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

"Sure." Their warder watched with interest as Train dimmed the lights of the cell and switched on the flashlight so that it cast a tiny spot of radiance on a gleaming water faucet. The guard stared at it, fascinated.

Train's voice sank to a whispering drone. "Concentrate on the light.

Block out every other thing but the light."

The guard shifted uneasily. This was a strange way to treat a sick man, and the light was shining right in his eyes. Perhaps he had better call the medico after all. He was half decided to do so, but he felt tired and the chair was comfortable. What was it Train was saying?

"By the time I have counted to twenty, you will be asleep. One…" The guard's eyes grew heavy. "Concentrate …block out everything but the light …everything but the light …seven …

The spot of light floated before the guard's face, distorting into strange shapes that shifted. He just barely heard Train drone "twelve" before he began to breathe deeply and hoarsely.

Train switched on the lights and slipped the flashlight into his pocket.

"Perfect specimen, Lawrence," he exulted. "You can always tell by the eyebrows."

"Fascinating," returned the erstwhile victim to conjunctivitis of the exegetical peritoneum as he climbed out of bed. "What now?"

Train rolled back the guard's eyelids with a practiced thumb. "Ask him anything," he said. "He'll tell you whatever we want to know."

Lawrence cleared his throat, bent over the sleeping man. "When are you leaving for Earth?"

"This afternoon. One hour from now."

"Do the others know you?"

"They never saw me, but they know my name."

"What are the passwords on the way to the ship?"

"Front gate, rabies. Second gate, tuberculosis. Field guard, leprosy.

Ship port, cancer."

"Someone must have had a grim sense of humor," whispered Lawrence to Train. "What are your duties on the ship?"

"I have no duties."

The chemist snapped: "One of us must take his place."

"Yes. Which one of us? No, we won't have to decide. I'm going. Aside from such details as the fact that his uniform will fit me, but would look suspiciously baggy on you, I have a chance to do something about this whole rotten system when I get back. You would only be able to commit more murders, or near-murders."

The chemist's lips whitened. "You're right," he whispered. "When you have the chance, promise me that you'll wipe out this asteroid and the filthy stuff they manufacture here. I don't think I'll be around by that time; exposure to the sun might get me sooner than we think."

"I know," said Train shortly, "and I promise." He gripped the other's hand and shoulder for the moment, then turned to the unconscious guard, and began a machine-gun fire of questions that were to stock his brain with every secret datum held inviolate by the militia of the man-made planetoid.

Ann Riley was frying breakfast bacon and eggs; she did not hear the door of her flat open softly and close. Behind her a voice suddenly spoke. "Cut me in on some of that."

She turned and gasped: "Barney, you sonova gun!" she yelled and flew into his arms.

"It was really nothing," he explained over the coffee. "They just hadn't figured on the hypnosis angle and I took care not to drop any bricks on the voyage. The inefficiency of that system is appalling. If I were managing it, I could step up production of their rotten stuff three hundred percent and see that no prisoner even thought of escaping."

"Yeah," she said skeptically, "I know. But what are you going to do now that you're back?"

"I'm safe for a month. That's how long it takes for a ship to get there and back, and they haven't any other means of communication. The nearness to the sun makes radio or beam messages impossible. So, first, I'm going swimming."

"No, you aren't," she said coldly, a gleam in her eye. "I've been redrafting Independent Fourteen, and all the details are there down on paper again—except for the ones you have in your head. We're going to build that machine and build it fast and powerful. Then we'll throw it in the teeth of T. J. Hartly and World Research, Incorporated. And we're going to fling it so hard there won't be a sound tooth left in their mouths."

"Yes, my pet. I must confess I had some such thought in my head when I decided to come back to Earth."

"We can rig up enough of a lab," she went on, "right here in my flat.

There's no more experimentation to do; we just need the bare essentials with a slight margin for error.

"Splendid," he nodded, reaching for another slice of toast. "We'll need about a hundred yards of silver wire, some standard castings, and a few tubes. You'd better go out and get them now—shop around; we can't afford to get the most expensive. Where have you got the plans?"

They rose from the table and Ann drew a huge scroll of paper from the closet. "Here they are. Full scale, this time."

Train scanned them. "Hey! This distributor wasn't on the designs I gave you."

"Oh, I just filled it in," she demurred.

The scientist scowled. "Hereafter," he proclaimed, "all filling in will be done by Doctor Train. Now gwan out and buy the stuff while I work out the missing circuits." He seated himself at a desk, brooding over the plans.

He looked up when a firm tap came on his shoulder.

"Well?" he asked without turning his head.

"Excuse me, young man, but a point of morality has just come up.

Where do you expect to live while you're building Independent Fourteen?"

"Right here," he answered calmly. "First, I can't afford to live anywhere else—even though I drew a guard's salary, and that isn't too small. But there's the danger to consider. You wouldn't want your collaborator to be snatched up and deported again, would you?"

"Fundamentally," she began in a determined voice, "I'm a conventional person. And I do not like neighbors talking about me as though I were a thing loathsome and accursed in the eyes of gods and men."

"What have neighbors to do with it?"

"Don't you think they would consider it a bit peculiar were a man suddenly to come to my flat and begin to live with me as though it were the most natural thing in the world?"

"Isn't it?" he replied. "In the eyes of Science nothing is unclean or to be shunned."

"Dr. Train!" she flared, "you are going to marry me whether you like it or not. At once!"

He stared at her. "I never really thought of it like that," he began …but Ann was already speaking into the mouthpiece of the phone.

"Central Services, please."

She returned to him. "There—that was easy, wasn't it? He'll be here in a moment; he lives a few houses down."

There was a knock on the door. "Central Service is Super Service,"

quoted Ann. "That's him now."

She rose to admit a sickly individual who greeted her in a brisk, flabby voice. "Miss Riley?"

"Yes. And that object is Doctor Train, my spouse-to-be."

"Thank you," said the agent, opening a book. "Please sign in duplicate."

Ann scribbled her name and passed the book to Train, who also signed.

"Two dollars for ceremony and registration," said the anemic Cupid.

Train handed over the money and limply accepted the certificate in return.

"Thank you," said the agent. "I now pronounce you man and wife." He walked out through the door, closing it gently behind him.

"Well," said Ann, after a long pause.

"Well, what?"

"Aren't you going to kiss the bride?"

"Oh." He did so until she pounded his back for air. "I must be a romanticist," he complained, "but I always wanted an old-fashioned wedding before a city clerk."

"Times have changed," she philosophized. "The tempo of life is accelerated; things move at a fast and furious pace in these mad days.

The old conventions remain, but one complies with them as swiftly and effortlessly as possible. It helps to retain the illusion of gentility."