Element 79 (15 page)

The men were actually reduced to making a complaint, through the agency of the jolly communication chaps, when at one time things really had gone a bit far. The Martians replied in the following terms:

(1) A survey of the entertainment enjoyed by the human species throughout the second half of the twentieth century shows that sex served as the major item of human attention, pleasure, and happiness.

(2) The pursuit of happiness is the declared intent of the human species.

(3) Present policy provides for (2).

(4) The subject is closed.

The sheer physical strain of maintaining what turned out to be a stable population of some three million reduced the men to a state in which they no longer had the necessary determination to suppress the robots. A critical point was passed, separating the time when the robots might once again have been consigned to the furnace and to the compactor from the final era in which this was no longer possible. The jousting ball was now ultimate law. The human species was powerless, not only biologically, but also physically. The Martians had won the final battle, and without striking a single physical blow, if one excepts the biochemical analysis of the four unfortunate scientist-explorers sent to them at such enormous expense by NASA. Humans had themselves looked after the physical aspects of the matter, even to the extent of building the robots which now held them in bondage. It only remained for the Martians to have the robots herd the whole human species together into a reasonably spacious compound. Earth could then be cleaned up, cleaned of its horrible green slime, and at last made fit for a Martian to live in.

So it came about that the entire human species came to live in greater Los Angeles, and that true Martians arrived here to take up an abode beneath the polar icecaps. Ample water was pumped in to the humans, who kept their little patch of Earth forever verdant. There were just a few who hankered after the strident old days, but they never got much of a hearing. Life on the whole was very pleasant. Indeed, there came a time when the species attained a considerable cachet. Rather to their own surprise, the Martians found humans a distinctly exportable item. Nobody throughout the Galaxy could at first believe it possible for such astonishing creatures to exist. Nobody had ever conceived of chemical life. As far as was known, the creatures were quite unique.

The spring of 1966 brought startling news to the British bird-watching world. A pair of Baird’s Oreales were nesting in the park of an estate near Bury Saint Edmunds.

Hugh McAlan was an improbable bird-watcher. Seriously shortsighted, he was a convert to the eye-exercise school. Bird-watching had been recommended to him as likely to sharpen his acuity. It did so, but not for the reason McAlan imagined. There was no improvement at all in the optics of the eye. What bird-watching did was to make him more consciously aware of the information that was passing in any case from eye to brain, information which he had previously ignored. It simply directed certain things to his attention, things that had been there anyway.

McAlan applied to the Ornithological Trust for a permit to visit the estate near Bury Saint Edmunds. He wasn’t too hopeful about his application, because it was plainly impossible for the Trust to grant permits to more than a small fraction of the many ornithologists of the Greater London area. Hugh McAlan was one of the lucky ones as it turned out, however. He was given a permit for eleven a.m. Sunday, which was much the best day of the week for him, and pretty well the best time of day, too.

So one morning in late April, McAlan headed his Austin Mini out of London onto the Newmarket–Bury road. By his side were binoculars and a luncheon satchel, in the boot of the car his faithful waders.

The ornithological party, when fully assembled, turned out to be about fifty strong. With so many people, the warden who conducted them through the estate was understandably reluctant to approach the Oreales closely. At all costs, the birds must not be frightened from the park.

Some of the party claimed to have sighted the Oreales in the far distance, but McAlan wasn’t one of them. He saw a white-backed woodpecker, a nuthatch, and a redstart, which partly made up for the Oreales. The session lasted several hours. His feet were quite tired by the time he got back to the Mini.

Hugh McAlan decided to return along the Haverhill road instead of by the faster A11. He started off down quiet country lanes, musing to himself. He wasn’t giving full attention to the driving, but neither was he really careless. He would have noticed any unexpected road traffic, like a car pulling out of a side road, for instance. What he did not notice, until it was too late, was a pair of birds, flying endlessly round and around each other, a pair that came into the road over the bushes on his near side. There was an unpleasant thud as the car hit the wretched creatures. Only after the impact was McAlan fully aware of what had happened. He stopped and looked back over his shoulder. The birds were lying dead in the road, the road itself covered by an incredibly vast carpet of feathers. He climbed slowly out of the car and sadly walked to the point of the tragedy. Some of the feathers were of a greenish tinge. There were black tailfeathers, too. But most were of a brilliant yellow. Hugh McAlan had “got” his Oreales after all.

Arthur Hadley was a hard-driving man, just turned fifty. His only occupations were business and sex. On these topics he lavished his working hours in a ratio of about three to one. His headquarters were in Nottingham, but his activities were by no means confined to the immediate neighborhood. He had a chain of interests spread over the whole of the north of England. He had partners in some of these interests, partners whom he terrified by the risks he ran, like Tony Brown. Sir Anthony Brown was a yellow-bellied twerp, in Hadley’s personal opinion, but his title happened to be useful. The risks were always of the “swallow-all-the-water-in-the-sea” kind. Hadley’s specialty was the take-over bid. Early in life he’d discovered a simple truth, take-overs go most smoothly and profitably if they’re done when times are bad. There was no point in making bids for prosperous firms with long order books, too costly. In the old days, he’d bought when trade was slack. Now things were different, without the old big ups and downs. He bought now when credit was tight, and credit was tight every three or four years, whenever the whole country got itself into another kettle of economic hot water. In the year 1965 he did quite a lot of buying. By the end of 1965 he was pretty replete, overextended, folks called it. For the next year or two it would be necessary to sit down and work away at it all, to chew the cud, to masticate.

Arthur Hadley was good at chewing the cud, because he gave a lot of time and thought to the process. He was good at choosing the right man for a job. He made mistakes sometimes, of course, but once he realized he’d made one, he always put it right quickly. “Cut your losses—fast” was one of his favorite tags. He was thinking now of hoofing out a dull old bugger, who for donkey’s years had run a firm he’d recently bought on the outskirts of Sheffield. Too set in his ways, too stereotyped, too old-fashioned. The only problem was, who to move into the job. Perhaps it would be best to give young Mike Johnson a whirl. It would mean taking him away from the Nottingham factory, which would be a real nuisance just at the moment. But he couldn’t see a better solution. He said so to his twenty-eight-year-old wife, Jennifer, and was surprised when Jenny disagreed. Usually she just listened to his business talk. He used her as a pair of ears, not really because he needed to talk to anybody, for advice or anything like that, but because he was inhibited—like most people—against talking to himself. That was why he was surprised about Mike Johnson. For a brief flash he wondered whether there could be anything between Johnson and his wife. Then he dismissed the thought. Jenny hadn’t much appetite for that sort of game.

Like many promiscuous men, Hadley expected his wife to be one hundred percent “respectable.” Wasn’t that one of the reasons why he’d married her, for Christ’s sake? The daughter of a local manufacturer, Jennifer had been well-educated. She was well-spoken and she knew how to entertain his business associates in the best style. He hadn’t found her very sexy, but that really wasn’t important. There was plenty of sex to be had in other directions, at any rate, there was in the circles in which he moved. Like any woman, Jenny had wanted children, and he’d given her three, in rapid tempo. The arrangement now was that she brought up the kids—his legitimate kids—she made the home attractive and respectable, and in return he gave her anything she wanted—clothes, a car, that sort of thing. He thought it worked very well.

Blanche White was one of the other directions. She was a pretty little thing of nineteen. She worked in one of Hadley’s subsidiaries. Because she didn’t read complex balance sheets, and because nobody told her, Blanche didn’t realize that Hadley was her true boss. But she knew he was an important man, and she was flattered when he asked her to go out with him. She’d been out with him now quite a number of times, usually at intervals of two or three weeks. Hadley had taken her the second time, and he’d made her every time since. And now the silly little bitch had got herself in the family way. How was it possible to be so bloody stupid, he wondered. “Why were you so bloody stupid?” he asked her.

They were in the sitting room of a little place he’d had specially built, about five miles outside Nottingham. “I thought you,…” she began.

Hadley gave a snort and took a sharp snap of whiskey. “Don’t be bloody daft. It’s not up to men these days, not with all the new things they’ve got. Didn’t anybody ever tell you?”

“I didn’t like to go, to that clinic place.”

“Didn’t like to go! You’ll like it a lot less, what’s going to happen to you now!”

“What’s to be done?” the girl sobbed.

“What’s to be done! Stop being bloody daft, for one thing. See a doctor. Go on working as long as you can. Then I’ll see you over it.”

“See me over it!”

“What the hell else d’you expect? There’s a hundred million kids born into the world every year. Don’t think anybody’s going to fall over backwards just because you’re going to have one of ’em.”

“Don’t you care a bit?”

“I care a hell of a lot. D’you think it’s any pleasure to me, this sort of thing? I’m not going to get anything out of it.”

Hadley did get something out of it, much more than he could ever have imagined. He began with a small bonus. He took the little fool back to the bedroom. Tearfully, she let him do it again. He got far more out of it this second time than he expected in the circumstances. She again asked him, now in a whisper, to look after her. Once again, he told her he’d see she was all right. He left her there, thinking this was about as far as he could commit himself for the present. He took another sharp snap before starting back to Nottingham. He’d intended to stay here the night, told Jenny he’d be away the whole night. But he wasn’t staying now, not with this situation to prey on his mind.

There was a stretch of some two miles of twisting country road before the main highway into Nottingham. He thought about Blanche White as he drove his big yellow Jaguar. She wouldn’t give any trouble, too mouselike. He’d see her over it, like he said he would, until the kid was old enough to go to school. Then he’d find her a job. It might be worth his while to go on giving her a bit even after that. She’d only be twenty-three or twenty-four, useful in an emergency, perhaps.

The T-junction onto the highway came up. A vehicle was approaching from the left. It wasn’t too far away, but far enough. Hadley saw no point in letting it get ahead of him. He gunned the big car as fiercely as he could. This was the time when it paid to have a piece of real machinery. The car leaped forward, straight into the track of the oncoming vehicle. Hadley took the turn at a bad angle. There was a blaze of light in his eyes, followed instantly by a blaze inside his head.

The other vehicle was driven by Jonathan Adams, forty-five, professor of philosophy at Oxford. He was on his way to Nottingham to give a lecture at the university there. He was to stay overnight with his opposite number, Jerome Renfrew. He knew Renfrew, of course, but not very well. This worried Adams, because he’d been delayed in leaving Oxford, so he would be arriving at the Renfrew household long after it was really proper for him to do so.

It was characteristic of Adams that he didn’t know Renfrew very well, in fact, he didn’t know anybody very well. A reticent, shy man, living in College rooms, what he liked most was travel, and reading, of course. Adams had a good reputation in his own field. He was a remarkably incisive lecturer for one so retiring in all other human contacts.

Adams was also a skillful driver. He’d batted along at a good pace all the way from Oxford, because he was so late, of course. Almost in Nottingham, he noticed the lights of a car moving along a side road ahead. It never crossed his mind that anybody could be fool enough to pull out into the main road, so he kept going ahead. Then, to his horror, the car did pull out, immediately in front of him. If only the fool had kept to the center of the road and left him with enough room to get through on the near side.

Jonathan Adams came to his senses still in the driver’s seat. He sat there for a few moments. There was an instant when he was vaguely conscious of somebody peering into the car. He remembered leaving Oxford. He was driving to Nottingham, that was it. Then he remembered the side road and the other car, but he couldn’t remember the actual collision. Still there must have been a collision, an appalling crash, unless at the last moment he’d managed only to sideswipe the other car. Perhaps he’d done that and then gone off the road, in which case it might not be too bad. Slowly, very gingerly, he tried moving his hands and arms. They were all right so far as he could tell, no sharp pain. Next the legs. They moved, so his spine wasn’t dislocated. The head was now the critical thing. Gently he moved his hands upward over the face and skull. Not bad, so far as he could tell. It began to look as if he’d gone off the road with only a blow hard enough to put him out for a few moments. He decided to risk it, to try climbing out of the car. He knew he shouldn’t do this, really. Better to wait for an ambulance. Some passing driver would be sure to call the police. There might be internal injuries. The temptation was too strong, however, to be out of this coffin-like box in which he seemed to be entombed. It was a difficult business, for the car had been knocked onto its side. He saw now why he’d felt so queer, because he hadn’t been sitting upright. After a struggle he managed it. Miraculously he was standing there looking down at the wreckage. It looked pretty bad, not much worth salvaging.