Short Fiction - Poul Anderson (books to read for self improvement .TXT) 📗

themselves are being driven to oligarchic, unconstitutional acts; they have no choice, but it’s making them enemies.

“And then there’s the normal human energy and drive. Man can only be safe and sane and secure for so long, then he reacts. This New Enlightenment is really a decadent age, a period where an exhausted civilization has been resting under a holy status quo. It can’t last. Man always wants something new.”

“You Humanists talk a lot about ‘man’s right to variability,’ ” said Valeria. “If you really carry off that revolution your writings advocate you’ll just trade one power group for another⁠—and more fanatic, less lawful, than the present one.”

“Not necessarily,” said Lundgard. “After all, the Union will probably break up. It can’t last forever. All we want to do is hasten the day because we feel that it’s outlived its usefulness.”

Bo shook his head. “I can’t see it,” he said heavily. “I just can’t see it. All those people⁠—the Lunarites, the violent clansmen on Venus, the stiff correct Martians, the asteroid rockhounds, even those mysterious Jovians⁠—they all came from Earth. It was Earth’s help that made their planets habitable. We’re all men, all one race.”

“A fiction,” said Lundgard. “The human race is a fiction. There are only small groups with their own conflicting interests.”

“And if those conflicts are allowed to break into war⁠—” said Valeria. “Do you know what a lithium bomb can do?”

There was a reckless gleam in Lundgard’s eyes. “If a period of interplanetary wars is necessary, let’s get it over with,” he answered. “Enough men will survive to build something better. This age has gotten stale. It’s petrifying. There have been plenty of shakeups in history⁠—the fall of Rome, the Reformation, the Napoleonic Wars, the World Wars. It’s been man’s way of progressing.”

“I don’t know about all those,” said Bo slowly. “I just know I wouldn’t want to live through such a time.”

“You’re soft,” said Lundgard. “Down underneath you’re soft.” He laughed disarmingly. “Pardon me. I didn’t mean anything personal. I’ll never convince you and you’ll never convince me, so let’s keep it friendly. I hope you’ll have some free time on Luna, Valeria. I know a little grill where they serve the best synthosteaks in the System.”

“All right,” she smiled. “It’s a date.”

Bo mumbled some excuse and went aft. He was still calling her Dr. McKittrick.

IV

You can’t just lie here and let him come kill you.

There was a picture behind his eyes; he didn’t know if it was a dream or a long buried memory. He stood under an aspen which quivered and rustled as if it laughed to itself softly, softly, when the wind embraced it. And the wind was blowing up a red granite slope, wild and salt from the Sound, and there were towering clouds lifting over Denmark to the west. The sunlight rained and streamed through aspen leaves, broken, shaken, falling in spatters against the earth, and he, Bo Jonsson, laughed with the wind and the tree and the far watery glitter of the Sound.

He opened his eyes, wearily, like an old man. Orion was marching past, and there was a blaze on crags five miles off which told of the rising sun. The asteroid spun swiftly; he had been here for many of its days now, and each day burdened him like a year.

Got to get out of here, he knew.

He sat up, pain tearing along his furrowed breast. Somehow he had kept the wrench with him, he stared at it in a dull wonder.

Where to go, where to hide, what to do?

Thirst nagged him. Slowly he uncoiled the tube which led from the electrically heated canteen welded to his suit, screwed its end into the helmet nipple, thumbed down the clamp which closed it, and sucked hard. It helped a little.

He dragged himself to his feet and stood swaying, only the near-weightlessness kept him erect. Turning his head in its transparent cage, he saw the sun rise, and bright spots danced before him when he looked away.

His vision cleared, but for a moment he thought the shadow lifting over a nearby ridge was a wisp of unconsciousness. Then he made out the bulky black-painted edge of it, gigantic against the Milky Way, and it was Lundgard, moving unhurriedly up to kill him.

A dark laughter was in his radio earphones. “Take it easy, Bo. I’ll be there in a minute.”

He backed away, his heart a sudden thunder, looking for a place to hide. Down! Get down and don’t stand where he can see you! He crouched as much as the armor would allow and broke into a bounding run.

A slug spat broken stone near his feet. The powdery dust hung for minutes before settling. Breath rattled in his throat. He saw the lip of a meteoric crater and dove.

Crouching there, he heard Lundgard’s voice again: “You’re somewhere near. Why not come out and finish it now?”

The radio was non-directional, so he snapped back: “A gun against a monkey wrench?”

Lundgard’s coolness broke a little; there was almost a puzzled note: “I hate to do this. Why can’t you be reasonable? I don’t want to kill you.”

“The trouble,” said Bo harshly, “is that I want to kill you.”

“Behold the man of the New Enlightenment!” Bo could imagine Lundgard’s grin. It would be tight, and there would be sweat on the lean face, but the amusement was genuine. “Didn’t you believe sweet reasonableness could solve everything? This is only the beginning, Bo, just a small preliminary hint that the age of reason is dying. I’ve already converted you to my way of thinking, by the very fact you’re fighting me. Why not admit it?”

Bo shook his head⁠—futile gesture, looked in darkness where he lay. There was a frosty blaze of stars when he looked up.

It was more than himself and Johnny Malone, more even than the principle of the thing and the catastrophe to all men which Lundgard’s victory meant. There was something deep and primitive which would not let him surrender, even