Zach Hughes - The Stork Factor

brain. It was the suffering mass of people, those who had lived like rats in the hell of the cities, those whose bodies had altered through the tension, the irritation, the overcrowding, those with vastly enlarged adrenals and seared lungs and overworked hearts who had developed the unopened conduits through which could pass, with stunning stimulation from Luke's mind, the life force, the knowledge, the ability. He found it first in a tired old non-commissioned officer on the fringes of the mass of rebel troops who milled and shouted and wondered at the vast fleet which had appeared so miraculously overhead to save them from

the Brothers' fire guns. He saw the black ball of potential, shot power into it, sent the old man reeling down to his knees holding his head in pain. Then there was communication. «Know yourself, brother,» Luke told him in his mind, giving instruction, leading, showing the old non-com the key to it all. «Pass it on, brother.» It spread out through the troops with a visible ripple of movement,

rapid, the aching, almost-dead city people finding a reward, at last, for the

lifetime of almost non-living. And from the battlefield, small ships carried converters to the cities, across the country, to the south into the devastated Republic of South American. «Know yourself, brother. Pass it along.» With the change spreading in a moving wave of wonder, the education process was begun. The fleet from the inner galaxy moved to key points, thousands of ships, each ship's system connected with the main computer, each ship able to reach into the minds of a hundred changees at once, force-feeding information to newly opened minds eager for knowledge. Luke, having begun the wave of change, flew with Wundt and Baxley to the underground capital near old Washington, installed Baxley as temporary President of the Third Republic. The crippled communications system was augmented by the mind-to-mind passage of the news among the changees. Organization slowly began to come from chaos. From the very first a special search team had been looking for Irene Caster. She was traced from the shakeshock therapy room in police headquarters in West City to a Fare home for invalids. The home, itself, had been in the path of a localized skirmish involving conventional weapons. The buildings were sagging, burned-out, empty. There was no trace of any of the occupants of the home. «Too late,» Luke said, when he received the report. «God I was too late.» He was with Wundt and Baxley. It was six days after Luke's return. Already, computer-educated technicians had patched the nationwide network of communications to establish a link to the west. The news saddened Luke. He walked to the wall on which hung a large, military map of the Republic, looking at it with unseeing eyes. He thought of Caster as she was when they were together in West City, gay, optimistic. He

remembered the fright on her face as he was lifted by the girl called, in his mind, Blaze. He imagined the tortures she had endured, the final treatment on the shakeshock rack which blasted her mind, left her a vegetable, for that was the only conclusion to be drawn from the information that she'd been sent to a Fare home for invalids. Then the

local battle with high-explosive shells tearing and blasting and ripping the buildings and people fleeing in panic, those who could move. Caster, perhaps, not realizing the danger, moving slowly, zombilike, walking into the path of the onrushing troops. She was dead. He had to accept it. And there was an empire to be built. It was estimated that some 60 percent of the population had changed. Another small percentage would be reached, but that would leave almost 40 percent of the people in misery. Orders went out. Those who have the life-control power are to use it to heal those who have not been able to make a change. Time passed. Local areas elected representatives to the First Congress of the Third Republic. The congress approved Luke's unilateral appointment of Colonel Ed Baxley as President, pending organization of the elective machinery based on the old system of the First Republic. Luke spent long hours in consultation with Baxley and a staff of newly changed, vibrant, healthy young men. There was so much to be done. A task force was set to work revamping the industrial facilities of the Republic. Plants which had produced endless lines of useless ground cars turned to the making of elements which went into ships patterned after the fleet which

Luke had brought into the last battle on the northern plains, for vast as it was, the fleet was inadequate for the purpose of resettling almost three billion people on new planets scattered long light-years along the periphery of the galaxy. Another task force went into the Republic of South American, working toward union, toward peace among the survivors of centuries of warfare and pestilence on a tired, wasted planet. Vast efforts were underway to clean the environment of the Earth. This effort had priority, since it would take years, decades to complete the colonization of new planets and, moreover, there were those who were sentimental about the home planet, who wanted to keep it, return it to health and beauty. It became increasingly apparent that the non-changees were being left behind. Baxley and Wundt, healthy, cared for by the changees on the staff, found themselves turning over details more and more to the vibrant young men with the expanded minds. It was thus over the entire area of the two continents. Those who could not change found themselves being left out. They were treated with courtesy, but there was a touch of condescension which, as the exciting days passed, brought a crisis. The crisis came when the majority, the changees, voted to limit the franchise to changees only. Colonel Ed Baxley, at the head of the table, resplendent in white, rose, his face grim. «Gentlemen, I find myself, as President of the Republic, in an untenable position. You are saying that I will be unable to exercise the basic rights of citizenship.» «The rule will not apply to you, of course,» said a bright young changee. «Why should I be allowed special status?» Baxley asked his face flushed. «I am, along with all the others who have not been able to change, an inferior being.» «As I understand it,» Dr. Wundt said, with a rueful smile, «We are being punished now for having lived a childhood of comfort.» «Perhaps we can find a way,» Luke said. «Research is under way.» «I don't have your mental abilities, my boy,» Wundt said, «but I'm a medical doctor. I've studied the matter. Encephalograph of changees and those who have the change potential, when compared with the ordinary

brain, say the brain of the colonel or myself, show differences so basic that I, in my ignorance, hold no hope of ever knowing the feeling of being a superman.» «But we can help you,» Luke said. «We can heal you, keep you healthy.» «And keep us as poor, retarded relations locked in a back room?» Baxley said. «No, not at all,» Luke insisted. «He is right, of course,» said one of the young staff men. Luke looked angrily toward the speaker. «I've always wanted to go into space,» Wundt said. «It's been a lifelong dream. Give us, the retarded relations a back room, a planet or two somewhere. Give us a basic technology, medicine—» «But that's exile,» Luke said. «That's what they did with us.» «Yes,» Wundt said. «I've been thinking of that. It's almost as if there had been a long-range plan, almost as if we were put here, God knows how long ago, to act as a blood bank for the race, to furnish new blood when the old became tired, inactive. Now they had lapsed into complete inactivity. You might even say they're being rewarded for good work. When it comes right down to it, being eternally healthy, euphoric, sexually stimulated, without care or responsibility is not a bad way to live.» «But don't you see,» Luke said, «we'd be doing exactly as they did. We'd