A Separate War and Other Stories (24 page)

The huge icicle fell and splintered into several thousand pieces. They reassembled into a creature who looked rather like the captain.

“What would you do to me if I said ‘no'?”

“That's ridiculous,” said the captain, somewhat emboldened by facing a familiar shape. “No one can do anything to harm you.”

“All right, that settled, will you please
go
and let me get back to my conversation.”

Curious in spite of himself, the captain asked, “Who are you conversing with? You don't generally think with the other crew members.”

“My father has found a particularly humorous ninth-order differential equation; he is explaining it to me, and I would like to devote all of my energy to understanding.”

The captain shivered, not just from cold. Brohass's father had been dead for thirty years. But half of him would live as long as Brohass lived; a quarter would live as long as Braxn, and so on down the line. It was unsettling to more mortal beings that a G'drellian maintained an autonomous existence, within his descendants, for tens of thousands of years after physical death. Whether a G'drellian would ever die completely was problematical. None yet had.

“This won't take much of your time. I want you to locate Braxn and give him a message.”

“Why can't you find him yourself?”

“It's a rather large planet, Brohass, and he's thrown up a strong communication block.”

“We're on a planet? Which one?”

The captain thought a long string of figures. “They call it ‘Earth.'”

“I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with it. Please open your mind and let me extract the relevant details.”

The captain did so, with chagrin. Brohass could easily have asked the computer, but his people were born voyeurs, and never would pass up a chance to probe another's mind.

“Interesting, savage—I can see why he was drawn to it. Incidentally, your treatment of Llarvl was shameful. In his place,
you
would have lost control of my son just as quickly.

“And your knowledge, captain, of the people on this planet, is encyclopedic, but imperfect. You misunderstand both catechism and tautology, you used the expression
coup de grâce
where
coup de théâtre
would have been more fitting, and your Middle German would send a Middle German into convulsions. Furthermore, you
are
an ambulatory vegetable.

“To your credit, however, you were correct in assessing my son's plans. He is now in possession of a minute of ‘time,' as they say, on the planet's communications network.

“Funny idea, that; beings possessing time rather than the other way around…”

“Brohass!”

“Captain?”

“Aren't you going to do anything?”

“Interfere with my child's development?”

“He's going to
kill
several billion entities!”

“Yes…he probably is. Mammals, though. You have to admit they'd probably never make anything of themselves, anyhow.”

“Brohass! You've got to stop him!”

“I'm pulling your spindly leg, captain. I'll talk to him. Just once, just once I would like to have a captain who could take a joke. You know, you vegetable people are unique in the civilized universe in your…”

“How much time do you have?”

“Oh, two thousand three hundred thirty-eight years, four days and…”

“No, no! How much time before Braxn gets on the air?”

“If Braxn got on the air, he would fall to the ground, even as you and I.”

The captain made a strangling noise.

“Oh, don't bust a root. I have several seconds yet.” Brohass reverted to his native formlessness and sent a piercing tendril of thought through his son's massive block.

“Braxn! This is your father. Will you slow down just a little bit?”

Braxn concentrated, and the bustling studio slowed down and froze into a tableau of suspended action. “Yes, Father. Is there something I can help you with?”

“Well, first, tell me what you're doing in a television studio.”

“At the minute of maximum saturation, I'm going to broadcast the Vegan death-sign. That's all.”

“That's all. You'll kill everybody.”

“Well, not everybody. Just those who are watching television. Oh, yes, and I've worked out a phonetic equivalent for simultaneous radio transmission. Get a few more that way, if it works.”

“Oh, I'm sure you can do it, son. But, Braxn, that's what I wanted to think to you about.”

“You're going to try to think me out of it.”

“Well, if you want to put it that way…”

“I bet that joke of a captain put you up to it.”

“You know that that vegetable who walks like a man…”

“Hey; that's a good one, Father. When'd you—”

“—neither he nor anyone else on this tin can could make me do anything that I…” Brohass sighed. “Look, Braxn. You're poaching on a game preserve. Worse, shooting fish in a barrel. With a fission bomb, yet. How can you get any aesthetic satisfaction out of that?”

“Father, I know that quantity is no substitute for quality. But there are so
many
here!”

“—and you want to be poet laureate, right?” Brohass snorted mentally.

“There's something wrong in that? This will be the biggest epic since Jkdir exterminated the…”

“Braxn, Braxn; my son—you're temporizing. You know what's wrong, don't you? Surely you can feel it.”

Braxn fell silent as he tried to think of a convincing counterargument. He knew what was coming.

“The fact is that you are maturing rapidly. It's time to put away your blocks—sure, you can go through with this trivial exercise. But you won't be poet laureate. You'll be dunce of the millennium, prize buffoon. You're too old for this nonsense anymore; I know it, you know it, and the whole race would know it eventually. You wouldn't be able to show your mind anywhere in the civilized universe.”

He knew that his father was telling the truth. He had known for several days that he was ready for the next stage of development, but his judgment was blinded by the enormity of the canvas he had before him.

“Correct. The next stage awaits you, and I can assure you that it will be even more satisfying than the aesthetic. You have a nice planet here, and you might as well use it as the base of your operations. The captain is easily cowed—after I assure him that you no longer wish to, shall we say, immortalize these people in verse, he'll be only too glad to move on without you. We'll be back to pick you up in a century or so. Good-bye, son.”

“Good-bye, Father.”

The filament of the green light on the camera facing him was just starting to glow. He had something less than a hundredth of a second.

Extending his mental powers to the limit, he traced down every network and advertising executive who knew of the deal he had made. From the minds of hundreds of people he erased a million memories, substituting harmless ones. Two hundred pounds of gold disappeared back into thin air. Books were balanced.

Everyone in the studio had the same memory: Five minutes ago a police-escorted black limousine screeched to a halt out front, and this man, familiar face lined and pale with shock, stormed in with a covey of Secret Service men and commandeered the studio.

Braxn filled out his face and body with paunch. The man who owned this face died painlessly, as soon as Braxn had assimilated the contents of his brain. The body disappeared; his family and associates “remembered” that he was in New York for the week.

A finger of thought pushed into another man's heart and stopped it. Convincing—he was overworked and overweight, anyhow. But to be on the safe side, Braxn adjusted his catabolism to make it look as if he had died ten minutes earlier. He manufactured appropriate cover stories.

All this accomplished, Braxn let time resume its original rate of flow.

The light winked green. A voice offstage said, “Ladies and gentlemen”—what else could one say—“the, uh, vice president of the United States.”

Braxn assumed a tragic and weary countenance. “It is my sad duty to inform the nation…”

Nine stages in the development of a G'drellian, from adolescence to voluntary termination.

The first stage is aesthetic, appreciation of an Art alien to any human, save a de Sade or a Hitler.

The second stage is power…

(1969)

The president of the United States was an alien.

Now it says right here in the Constitution—Article II, Section I, Paragraph 5—that “No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States” can be president.

Ross Harriman was what they called him, and he let them call him that, as his own name had a decidedly foreign flavor to it.

They thought he had been born in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1945; and after a half century of reasonably honest living and politicking, had come to be vice president. On the death of President Ashby last week, Harriman became president.

In point of fact, Harriman, who called himself something that sounded like Braxn, was not born at all. He was budded about six months ago on an interstellar survey ship just out of the Vega system and eased into the first stage of maturity about a week before they got to Sol system and went in orbit around Earth.

The problem of Braxn's nationality would have interested quite a few people, as there was a pregnant woman on Tranquility Base, and there would no doubt soon be another on Tsiolkovski. The
jus sanguinis
argument was somewhat simplified in Braxn's case, as he had only one parent, his bud-father Brohass, who was a pure-“blooded” G'drellian. The
jus soli
, or place-of-birth, argument, however, was most complicated—Braxn was born somewhere on a non-Euclidian geodesic stretching from Vega to Earth through seventeen distinct (of course) dimensions.

Braxn could probably have made a point for claiming to be a citizen of either Vega system or Sol system. But the inhabitants of one were preliterate gibbering savages, and the inhabitants of the other not much better, so he let the option go and remained a G'drellian.

Outside of legal fiction, of course, Braxn could only be a G'drellian, and would never wish to be anything else. The inhabitants of G'drell were about the most gifted creatures in the galaxy: the best shape-changers and quickest learners, very good philosophers and mathematicians, virtually (absolutely, they claimed) immortal, powerful telepaths, competent humorists, sometimes talented weather forecasters and inventors. A G'drellian invented the drive which all interstellar ships use—it has a moving part but doesn't wear out. Neither does it use anything so cumbersome as fuel. Every adult G'drellian understands the principle behind the drive. But they've never been able to explain it to anybody else, or so they claimed.

So at an age when a human child is barely able to focus his eyes and reach for a bottle, Braxn was teaching quantum mechanics to a class of Oxford upperclassmen. When that got dull, after one afternoon, he became a cutthroat bandit on the Trieste waterfront. That lasted almost a whole day. And so on.

In this first stage of his development, Braxn, like all G'drellian children, was after a variety of experiences. The one thing common to all of his little experiments in living was that he either inflicted or experienced pain or discomfort—from simple embarrassment to excruciating death. These sensations he arranged in a system of esthetics that was incomprehensible to mere humans.

To an adult G'drellian, however, they were on the order of finger paintings.

Throughout this childish stage the immature G'drellian is protected from real harm by a considerable ability to manipulate time and space, matter and energy, by purely mental effort. He could repair damaged tissues by transmutation of any available matter, or, if given warning, could simply teleport out of harm's way.

Learning about pain, Braxn destroyed several hundred sentient creatures. And in his lovable childlike way, he felt no more remorse for them than a zoologist feels for the specimens he dissects. Less.

There came a time when Braxn had reached a plateau of sophistication in dealing with the illusions (to him) of pain and death. At this point, he was ready to pass on to the next phase of his education—the manipulation of power.

At this particular moment of history (the last decade of the twentieth century), there were two laboratories of sufficient size and scope for Braxn to use as a base for his investigation of power. One was the fifty-two United (everybody keep a straight face) States of America and the other was what was loosely called “The Eastern Bloc”: forty-nine or fifty (the number changed every now and then) countries and fractions of countries who at least paid lip service to the ideals of Marx and/or Mao and/or Lenin.

When Braxn had to make the decision, he was in New York, which is closer to Washington than Novymoscva. The effort required to teleport was more important to him than the miniscule difference he saw between communism and capitalism, between oriental inscrutability and occidental brashness. So he became president.

It took him less than a microsecond to elect himself.

First he killed the president by the simple expedient of wishing a heart attack on him. He disposed of the vice president after duplicating the latter's body and brain and was swished into office by the law of succession. The period of confusion after the president's death, Braxn reasoned, would cover any mistakes he might make out of inexperience. Besides, he had at his disposal all of the political acumen stored up in the former vice president's brain.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with vice presidents, this was not much. But the personal details were useful.

Braxn stumbled through the first hours of office, giving a convincing imitation of a bewildered Ross Harriman suddenly weighed down by grief and a crushing burden of responsibility. By 3:00
A.M.
, after numberless conferences, speeches, comfortings, and a few genuine surprises—China turned out not to have been behind the newest Pakistan conflict—the army of advisors, well-wishers, reporters, and opportunists let the new chief executive retire for the night.

 

Of course, being a G'drellian, Braxn needed sleep no more than he needed pollen or diesel fuel. But he was glad to get away from public scrutiny so he could relax in a more comfortable shape.

Once satisfied that his suite was free of bugs and that he was in no danger of sudden interruption, Braxn mentally reviewed the shapes available in his repertoire. He settled on being a Persian rug. He had been one before and enjoyed the musty taste and the soothing colors and the fuzzy feel of air washing over him. He set his mind in the Persian rug pattern and
pushed
.

Nothing happened.

He
pushed
in the old familiar way, but instead of rolling out on the floor in a riot of rich colors, he stayed the same shape and the air in front of him shimmered and solidified into an image of Brohass, his father. He held up a tentacle.

“Don't try to say anything, Braxn old bud, because the following is a recorded announcement, which you triggered by trying to change shape.

“I don't know how long you stayed in that dumpy Harriman body before you decided to slip into something more comfortable. Doesn't really make any difference. You're stuck with Harriman for a while, with one important exception.

“While you were an infant, in the aesthetic stage of your development, you did quite a bit of violence to your environment. This was necessary, for reasons that will one day be quite clear. While you were on your rampage, you had to be protected from the possible consequences of your violence—thus you were given certain of the powers of an adult G'drellian. These included, but were not limited to, transmutation, teleportation, telekinesis, and the ability to read and manipulate the minds of others. These powers are ebbing in you, and in a short while you will find you have none of them. With, as I said, one important exception.”

“Dad—”

“There is, of course, a good reason for this. The present stage of your development involves the manipulation and appreciation of power, both in the abstract and the concrete, personal sense.

“Being virtually omnipotent, at least by the standards of this planet's aborigines, you could no more learn about power than one could learn to be a gourmet, continually gorged with food. Thus, for your own good, these powers have gone into a dormant cycle—they are there, but you can't use them.

“You will
never
get them back unless you successfully complete this phase of your growth. Don't—”

“The…”

“—interrupt. The exception. Most organisms who are relatively powerful, in relation to the challenges of their environment, are shielded from an appreciation of their power by an inability to directly feel the effects of wielding that power. You, son, won't be limited in this wise.

“The exact mechanism I am using to implement this, I will leave for you to discover. Just one word of warning.

“You can die here.” The word “die” laid an icicle next to Braxn's spine. He had seen things die, hundreds of them, but it never occured to him that—“Yes, you can die. G'drellians
are
immortal, but only after the fourth phase. You may die, and to be perfectly frank, it would upset me no more than if you had aborted as a bud. You are still an imperfect, unformed organism.

“But you show promise, son. I'm looking forward to seeing your progress, some months or years from now, when the ship returns. Until then, learn and grow.”

The image of the octopoid figure faded out, and the phone chimed. Braxn glared at it and savagely punched the
full view
button.

“Mr. Harriman, sir, Senator Tweed, uh, he says he has to see you immediately.”

“Damn it, Fred,” Braxn exploded in a way that was calculated to show it was calculated, “tell Tweed he can see me in the morning. It's been too damn rough a day to sit up here and choke on that infernal cigar smoke!”

“Well, sir, not meaning to, appear to, uh—”

“
God
damn it, Fred, you never minced words with the Old Man. Show me the same consideration. Spit it out.”

“Sir, Senator Tweed
is
the majority leader—”

“And I'm the minority president.”

“Yes sir, and he's very conscious of protocol, or at least outward forms—you
must
see him before any other member of Congress—”

“Jesus Christ,” Braxn slid the old-fashioned horn-rims off his face and knuckled an eye in a well-known gesture. “Mana.”

“Sir?”

“I've got mana. Anthropologist's word.” Fred looked at Braxn in a subtly different way.
You ignored old Harriman while you were Ashby's right hand; surprised to find out that he might be more than just a harmless puppet?
“He wants to be first in line while the magic's still fresh…or—something, I read about it somewhere.” He looked thoughtfully at Fred's image.
He knows I'm backing off. Does he know I know he knows—
“Hell, send him in. Call the plant and have 'em turn the airco all the way up. Make it as noisy as possible.” He grinned sweetly at the screen. “Maybe the old bastard forgot his hearing aid!”

A Secret Service man conspicuously armed with a high-energy laser tube opened the old thick oak door and ushered in Arthur Tweed. He was an old man who in the right light could have looked like an old woman, shoulder-length stringy silver hair against wrinkled, craggy features. But he never stood in the light that way, not in public, any more than he would allow his shoulders to slump or his gait to falter.

He strode through the door not at all like an octogenarian kept up six hours past his bedtime. He crinkled a smile at Braxn that lasted until the door whispered shut. Then eighty-three years dropped like a mantle on his frail body, and the grin became a winsome spinster's smile. Braxn ignored this as he had ignored the college-boy routine. Just another part of the act; the old man knew that not even politicians were immune to pity.

“Good of you to see me at this hour, Ross.”

Braxn raised an eyebrow. Tweed had known Harriman for eighteen years, and had never used his first name before. He waited just a fraction of a second longer than was polite, before replying, “My pleasure…Senator. Please pull up a chair.” Purely rhetorical; the man looked as if he couldn't pull up a weed without keeling over. He perched himself on the edge of an overstuffed chair to Braxn's right.

“I've already offered you my official condolences, but please let me…” Braxn cut him short with a wave of the hand.

“Skip it. You didn't like the old bastard any more than I did.”

“Uh…huh!” The senator slid back in the chair. “Huh! Huh!” It took Braxn a second to realize he was laughing. “That's what I like—huh! huh!—a man who speaks his mind—huh!”

Just what you don't like, you old trickster.
Tweed reached into his vest pocket and extracted a short black Toscani cigar. The sulphurous vapor from the wooden match was balm to the nose, compared to what followed. Providentially, the airco cut in at just the right moment, loudly. Tweed looked at him through narrowed eyes.

“Can't be feeling the heat, Ross?”

“No.” He pushed an immaculate silver ashtray across the desk to Tweed. “Just a social visit, or…”