Natural State

VII

BITHER was intent over a shallow vessel half full of a viscous clear liquid, with a great rounded veined ― and ― patterned glistening lump immersed in it, transparent in the phosphor-light that glowed from the sides of the container―a single living cell in mitosis, so grossly enlarged that every gene of every paired chromosome was visible. B. J. watched from the other side of the table, silent, breathing carefully, as the man’s thick fingers dipped a hair-thin probe with minuscule precision, again and again, into the yeasty mass, exercising a particle, splitting another, delicately shaving a third.

From time to time, she glanced at a sheet of horn intricately inscribed with numbers and genetic symbols. The chart was there for her benefit, not for Bither’s―he never paused or faltered.

Finally, he sat back and covered the pan. “Turn on the lights and put that in the reduction fluid, will you, Beej? I bushed.” She whistled a clear note, and the dark globes fixed to the ceiling glowed to blue-white life. “You going to grow it right away?”

“Have to, I guess. Dammit, Beej, I hate making weapons.”

“Not our choice. When you think it be?”

He shrugged. “War meeting this afternoon over at Council Flats. They let us know when it be.”

She was silent until she had transferred the living lump from one container to another and put it away. Then, “Hear anything more?”

“They dusting every ore-bed from here to the Illinois, look like. Crystal, Butler’s―”

“Butler’s! That worked out.”

“I know it. We let them land there. They find out. After another pause, Bither said, “No word about Alvah, Beej. I sorry.”

She nodded. “Wouldn’t be, this early.”

He looked at her curiously. “You still think he be back?”

“If the dust ain’t got him. Lay you odds.”

“Well,” said Bither, lifting the cover of another pan to peer into it, “I hope you―”

“Ozark Lake nine-one-two five,” said a reedy voice from the corner. “Ozark Lake nine-”

“Get that, will you, Beej?”

B. J. picked up the ocher spheroid from its shelf and said into its tympanum, “Bither Laboratories.”

“This Angus Littleton at Iron Pits, the thing said. Let me talk to Bither.”

She passed it over, holding a loop of its rubbery cord―the beginning of a miles―long sheathed bundle of cultivated neurons that linked it, via a switchboard” organism, with thousands like it in this area alone, and with millions more across the continent.

“This Doc Bither. What is it, Angus?”

“Something funny for you, Doc. We got a couple prisoners here, one a floater pilot, other a Chicago spy.”

“Well, what you want me to―”

“Wait, can’t you? This spy claim he know you. Doc. Say his name Gustard. Alvah Gustard.”

ALVAH stared out through the window, puzzled and angry. He had been in the room for about half an hour, while things were going on outside. He had tried to break the window. The pane had bent slightly. It was neither glass nor plastic, and it wasn’t breakable.

Outside, the last of the invading floaters was dipping down to ward the horizon, pursued by a small darting black shape. Goldendun haze obscured all the foreground except the first few rows of plants, which were drooping on their stems. The squadron had made one grand circle of the mine area, dusting as they went, before the Muckfeet on their incredibly swift flyers―birds or reptiles, Alvah couldn’t tell which―had risen to engage them. Since then, a light breeze from the north had carried the stuff dropped over the Pits: radioactive dust with a gravitostatic charge to make it rebound and spread―and then, with its polarity reversed, cling like grim death where it fell.

He turned and looked at the other man, sitting blank-faced and inattentive, wearing rumpled sky-blue uniform, on the bench against the inner wall. Most of the squadron had flown off to the west after that first pass, and had either escaped or been forced down somewhere beyond the Pits. This fellow had crash-landed in the fields not five hundred yards from Alvah’s window. Alvah had seen the Muckfeet walking out to the wreck―strolling fantastically through the deadly haze―and turkey ― trotting their prisoner back again. A little later, someone had opened the door and shoved the man in, and there he had sat ever since.

His skin-color was all right. He was breathing evenly and seemed in no discomfort. As far as Alvah could see, there was not a speck of the death-dust anywhere on his skin, hair or clothing. But mad as it was, this was not the most incongruous thing about him.

His uniform was of a cut and pattern that Alvah had seen only in pictures. There was a C on each gleaming button and, on the bar of the epaulette, CHICAGOLAND. In short, he was evidently a Floater Force officer from Chicago. The only trouble was that Alvah recognized him. He was a grips by day at the Seven Boroughs studios, famous for his dirty jokes, which he acquired at his night job in the Under Queens Power Station. He was a lieutenant j.g. in the N. Y. F. F. Reserve, and his name was Joe “Dimples” Mundry.

Alvah went over and sat down beside him again. Mundry’s normally jovial face was set in wooden lines. His eyes focused on Alvah, but without recognition. Joe―”

My name, said Mundry obstinately, is Bertram Palmer, Float Lieutenant, Windy City Regulars. My serial number is 79016935.

THAT was the only tune he knew. Alvah hadn’t been able to get another word out of him. Name, rank and serial number―that was normal. Members of the armed services were naturally conditioned to say nothing else if captured. But why throw in the name of his outfit?

One, that was the way they did things in Chicago, and there just happened to be a Chicago soldier who looked and talked exactly like Joe Mundry, who had the same scars on his knuckles from brawls with the generator monkeys. Two, Alvah’s mind had snapped. Three, this was a ringer foisted on Alvah for some incomprehensible purpose by the Muckfeet. And four―a wild and terrible suspicion …

Alvah tried again. “Listen, Joe, I’m your friend. We’re on the same side. I’m not a Muckfoot.”

“My name is Bertram Palmer, Float Lieutenant―”

“Joe, I’m leveling with you. Listen ― remember the Music Hall story, the one about the man who could …” Alvah explained in detail what the man could do. It was obscenely improbable and very funny, if you liked that sort of thing, and it was a story Joe had told him two days before he left New York.

A gleam of intelligence came into Joe’s eyes. “What’s the punchline?” he demanded.

” ‘What the hell did you want to change the key on me for?’ ” Alvah replied promptly.

Joe looked at him speculatively. “That might be a old joke. Maybe they even know it in the Sticks. And my name isn’t Joe.”

He really believed he was Bertram Palmer of the Windy City Regulars, that much seemed clear. Also, if it was possible that the Muckfeet knew that story, it was likelier still that the Chicagolanders knew it.

“All right,” said Alvah, ask me a question ― something I couldn’t know if I were a Muckfoot. Go ahead, anything. A place, or something that happened recently, or whatever you want.”

A visible struggle was going on behind Joe’s face. “Can’t think of anything,” he said at last. “Funny.”

Alvah had been watching him closely. “Let’s try this. Did you see Manhattan Morons?”

Joe looked blank. “What?”

“The realie. You mean you missed it? Manhattan Morons? Till I saw that, I never really knew what a comical bunch of weak-minded, slobber-mouthed, monkey-faced drooling idiots those New Yorkers―”

Joe’s expression had not changed, but a dull red flush had crept up over his collar. He made an inarticulate sound and lunged for Alvah’s throat.

When Angus Littleton opened the door, with Jerry and B. J. behind him, the two men were rolling on the floor.

“WHAT made you think he was a spy?” B. J. demanded. They were a tight self-conscious group in the corridor. Alvah was nursing a split lip.

“Said he a Yuke,” Jerry offered, “but didn’t seem too sure, so I said the Yukes greedy. He never turn a hair. And he act like he never see a mine before. Things like that.”

B. J. nodded. “It was a natural mistake, I guess. Well, thanks for calling us, Angus.”

“Easy,” said Angus, looking glum. “We ain’t out of the rough yet, Beej.”

“What do you mean? He didn’t have anything to do with this attack―he’s from New York.”

“He say he is, but how you know? What make you think he ain’t from Chicago?”

Alvah said, “While you’re asking that, you might ask another question about him.” He jerked a thumb toward the closed door. “What makes you think he is?”

The other three stared at him thoughtfully. “Alvah,” Beej began, “what are you aiming at? Do you think―”

“I’m not sure,” Alvah interrupted. “I mean I’m sure, but I’m not sure I want to tell you. Look,” he said, turning to Angus, “let me talk to her alone for a few minutes, will you?”

Angus hesitated, then walked away down the hall, followed by Jerry.

“You’ve got to explain some things to me about this raid, said Alvah when they were out of hearing. I saw those floaters dusting and it was the real thing. I can tell by the way the plants withered. But your people were walking around out there. Him, too―the prisoner. How come?”

“Antirads,” said the girl. “Little para-insects, like the metallophage―the metallophage was developed from them. When you’ve been exposed, the antirads pick the dust particles off you and deposit them in radproof pots. They die in the pots, too, and we bury the whole―”

“All right,” Alvah said. “How long have you had those things? Is there any chance the Cities knew about it?”

“The antirads were developed toward the end of the last City war. That was what ended it. At first we stopped the bombing, and then when they used dust―You never heard of any of this?”

“No,” Alvah told her. Third question, what are you going to do about Chicago now, on account of this raid?”

“PULL it down around their ears,” B. J. said gravely. “We never did before partly because it wasn’t necessary. We knew for the last thirty years that the Cities could never be more than a nuisance to us again. But this isn’t just a raid. They’ve attacked us all over this district ―ruined the crops in every mine. We must put an end to it now―not that it makes much difference, this year or ten years from now. And it isn’t as if we couldn’t save the people …”

“Never mind that,” said Alvah abstractedly. Then her last words penetrated. “No, go ahead ― what?”

“I started to say, we think we’ll be able to save the people, or most of them―partly thanks to what we learned from you. It’s just Chicago we’re going to destroy, not the―”

“Learned from me?” Alvah repeated. “What do you mean?”

“We learned that, when it’s a question of survival, a City man can overcome his conditioning. You proved that. Did you eat the radnip?”

“Yes.”

”There, you see? And you’ll eat another and, sooner or later, you’ll realize they taste good. A human being can learn to like anything that’s needful to him. We’re adaptable―you can’t condition that out of us without breaking us.”

Alvah stared at her. “But you spent over two weeks on me. How are you going to do that with fifteen or twenty million people all at once?”

“We can do it. You were the pilot model―two weeks for you. But now that we know how, we’re pretty sure we can do it in three days―the important part, getting them to eat the food. And it’s a good thing the storehouses are full, all over this continent.”

They looked at each other silently for a moment. “But the Cities have to go,” B. J. said.

“Fourth and last question,” he said. “If a City knew about your radiation defenses all along, what would be their reason for attacking you this way?”

“Our first idea was that it was just plain desperation―they had to do something and there wasn’t anything they could do that would work, so they just did something that wouldn’t. Or maybe they hoped they’d be able to hold the mines long enough to get some metal out, even though they knew it was foolish to hope.”

“That was your first idea. What was your second?”

She hesitated. “You remember what I told you, that the Cities cannibalized each other for a while, the big ones draining population away from the little ones and reclaiming their metals―and you remember I said that had gone as far as it could?”

“Yes.”

“Well, when the big fish have eaten up all the little fish, they can eat each other till there’s just one big fish left.”

“And?” asked Alvah tensely.

“And maybe one City might think that, if they got us to make war on another, they could step in when the fighting was over and get all the metals they’d need to keep them going for years. So they might send raiding parties out in the other City’s uniforms, and condition them to think they really were from that City. Was that what happened, Alvah?”

ALVAH nodded reluctantly. “I don’t understand it. They must have started planning this as soon as I stopped communicating. It doesn’t make sense. They couldn’t be that desperate ―or maybe they could. Anyway, it’s a dirty stunt. It isn’t like New York.”

She said nothing―too polite to contradict him, Alvah supposed.

Down at the end of the hall, Angus was beginning to look impatient. Alvah said, “So now you’ll pull New York down?”

“Alvah, it may sound funny, but I think you know this, really ―you’re doing your people a favor.”

“If that’s so,” he said wryly, “then New York was ‘really’ trying to do one for Chicago.”

“I was hoping you’d see that it doesn’t matter. It might have been Chicago that went first, or Denver, or any of the others, but that isn’t important―they all have to go. What’s important is the people. This may be another thing that’s hard for you to accept, but they’re going to be happier, most of them.

And maybe she was right, Alvah thought, if you counted in everybody, labor pool, porters and all. Why shouldn’t you count them, he asked himself defiantly ―they were people, weren’t they? Maybe the index of civilization was not only how much you had, but how hard you had to work for it―incessantly, like the New Yorkers, holding down two or three jobs at once, because the City’s demands were endless―or, like the Muckfeet, judiciously and with honest pleasure.

“Alvah?” said the girl. She put her question no more explicitly than that, but he knew what she meant.

“Yes, Beej,” replied Alvah Gustad, Muckfoot.