The Instant of Now by Irving E. Cox (find a book to read .TXT) 📗

Ad-Air University could be so repeatedly defeated by his logic. Slowly, however, he reasoned his way to an explanation.

The scientists, like the system itself, were in the last wild frenzy of a decaying social order. They had lived so long in the atmosphere of relative truths, they had so carefully schooled themselves to avoid all absolutes, that they were unable to elude the simplest processes of logic. Their very efforts to be objective made them too honest to reject a conclusion once Dirrul had demonstrated the careful structure that seemed to support it.

A month passed. Dirrul felt divorced from the Movement, existing in suspended animation in a cloud of wordy unreality. Then abruptly the slow-moving dream ended. Late one night Paul Sorgel slipped into Dirrul's apartment and announced in an emotionless whisper, "The Plan's ready. You'll have to carry the details to Vinin. We can't use the teleray—the Union monitors might pick up the message and decode it."

"Naturally our Vininese Headquarters will want to know, Paul," said Eddie, "but can't that wait? We'll need every man here when we—"

Sorgel interrupted him. "I've made one or two changes in Glenna's original plan. It was too impractical. A handful of men can't take over half a galaxy."

"Glenna and Hurd weren't after the entire Planetary Union, Paul—that's out of the question. We meant to liberate Agron first. The capital is here and for awhile the government would be disrupted. When the people on the other planets saw how much better our social organization had become, modeled on the Vininese system, they would stage their own revolutions just like ourselves."

Sorgel laughed scornfully. "And in the meantime, of course, none of them would think of attacking you and throwing your people out?"

"Not if we seized the Nuclear Beam Transmitters," said Dirrul, "no space-fleet could come near us then."

"Eddie, you've lived in Agron too long. You're not thinking straight when you try to build the Plan around a single weapon."

"Why not, Paul? It's a perfect defense. In less than thirty seconds the Beam Transmitters can charge the entire stratospheric envelope of Agron. Nothing can move through it without disintegrating, yet life on the surface of the planet would go on quite normally because the atmosphere serves as an insulation."

"Technically it's a change in the form of energy, not a disintegration," Sorgel reminded him. "The beamed electrons unite with the atoms of visible material substances and alter them. I quite understand the process, Eddie—Vinin has the Beam too, you know."

"Because the Agronian scientists gave you the specifications!"

"That always has rankled, hasn't it?" said Sorgel.

"Yes," Dirrul admitted. "If the Vininese scientists had discovered the Beam-reaction first they would have conquered the galaxy."

"Conquer is a nasty word, Eddie," Sorgel said softly. "Vinin makes no conquests. Let's put it differently and say we would have used the Beam to bring peace to the galaxy instead of splitting it in two as it is now."

"Glenna's Plan can change all that, at least here on Agron."

"Face the facts, Eddie! A few conscientious people with ideals can't take over a planet. The Movement has its crews trained to capture the Beam Transmitters. You'll isolate Agron and seize the government offices simultaneously. What happens then?"

"Our people will rise and join us," said Eddie. "We'll create a new government modeled on Vinin's and we'll have young leaders instead of murky thinkers like Dr. Kramer."

"That's effective propaganda for speechmaking, but—"

"Glenna pounded away at it too, Paul," said Eddie. "It was the most telling line in winning our new crop of recruits."

"Which is precisely why the police disposed of her. But it won't work. The people won't rise. A mob is lethargic, too willing to keep things as they are. Here on Agron you've been coddled too long with luxuries and easy living. You have to prod the mob awake with a shock-force, a force coming from the outside."

"How, Paul? We haven't enough people in the Movement to put on any real show of strength. We can't even get outside."

"Now you understand the changes I've made in Glenna's Plan. You people in the Movement will seize the Beam Transmitters as originally planned. Then you'll simply hold them and keep them decommissioned long enough for a Vininese space-fleet to land. We'll set up your new government for you."

"And the rest of the Planetary Union will go to war!"

"It hardly matters," said Paul. "Once we're here the Beams will protect us against counterattack and every planet in the Vininese Confederacy has the same defense. One by one we can liberate the planets of the Union in the same way. But the timing is vital, of course—that's why you have to go to Vinin."

"I had a vacation leave only three months ago. I can't get tourist passage now without—"

"I've considered that. You'll have to have your own space-ship."

"Now wait a minute, Paul! It's one thing to borrow a surface jet but a space-cruiser...!"

"A cruiser, yes—not an old cargo ship. And you can handle that without a crew."

"It can't be done, Paul." Dirrul held his Glo-Wave nervously to the end of a cigarette. "Besides, I want to think this through carefully before I make up my mind."

"A merchant ship made a crash landing at Barney's emergency field yesterday," said Paul. "The damage was slight, but the pilot—unfortunately the pilot is dead." Sorgel smiled enigmatically. "Barney's one of our best men. He's been on the lookout for a chance like this for weeks.

"You'll leave tonight. Avoid the regular space lanes. I'm guessing you'll be on Vinin in a hundred days at the outside. On the fiftieth day after that—exactly one hundred and fifty days from now—our Vininese space-fleet must make a landing on Agron."

"I'll be missed, Paul—they'll make inquiries."

"And get no satisfactory answers."

Pacing the floor, Dirrul asked tensely, "Does everyone in the Movement know about this?"

"The vote was made unanimously yesterday."

"One of the others must have a vacation leave coming up. Send him. We're not at war with Vinin. He could take one of the regular space excursions."

"I can't send a message in writing. It would be picked up by the customs police. And you're the only one who can carry it verbally, Eddie. You know the whole background because you worked with Glenna and Hurd. You've been in the Movement longer than any of the others."

"Why not go yourself, Paul?"

"I can do more for the liberation if I stay here."

"I wish I'd been at the meeting yesterday when the vote was taken. I'd have liked to discuss it with the others before—"

"Why so many questions, Eddie? Why so many doubts all of a sudden?" Sorgel stood and faced Dirrul, holding his shoulders in a grip that hurt. "Are you trying to back out? Maybe it wasn't a good thing to let you play around with the science boys after all. Be honest with me, Eddie. If you're not sure where you stand, say so. There's no room in the Movement for traitors."

When Dirrul said nothing Sorgel added in a voice that rang with fervor, "You're the only man in the Movement who has had any training as a space-pilot. It depends on you now—everything you've ever dreamed of, everything Glenna and Hurd wanted. Can you forget what the Agronian police did to Glenna? Is your courage any less than hers?" Again Sorgel paused but still Dirrul said nothing. "The future of your world depends on you, Eddie—don't let it down."

"I'll go," Dirrul whispered.

As Eddie made up his mind his internal tension relaxed and he was filled with a sense of well-being. When he thought about it he couldn't understand why he had hesitated—unless perhaps what Sorgel suggested was true—that his contact with the Ad-Air faculty had blunted and nearly perverted his established sense of values.

An hour later Dirrul boarded the battered antiquated space cargo carrier on the launching rack at Barney's emergency field. At the last minute Sorgel pressed a curious disk into his hand. Made of a very light metal and suspended from a short chain it was two inches in diameter and covered with a complex grid design.

"Put it around your neck before you land, Eddie. Don't remove under any circumstances until you report. Give it to the Chief then. He'll know I sent you because it's my own identification activator." Sorgel clasped Dirrul's hand warmly. "When you land on Vinin take the North Field below the capital. It's the HQ operational center. Use Wave-code three-seven-three and they'll know you're friendly."

IV

After the launching space-flight was normally a monotonous routine. The course was charted by automatic navigators and the vast pattern of interlocking machinery and safety devices was electronically controlled by robot relays from the pilot master-panel. The chief function of a trained space-pilot, aside from his services as a diplomat, was to handle emergency situations for which automatic responses could not be built into the machinery.

Dirrul, however, could not depend a great deal upon the robot devices. He had to avoid the well-traveled and well-charted commercial space-lanes. He had to be constantly on the alert for the telltale white of a police cruiser. A cargo carrier was the slowest ship in the universe—Dirrul could outrun nothing, not even a playboy's sport jalopy, and inspection by the customs police would have been disastrous.

He followed a roundabout route, keeping as far from inhabited planets as he could, and he made good time. In ninety-five days he had reached the mythical border in space, which divided the territory of the Planetary Union and the Vininese Confederacy.

He was almost at midpoint in the galaxy. On the glazed screen of his space-map the mirrored pinpricks of sun systems glittered like microscopic gems scattered over the curve of a gigantic black saucer. Dirrul had never been so far from Agron. He felt a stifling sense of insignificance.

The meaning of time as he understood it was somehow overwhelmed by the immensity of space. Now and yesterday, today and tomorrow, became a single unity. Dirrul had a new sense of the past in terms of the present. His mind groped for word symbols that he understood which could crystalize the shadowy new concept filling his mind.

New understanding seemed to arise from the space-map. Somewhere among the glowing points of light was the Place of the Beginning, a single planet called Earth. In the far-distant past Earthmen had made themselves rational beings. But for centuries thereafter they had made no further progress, apparently appalled by the audacity of such presumptive evolution. They had fought through a long primitive period of violence, erecting system on system and philosophy upon philosophy to conceal, destroy and wipe out their own biological machinery.

Then out of a final orgy of death and terror the Earthmen had grasped the meaning and the responsibility of the Rational Potential. They had understood the reality of being.

Within a century after that they had conquered space. They had found peoples like themselves occasionally—but more often races that had followed different biological adaptations to different environments. Wherever there seemed to be a spark of primitive rationality the Earthmen had stayed and patiently taught the Rational Potential of being, which they had learned for themselves only after such bloodshed.

The galaxy was theirs, in a sense, for it thought in the patterns of Earthmen, although long ago their direct influence had waned. They were a legend and an ideal, lost in the vastness of space, yet bound fast into the cultures of all peoples.

Yet somewhere the Earthmen must have failed, somewhere there must have been a flaw in their teaching. Fifty years earlier, as the Agronians measured time, the galaxy had been torn apart by war. The Agronians had led one group of planets, the Vininese another. Planet after planet was seared by deadly new weapons—world after world died in the orange flame of gaudy atomic disintegration. Slowly the power of Vinin crept across the sky until the Vininese ruled half the galaxy.

Their first defeat had come unexpectedly. Their great space-armada swung in on Agron, while the people crowded in terror in their flimsy raid shelters. But the Vininese ships had vanished high in the air. Not even debris had fallen on the planet.

It was the first use of the Nuclear Beams. Dirrul had been a schoolboy when the Agronian scientists announced their discovery. He remembered the exciting thrill of pride, recalled how he and his schoolmates had dreamed of destroying the Vininese with the new weapon.

He remembered too the galling bitterness he had felt when the scientists announced that they had made peace instead.

They had had sound reasons, of course. They said the Beams had a limited value. They could be used only defensively to girdle a single planet in the stratospheric level of its atmosphere. Elsewhere they were harmless. To compound the spectacular timidity, the scientists had given away the secret to all comers, including the Vininese. They had an argument for that particular idiocy too—if each planet could protect itself so easily from all external attack its people could freely decide for themselves