David Gerrold - A Matter for Men

"Uh huh," he said. "Anything else?"

"Angry. I think."

"Good. Anything else?"

"No, I don't think so."

"Great." He said, "I'm here to debrief you. Are you up to it?" He looked at me expectantly.

"No."

"Fine." He rose to leave.

"Wait a minute."

"Yes?"

"I'll talk. I have some questions of my own." He raised an eyebrow at me. "Oh?"

"Will you answer them?"

He said, "Yes. As a matter of fact, I am authorized to answer your questions."

"Honestly?"

He nodded his head slowly. "If I can."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I'll tell you the truth as I know it. Is that all right?"

"It'll have to do."

He looked impatient. "What's the question?"

"All right. Why was I set up to be killed?"

Fromkin sat down again. He looked at me. "Were you?"

"You know I was! That Chtorran was supposed to get me too. That's why I was assigned there-so when the glass broke, I'd be the first. I wasn't supposed to have a working weapon, was I? Except I took the manual and went out to the range and familiarized myself with the gun. So it didn't work, did it?"

Fromkin looked unhappy-not pained, just sad. He said, "Yes. That was the expectation."

"You didn't answer the question."

"I will. Let's hear the rest."

"All right. Why was the Chtorran supposed to break out? I saw Dr. Zymph check the case with an aide. They weren't checking to see if it was safe. They were checking to make sure it would break at the right moment. When the Chtorran put its weight on it. Right?"

Fromkin said, "That's what you saw?"

I nodded. "All those people were supposed to die, weren't they?"

Fromkin looked at the ceiling for a moment. Composing his answer? He looked back at me. "Yes, I'm afraid so."

"Why?"

"You already know the answer, Jim."

"No, I don't."

"Go over it again. Why do you think the attack was set up?"

"After the fact, it's pretty obvious. Most of those people disagreed with the United States position on the Chtorran threat, so you invited them to a first-hand look at how one feeds. That's the guaranteed shock treatment. It always works. It worked on me, and all I had seen were the Show Low pictures. These people got the special live performance. It was set up so that none of our people were killed or injured, only those who opposed us." I studied his face. His eyes were shaded. "That's it, isn't it?"

"Pretty much," Fromkin said. "You're only missing the context."

"The context? Or the justification?"

Fromkin ignored my jibe. "You saw how the convention was progressing. Can you give me a better alternative?"

"Have you tried education?"

"Yes! Do you know how long it takes to teach a politician something? Three elections! We don't have the time! We have to make our point today. "

I must have been frowning, for he said, "You heard those delegates. They were running everything they saw and heard through the filter that the United States was using the Chtorran menace as an excuse to exploit the rest of the world again."

"Well? Isn't that true?"

Fromkin shrugged. "Frankly, it's irrelevant. The war against the Chtorr is going to last anywhere from fifty to three hundred years-if we win. That's our window for a best-case approximation.

"And? What's the worst case?"

"We could all be dead within ten years." He said it dispassionately, but the words came out like bullets. "The situation calls for extraordinary crisis-management skills. It demands the kind of unified effort that this planet has never seen. We need a controlling body that can function free of the usual inertia common to an accountable government."

"You're advocating a dictatorship?"

"Not hardly. I'm advocating universal military service for every man, woman, child, robot, dog and computer on the planet. That's all." He allowed himself a wry smile. "That's hardly a dictatorship, now, is it?"

I didn't answer. He stood up and went to the window and looked out. "The irony of the situation," he said, "is that the only surviving institutions who have the resources to handle the situation are the very ones least able to apply those resources-the world's great technological nations. The conference is dominated by Fourth Worlders who are still in a pre-Chtorran consciousness-you know the one: `They've got theirs, now I'm going to get mine.' And they're not going to let us play any other game while they still see themselves as not being equal partners. And the fact of the matter is, they're already equal partners. The Chtorrans find them just as tasty-they don't care!"

Fromkin turned to face me. He came back to the chair, but didn't sit down. "Jim, every day that passes without a program of unified resistance to the Chtorran invasion pushes the window of possible victory two weeks farther away. We're rapidly approaching the point where the window becomes totally unattainable. We don't have any time. They've taken the position that the United States is their enemy, one who will use any devious means to exploit them. They don't dare give up that position, because giving it up looks exactly like admitting they've been wrong. And that's the hardest thing in the world for a human being to dobe wrong. Do you know that people would rather die than be wrong?"

I saw the Chtorran pouring itself off the stage again. I heard the screams of terror. I smelled the blood. Those people died because they were wrong? I looked into Fromkin's face. His expression was intense. His eyes were hurting.

I knew it wasn't true even as I said it, but I had to say it. "So they're wrong-and you're right?"

Fromkin shook his head. "We did what we had to do, Jim, and the only way to explain it is so unsatisfactory that I don't even want to try."

I thought about it. "Try me anyway," I said.

He looked unhappy about it. "All right, but you won't like it. This is a different game-with different rules, one of the most important of them being `All previous games are no longer valid.' And anyone who keeps trying to play the old game in the middle of the new is in the way. Got that? So we put all of our biggest problems in the front rows. We didn't like it, but it was necessary.

"You're right. I don't like it."

He nodded. "I told you that you wouldn't." He continued, "But, Jim-every single one of those survivors has now experienced the war at close range. It is no longer just another political position. It's a bloody scar on the soul. The people who came out of that auditorium know who their enemy is now. What you saw-what you participated in-was a very necessary piece of shock treatment to the community of world governments."

He sat down again, leaned forward and put his hand on my arm. "We didn't want to do this, Jim. In fact, as of last week, we had decided not to. We were hoping then that the facts alone would be enough to convince the delegates. We were wrong. The facts aren't enough. You demonstrated that when you stood up in front of the entire conference. You demonstrated to us just how completely crystalized the Fourth World position was."

"Oh, sure-that's right," I said. "Blame it on me now!"

Fromkin leaned forward and said intensely, "Jim, shut up and listen. Stop showing off your stupidity. Do you know what you've given us? The lever with which to engineer a massive realignment of political intention. The tapes of the conference have been released to the public channels. The whole world has seen that Chtorran attacking a roomful of their highest leaders. The whole world has seen you bring that Chtorran down. Do you know you're a hero?"

"Oh, shit."

Fromkin nodded, "I agree. You're not the one we would have chosen at all, but you're the one we got, so we just have to make the best of you. Listen, the public is alarmed now-we need that. We didn't have it before. It makes a difference. We're seeing some very powerful people suddenly declaring their intentions to martial every resource necessary to resist the Chtorran invasion."