Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

Boone strangled with rage.

“You’re wrong,” he mouthed. “I’m the one that’s got you.” He slapped a pile of notes that lay on his desk. “I’m the one who’s going to crack you. I’ll bust you wide open. I’ll let them know what you really are.”

“Oh, yeah!” crowed Archie.

Boone set down the bottle. “Damn you,” he said thickly. “I have half a notion to settle you once and for all. You’ve deviled me long enough. I’m going to let you die.”

“You’ll do what?” demanded Archie.

“I’ll let you die,” stormed Boone. “All I have to do is forget to pump more radon in. In another week you’ll be polonium and—”

“You wouldn’t dare,” taunted Archie. “You know what would happen to you then. The Institute would have your scalp for that.”

The face was in the jar again. A terrible face. One that sent fear and loathing and terrifying anger surging through the scientist.

With a shriek of rage, Boone grabbed the bottle off the desk and hurled it. It missed Archie, shattered against the wall, spraying the glass jar with liquor.

Archie tittered and a hand materialized before the face, waggling its fingers in an obscene gesture.

With a hoarse whoop, Boone leaped forward and snatched up a heavy stool. Archie’s laughter rang through the room—terrible laughter.

Boone screamed in insane rage and babbled. The stool came up and smashed downward. The jar splintered under the crashing impact.

Searing radiations lanced through the room. The spectrographic detectors flamed faintly. Fans whined, rose to a piercing shriek, sweeping the air, throwing the radon outside the dome. Atmosphere hissed and roared.

But Harvey Boone knew none of this, for Harvey Boone was dead. Incredible pain had lashed at him in one searing second and he had dropped, his face and hands burned to a fiery red, his eyes mere staring holes.

Radon, in its pure state, weight for weight, is one hundred thousand times as active as radium.

“But Archie couldn’t have had anything to do with it,” protested Johnny Garrison. “Hypnotism! That’s incredible. He couldn’t hypnotize a person. There’s nothing to support such a belief. We’ve observed Archie for a hundred years—”

“Let’s not forget one thing,” interrupted Doc. “In Archie we were observing something that was intelligent. Just how intelligent we had no way of knowing. But we do know this: His intelligence was not human intelligence. It couldn’t be. True, we bridged the gap, we talked with him. But the talk was carried on in human terms, upon a human basis.”

Doc’s cigar traveled from east to west. “Does that suggest anything to you?”

The dome commander’s face was white. “I’d never thought of that. But it means—it would have to mean—that Archie was intelligent enough to force his thought processes into human channels.”

Doc nodded. “Could man have done the same? Could man have forced himself to think the way Archie thinks? I doubt it. Archie’s thought processes probably would be too alien for us to even grasp. What is more, Archie recognized this. It all boils down to this: We furnished the mechanical set-up, Archie furnished the mental set-up.”

“You make it sound frightening,” said Garrison.

“It is frightening,” Doc assured him.

Garrison stood up. “There’s no use beating around the bush. Both of us are thinking the same thing.”

Doc said: “I’m afraid so. There’s nothing else to think.”

“All of them know,” said Garrison, “all of them, or it, or whatever is out there—they know as much as Archie knew.”

“I’m sure they do,” Doc agreed. “Archie never lost his identity, even though we had to pump in new radon every few days. It was always the same Archie. Tests with the radon brains on the machines, however, revealed merely an intelligence very poorly versed in human knowledge. The same radon, mind you, and yet the radon that was used to replenish Archie becomes Archie, while all the other radon remained an intelligence that had none of Archie’s human knowledge.”

“And now,” said Garrison, “it’s all Archie. I told Mac he’d have to shut down the machines when the radon ran low in the brains. We simply can’t take a chance. There’ll be hell to pay. R.C. will blast space wide open. We’re behind schedule now—“

He stared out the port with haggard face, watching the snow sweep by.

“Take it easy, Johnny,” counseled Doc. “The home office has been riding you again. You’re behind schedule and you’re getting jumpy. You’re remembering some of the things you’ve seen happen to men who couldn’t keep the wheels of industry moving and the banners of Radium, Inc., waving high. You’re thinking of R.C.’s secret police and charges of sabotage and God knows what.”

“Look, Doc,” said Garrison desperately, almost pleadingly, “this is my big chance—my last chance. I’m not too young any more, and this chance has to click. Make good here on Venus and I’m set for life. No more third-rate wilderness posts out on the Jovian moons, no more stinking tricks on the Martian desert. It’ll be Earth for me—Earth and an easy-chair.”

“I know how it is,” said Doc. “It’s the old system of fear. You’re afraid of the big boys and Mac is afraid of you and the men are afraid of Mac. And all of us are afraid of Venus. Radium, Inc., owns the Solar System, body and soul. The radium monopoly, holding companies, interlocking directories—it all adds up to invisible government, not too invisible at that. R.C. Webster owns us all. He owns us by virtue of Streeter’s secret police and his spies. He owns us because radium is power and he owns the radium. He owns us because there isn’t a government that won’t jump when he snaps his fingers. His father and grandfather owned us before this, and his son and grandson will own us after a while.”

He chuckled. “You needn’t look so horrified, Johnny. You’re the only one that’s hearing me, and you won’t say a word. But you know it’s the truth as well as I. Radium is the basis of the power that holds the Solar System in thrall. The wheels of the System depend on radium from Venus. It was the price the people of Earth had to pay for solar expansion, for a solar empire. Just the cost of wheeling a ship from one planet to another is tremendous. It takes capital to develop a solar empire, and when capital is called on it always has a price. We paid that price, and this is what we got.”

Garrison reached out with trembling hands to pick up a bottle of brandy. The liquor splashed as he poured it in a tumbler.

“What are we going to do, Doc?”

“I wish I knew,” said Doc.

A bell jangled and Garrison lifted the phone.

The voice of the chief engineer shouted at him.

“Chief, we have to fill those brains again. Either that or shut down. The radon is running low.”

“I thought I told you to shut them down,” yelled Garrison. “We can’t take a chance. We can’t turn those machines over to Archie.”

Mac howled in anguish. “But we’re way behind schedule. Shut them down and—”

“Shut them down!” roared Garrison. “Sparks is trying to get through to Earth. I’ll let you know.”

He hung the speaker back in its cradle, lifted it again and dialed the communications room.

“How’s the call to Earth coming?”

“I’m trying,” yelped Sparks, “but I’m afraid. We’re nearing the Sun, you know. Space is all chopped. … Hey, wait a minute. Here we are. I’ll tie you in—”

Static crackled and snapped. A thin voice was shouting.

“That you, Garrison? Hello, Garrison!”

Garrison recognized the voice, distorted as it was, and grimaced. He could envision R.C. Webster, president of Radium, Inc., bouncing up and down in his chair, furious at the prospect of more trouble on Venus.