps-a-Daisy with a porcupine, one is necessarily jumpy. Now, all of us should've known this porcupine was loaded.'”

“Thank you, Dr. Sabantoce,” Latchely said. “I feel … and I know this is a most unusual course … that all of you should share in the decision that must be made here tonight. Each of you, by participating in this project, has become involved far more deeply here than is the usual case with scientific experiments of this general type. And since you student
assistants
have been kept somewhat in the dark, perhaps Dr. Sabantoce, as original discoverer of the GM effect, should fill you in on some of the background.”

Stall it is,
Sabantoce thought.

“Discovery of the genetic memory, or GM effect, was an accident,” Sabantoce said, picking up his cue. “Dr. Marmon and I were looking for a hormonal method of removing fat from the body. Our Compound 105 had given excellent results on mice and hamsters. We had six generations without apparent side effects and that morning I had decided to try 105 on myself.”

Sabantoce allowed himself a self-deprecating grin, said: “You may remember I had a few excess pounds then.”