C Kornbluth - His Share of Glory The Complete Short Science Fiction

Tentatively the three Visitors reached out into its mind. The thoughts were comparatively clear and steady.

When the figure had passed the Visitors chorused: Agreed, and headed back to their ship. There was nothing there for them. Among other things they had drawn from the figure's mind was the location of a ruined library; a feeble-minded working party of a million was dispatched to it.

Back at the ship they waited, unhappily ruminating the creature's foreground thoughts: "From Corey's Gin you get the charge to tote that bale and lift that barge. That's progress, God damn it. You know better than that, man. Liberty Unlimited for the Lonely Man, but it be nice to see that Mars ship land…"

Agreement: Despite all previous experience it seems that a sentient race is capable of destroying itself.

When the feeble-minded library detail returned and gratefully re-united itself with its parent "lives" they studied the magnetic tapes it had brought, reading them direct in the cans. They learned the name of the planet and the technical name for the wave-train entities which had inherited it and which would shortly be its sole proprietors. The solid life forms, it seemed, had not been totally unaware of them, though there was some confusion: Far the vaster section of the li-brary denied that they existed at all. But in the cellular minds of the Visitors there could be no doubt that the creatures described in a neglected few of the library's lesser works were the ones they had en-countered. Everything tallied. Their non-material quality; their curi-ous reaction to light. And, above all, their dominant personality trait, of remorse, repentance, furious regret. The technical term that the books gave to them was: ghosts.

The Visitors worked ship, knowing that the taste of this world and its colony would soon be out of what passed for their collective mouths, rinsed clean by new experiences and better-organized enti-ties.

But they had never left a solar system so gratefully or so fast.

After Armageddon

There was a lusty scream from the visitors' gallery. The lights of the hall flickered for a moment; guards drew and fired at shadows on the wall or at each other. Panic threatened; the restless roar of a great crowd rose to a jabbering sound like monkey-talk. In the great gallery and on the vast floor a few dimwits began to dash for exits.

"Rot them," growled Senator Beekman. He shoved the mike at Ballister.

"Shut them up," he snapped. "Use your precious psychology!"

Young Ballister took the mike, snapped on the button, dialed for heaviest amplification. "Atten-shun!" he barked into it, with the genuine parade-ground note of command.

The monkey-talk stopped for a priceless moment. Ballister jumped into it with both feet. Soothingly he said: "Now, folks, what's your hurry?

Stick around—these learned gentlemen put on a pretty good show for your benefit."

The learned gentlemen who were dashing for exits purpled; the visitors in the gallery laughed loud and long at the feeble little joke. They resumed their seats.

"Take it, Senator," snapped Ballister in an undertone. "I'll scamper for a gander at the fuss up there." He hopped nimbly from the platform into an elevator, which shot him up to the gallery. Displaying his Representative's badge, he broke through the cordon of International Police that was zealously guarding an ordinary seat, like any other of the five thousand in sight.

"What was it?" he demanded of a French provost. "Killing?"

The provost shrugged. "We do not know vat, m'sieu. On-lee we know that in that seat sat M'sieu the mayor of Bruxelles."

"Hi," snapped a crisp young voice at Ballister.

He removed his horn-rims to regard the young lady disapprovingly.

"Beat it, Kay," he ordered. "This isn't for the papers. Another unpleasant international incident. The Mayor of Brussels."

The young man looked down at the stage, very small and far away. From the speakers in the walls came the voice of Senator Beekman, hoarse and embarrassed:

"Our agenda will be incomplete today, gentlemen and ladies. I have been advised of the—the non-attendance of Monsieur Durtal, Mayor of Brussels and major sponsor of the bill entitled: 'An Act to Prevent Competitive Development of Instruments of Warfare.' We will proceed to—"

The Anti-War Conference had been in full swing for two months. There was nothing slow or inefficient about the great congress of all the nations; the tremendous task before them took time, lots of it. The Grand Agenda of the Conference covered a space of three years, and all busy ones.

Banister knew something about the Second World War; he had spent a couple of years in command of an infantry company at the tail-end of the mighty conflict. Then, when it was settled, and the sick-and-tired Axis armies and peoples had revolted and overthrown their warlords, he had naturally gone to the Conference as an American delegate.

Training as specialized as his—psychological jurisprudence—was in demand.

He thought he had seen everything, world-weary at twenty-three, but the Conference offered a few new kicks. There was something ludicrous about a Japanese delegate trying to wangle a few more square miles of Korea for his nation. Ballister was usually the trouble-shooter who explained to the simple people how their demands would encroach on so-and-so's rights, which would lead to such-and-such a consequence, which would be bad for the world in general for this-and-that reasons.

It was a plan magnificent in scope. The vast Auditorium of Oslo was jammed with the delegates and specialists; the gallery was jammed day and night with visitors—anybody who wanted to see. There was to be no diplomacy under the table in the world the Conference was making!

Twenty years of war had shown the fallacy of secret treaties; the delegates desperately hoped that their three years of cooperative common sense would blast the old diplomatic nonsense from the face of the Earth.

Ballister had his troubles, not the least of these being Kay Marsh, of the New York Enquirer. Any other reporter he could handle; not Kay, for she had majored with him at Columbia in the same psych courses and knew him like a book. She knew then, in the gallery, that this wasn't the time for comedy.

"Did you know him?" she asked.

"Met him twice," said Ballister despondently, regarding the empty chair. "A real humanitarian, man of the people. Not one of these professionals. And he's the third to go."

"Pelterie from Switzerland, Vanderhoek from South Africa, now Durtal of Belgium," she listed somberly. "Who's doing it?"

"If I knew I'd tell you," said Ballister. "Hell! Let us be gay! Have you got the handouts for the day's work?"

"I filed my copy already," she said. "Macklin's covering this business.

He's going to do a series of articles on it. You're off?"

"Through for the week. Let's flit."

"Sounds like an insect," she complained. "But if you wish."

They elbowed their way through the crowd, out of the Auditorium. Oslo was en flite, with its face washed and its hair brushed for the distinguished visitors. Its population had swelled by a half-million since it was chosen as the Conference site. Festively decked helicopters and 'gyros dragged advertising signs through the sky in all languages.

One battered little blimp towed the notice in French: "Attend the Produce Show! April 11!"

Kay pointed at it with a smile. "Did I ever tell you I was a farmer's daughter?" she remarked.

Ballister recognized the lead. "All right," he said. "I'll take you. But I guarantee you'll be bored silly; they probably won't even speak the international language."