Stepping Stone

III

For a very short time Chesley's wife was impressed. She said the uniform looked nice on him, so trim and neat, and it broadened his shoulders and made him look like a soldier. And Chesley himself, when he stopped being afraid of himself, found that it scared the pants off practically everybody who saw it except other members of the V.G. For the first time in his life he felt the surge of personal power through his previously calm veins.

"But why on earth should they hire you?" his wife demanded. "You're not a policeman."

"They don't need policemen. They need people with chemical training, for instance. I'm a Research Investigator."

"But you're not a researcher!" Chesley said loftily, "You don't understand. I don't do research, I investigate people who do research. Remember? Some kinds of research are forbidden. I check up on them, see? For instance, one of the first things I'm going to do is drop in on the rubber works. I want to talk to Dr. Pebrick."

"Your boss? About time!" his wife exclaimed. "I never thought I'd live to see it, Arthur, you getting up enough nerve to tell that fat—"

"It isn't a question of nerve, dear," he explained. "When I worked for him it was different. Now I'm a member of the V.G.and not a private, either! No, sir." He patted his stripes proudly. "See, dear? I'm a corporal!"

"Corporal?"

He nodded triumphantly.

She asked, with a dangerous note in her voice, "Is corporal higher than major?"

Chesley was shocked. "Oh, no, dear. Major is much higher. There's sergeant, top sergeant, lieutenant, captain—"

"Major is higher?" Mrs. Chesley stamped her plump foot. "You mean," she demanded, "that you're going to have to take orders from Elsie Morgenstern's husband? Arthur, I swear, I don't think you ever take into consideration the fact that I'm entitled to some respect in this neighborhood! Oh, I can't face Elsie Morgenstern after this! She'll put on that cat-eats-the-canary look and—Arthur, what's my mother going to say? My sister Caroline's husband's a lieutenant, and he's three years younger than you, and I always thought he was the biggest— Arthur, I never should have listened to you! Stepping stones! I go through seven years of misery and scrimping on your stepping stones, and then when you finally get a chance to make a man out of yourself with a half-way decent job in the V.G., you take the first offer they make, showing no guts, no strength, and — Arthur! Arthur, I'm warning you, don't you dare leave this house!"

Still, Chesley's first official act was to visit his old employer, and that made up for a lot, There is no need to go into details about it. Chesley was not yet used to throwing his weight around, but he knew the principles of throwing a scare into the lesser breeds, having been subjected to the technique many times, and it is of record that fifteen minutes after he had left the laboratory where he had formerly slaved, Dr. Pebrick called up his lawyer and made the will he had been putting off for ten years.

After that Chesley began to see the world.

He was amazed to see what sort of a world it was.

There are people who take seriously the pronouncements of politicians and government leaders, who realize the connection between a change of policy on bimetallism and the fact that today or tomorrow the price of eggs will go up or bombs will fall on Nova Scotia. Chesley was not one of them. He had heard everything the Viceroy had had to say, but it simply had not registered.

For example, there was the Viceroy's long and famous General Orders Number One, which prescribed exactly what the human race was required to do in order to make their miserable little pebble of a planet fit to be occupied by the Viceroy's race. The celebrated Para. iv (c) of those orders read:

It is contemplated that 50% of the human race will be required for maintenance duties under the occupation. Since the other 50% will not be adequate to the task of feeding the maintainers, it will be necessary to increase the adult, healthy human population as quickly as possible.

Therefore no beer; therefore no drugs; therefore no time wasted on amusements; therefore children, children, children. It was the Viceroy's orders. And the penalty for failure to comply was a violet flare and bam.

It had never occurred to Chesley that the flare might some day consume him. It simply didn't seem to matter. If it had been guaranteed that he would get it at a specific time, why, then, he might have paid some attention. But the danger was so indefinite that it seemed foolish to waste time on it.

Others were not so placid.

The old life was disintegrating. The mores of the world were changing every day—at least on paper; for what was permitted was compulsory, and nearly everything that was not compulsory was verboten. Artists were giving up their art ("non-essential") and musicians their music ("manpower-wasting") in order to go to work on a Viceroy's Project. It was like a great war effort. And yet there was none of the self-sacrifice, none of the shared resources that mark a people fighting a war. Everywhere there was springing up a shoddy second growth of new companies, new plants, that would somehow cash in on the great Projects. With the Viceroy creating money as he pleased, while governments stood by helpless, there was a fantastic spiral of inflation. The governments themselves were falling apart; no one would work for them. It paid off much better to be an agent of the Viceroy than to serve some possessor of minute authority like the American Government, the Russian, even the UN.

And there was one universal solvent—money.

On the first day of Chesley's employment in the V.G. he was offered a bribe. Berkeley Project Six Four Three had ordered a thousand bags of Portland cement; it was nearly half sand; the salesman grasped Chesley's hand anxiously and said, half pleading, half in contempt: "What's the difference, pal? A little sand isn't gonna hurt —saves putting the sand in later, right? Everybody's doing it." And when he took his hand away there was a thousand-dollar bill, wadded damply tight, left in Chesley's.

Chesley walked out of there and made a little note in his book; that was the first rule of the V.G.; anyone offering a bribe was to be reported for punishment.

But, somehow, that didn't seem to stop it. By the end of the second day he had been offered money to suppress a report on inferior steel alloy in fourteen thousand tons of I-beams; to help throw a contract to a firm that lacked plant, raw materials and employees; to change the wording of a bid specification so that a speculator could unload water-damaged organic chemicals, utterly worthless for any purpose. He was even bribed on general principles—because he was a member of the V.G., as a sort of general prophylaxis against any future illegal activities.

Chesley took his notebook in hand and reported to the District Sub-Office.

It was in a Project building—a spidery tripod a mile and a half high. Steel skeleton and blue-plastic frame, it rose on three thin legs, one planted firmly on lower Manhattan, one rooted in Staten Island, one plunging into the river off the Jersey piers. Chesley stepped into a glassy capsule at the base of the Manhattan leg and was blown by pneumatic force straight up the leg. It was a whirling, dizzying experience, but he could catch sight of the other Project buildings scattered across the land and sea—the giant bubbly dome over Astoria, Queens, with its revolving ruby lights; the pale, square monstrosity that floated in the ocean just off Coney Island; the sun glinting from the twenty enormous swimming pools the Viceroy had commanded all over New York and New Jersey.

Some day the Projects, all of them, would be used by the Viceroy's people, for purposes that were far outside of human understanding. But for now they belonged to the V.G., six-foot humans occupying rooms scaled for a race of no fixed size or shape, where some doors were so tiny a man had to crawl through on his belly, some ceilings so high that the lights had to be swung at the end of twenty-foot cables. Chesley slid through a narrow elliptical door marked AREA COMMANDER, saluted the first man he saw and said: "Sir, I wish to speak to Captain Carsten."

"Sit down, bud." The wind screamed and the overhead lights swung at the end of their long cables. Chesley took a seat on a curiously shallow bench at one end of the triangular room. It was full of members of the V.G., male and female, all in the blinding blue uniforms. They seemed to pay no attention to him—and even less attention to the TV repeaters that were scattered all over every room in the Project buildings, where every minute of every day the face of the Viceroy was in the screen ordering, exhorting, commanding his followers. Perhaps it was a recording, Chesley thought; although it seemed live, for at every twentieth word or so the Viceroy had to pause in what he was saying to glance at a memorandum handed him by a sweating human aide, or to stop, and close his eyes, and seem to concentrate for a second, while the faint halo flared around him. It was:

^"—no human who dares interfere with the occupation of"—pause, while he glanced at a slip—"this miserable little planet by"—pause, while he closed his eyes and the halo glowed bright—"the invincible race I represent will escape. No, not one! And if any"—pause for another slip from another messenger—"human is presumptuous enough"— pause, while the halo flared—"to attempt to thwart my plan for"— pause again; and words and pauses and words and ...

Chesley stopped a girl in the blue uniform. "What's he doing?" he asked.

She stared at him. "Oh, a rookie. That's how he blasts 'em, boy," she said, and bustled on. Chesley was very impressed. Imagine seeing the Viceroy in the actual act of execution! It didn't seem to be very difficult for him—and yet, Chesley thought, if you assume that one person out of a thousand needs execution every year, and that there are three billion persons alive on the Earth, those three million annual executions must occur at an average rate of—of— of, he finally computed, one every ten seconds or so, night, day, weekends and Sundays included. No wonder the Viceroy was harried!

"You!" barked a plump old V.G. with a lieutenant's shoulder bars. "You want to see the Captain? Come on in."

Chesley marched into an office with a soft and slanting floor and, keeping his balance with some difficulty, saluted, reported, and turned over his list of persons who had offered him bribes.

Captain Carsten stared at him in frank incredulity. "They tried to bribe you?" he asked.

"Yes, sir."

"And you—you're reporting them to me?"

"Yes, sir."

"I see." Carsten shook his head slowly, as though it were impossible to believe. And, in fact, he was baffled. He tried to clear up the confusion in his own mind. "You mean to say," he began, "that these people all offered you bribes, that you accepted the money, that you have brought the money to me here as evidence, and that you are turning their names in for punishment?"

"That's absolutely right, sir," Chesley said gratefully. He was very relieved; at first he had almost thought the captain didn't understand.

"I see," said the captain again. He picked up the pile of bills and the list of would-be bribe-givers. "There's quite a respectable sum here, Chesley," he said warmly. "And it requires a great deal of fortitude to resist keeping it. I must commend you."

"Thank you very much, sir!" Chesley felt the stirrings of pleasure in his tranquil little heart. "Shall I keep them under observation?"

"Eh? Keep who?"

"The people on the list, sir."

"Oh." The captain pursed his lips. "No," he said, "that won't be necessary. I'll take over, Chesley. I see that you have much more uncommon abilities than I had suspected, so that I think perhaps you should be transferred to—to a more advanced position." He nodded briskly, wadded up the money and put it in his pocket. "I'll keep the, uh, evidence. Pending the proper time, of course. Now, Chesley, dismissed!"

Chesley marched out, feeling quite good—until a couple of days later, when he made another routine check and came across the Portland cement salesman. "You?" Chesley said, astonished. "But I thought—"

"You thought what, pal?" the salesman snarled.

"I thought—" Chesley had been going to say that he'd thought the salesman would long since have passed on, accompanied by a violet flare and a bam. But obviously that hadn't happened, and he floundered.

"Ah," snarled the salesman, "you give me a pain. A thousand bucks wasn't enough for you, huh? You had to pass me on to Carsten, huh? What do you think I was bothering with you for? Just because I couldn't afford his prices—and now he's got me down for a weekly payoff, and, believe me, it isn't any measly grand. Get out of here, you! I don't have to bother with you small-timers any more—now that I'm paying for real protection, I'm going to get it!"

Truly, thought Chesley in his analytical way, the V.G. was a strange and educational organization.

But time went on, and Chesley's ears slowly dried, and it was only a matter of months before he had his own list, and more than five hundred lesser V.G.s under him to help in the collections. For the mortality rate among the human population itself was high, but among that segment of the race that had joined the V.G., it was fabulous. Nearly one execution out of ten, Chesley discovered with interest, was of a V.G.—V.G. caught conspiring to defraud, V.G. caught suborning forbidden research, V.G. under the influence of alcohol, V.G.—more often than any of these—the victim of a de sire for advancement on the part of one of his subordinates.

For if mortality was rapid, so was advancement. It was Major Chesley now, and the old apartment up the block from Mrs. Morgenstern was only a memory; the Chesleys lived in a penthouse over a pagoda-shaped Project of orange crystal.

The Viceroy could have blotted out his enemies en masse only at the cost of blotting out the human race, and forfeiting the work he wanted done. For his own sake, he had to ferret out hostile groups and individuals and destroy them without destroying too many of the others at the same time. Hence, he needed his international army, the V.G.

But the army was shot through with corruption. Men who spied on their fellow men for the sake of an inhuman ruler had little of ordinary human feelings. They robbed and reported for annihilation with relative impunity—at least until they aroused the opposition of other V.G. men. Then they themselves were robbed and reported. And another violet flare and bam.

Captain Carsten—now Colonel Carsten—got it one fine day. Major Morgenstern—now General Morgenstern—found out he was on a marshal's list, and hanged himself in panic. Major Chesley watched and profited; he made it a point never, never to interfere with an other V.G. man, at least one of superior rank.

And so, when the Viceroy at last was impelled to act in enormous wholesale fashion, Major Chesley ceased being even a major; there was a renewed loyalty check and a doubling of the hidden microphones; Major Chesley became Generalissimo Chesley.

The long procession of stepping stones, it seemed, had finally led to a goal.