Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (319 page)

“You don’t mean that,” Raeder said.

“Don’t be too sure.…You’ve got three hours and forty minutes until the end of the show. If you can stay alive, fine. The boodle’s yours. But if you can’t at least try to give them a run for the money.”

Raeder nodded, staring intently at her.

“In a few moments we’re back on the air. I develop engine trouble, let you off. The Thompsons go all out now. They kill you when and if they can, as soon as they can. Understand?”

“Yes,” Raeder said. “If I make it, can I see you some time?”

She bit her lip angrily. “Are you trying to kid me?”

“No. I’d like to see you again. May I?”

She looked at him curiously. “I don’t know. Forget it. We’re almost on. I think your best bet is the woods to the right. Ready?”

“Yes. Where can I get in touch with you? Afterward, I mean.”

“Oh, Raeder, you aren’t paying attention. Go through the woods until you find a washed-out ravine. It isn’t much, but it’ll give you some cover.”

“Where can I get in touch with you?” Raeder asked again.

“I’m in the Manhattan telephone book.” She stopped the car. “OK, Raeder, start running.”

He opened the door.

“Wait.” She leaned over and kissed him on the lips. “Good luck, you idiot. Call me if you make it.”

And then he was on foot, running into the woods,

* * * *

He ran
through birch and pine, past an occasional split-level house with staring faces at the big picture window. Some occupant of those houses must have called the gang, for they were close behind him when he reached the washed-out little ravine. Those quiet, mannerly, law-abiding people didn’t want him to escape, Raeder thought sadly. They wanted to see a killing. Or perhaps they wanted to see him
narrowly escape
a killing.

It came to the same thing, really.

He entered the ravine, burrowed into the thick underbrush and lay still. The Thompsons appeared on both ridges, moving slowly, watching for any movement. Raeder held his breath as they came parallel to him.

He heard the quick explosion of a revolver. But the killer had only shot a squirrel. It squirmed for a moment, then lay still.

Lying in the underbrush, Raeder heard the studio helicopter overhead. He wondered if any cameras were focused on him. It was possible. And if someone were watching, perhaps some Good Samaritan would help.

So looking upward, toward the helicopter, Raeder arranged his face in a reverent expression, elapsed his hands and prayed. He prayed silently, for the audience didn’t like religious ostentation. But his lips moved. That was every man’s privilege.

And a real prayer was on his lips. Once, a lipreader in the audience had detected a fugitive
pretending
to pray, but actually just reciting multiplication tables. No help for that man!

Raeder finished his prayer. Glancing at his watch, he saw that he had nearly two hours to go.

And he didn’t want to die! It wasn’t worth it, no matter how much they paid! He must have been crazy, absolutely insane to agree to such a thing….

But he knew that wasn’t true. And he remembered just how sane he had been.

* * * *

One week
ago he had been on the
Prize of Peril
stage, blinking in the spotlight, and Mike Terry had shaken his hand.

“Now Mr. Raeder,” Terry had said solemnly, “do you understand the rules of the game you are about to play?”

Raeder nodded.

“If you accept, Jim Raeder, you will be a
hunted man
for a week.
Killers
will follow you, Jim.
Trained
killers, men wanted by the law for other crimes, granted immunity for this single killing under the Voluntary Suicide Act. They will be trying to kill
you,
Jim. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” Raeder said. He also understood the two hundred thousand dollars he would receive if he could live out the week.

“I ask you again, Jim Raeder. We force no man to play for stakes of death.”

“I want to play,” Raeder said.

Mike Terry turned to the audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, I have here a copy of an exhaustive psychological test which an impartial psychological testing firm made on Jim Raeder at our request. Copies will be sent to anyone who desires them for twenty-five cents to cover the cost of mailing. The test shows that Jim Raeder is sane, well-balanced, and fully responsible in every way.” He turned to Raeder.

“Do you still want to enter the contest, Jim?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Very well!” cried Mike Terry. “Jim Raeder, meet your would-be killers!”

The Thompson gang moved on stage, booed by the audience.

“Look at them, folks,” said Mike Terry, with undisguised contempt. “Just look at them! Antisocial, thoroughly vicious, completely amoral. These men have no code but the criminal’s warped code, no honor but the honor of the cowardly hired killer. They are doomed men, doomed by our society which will not sanction their activities for long, fated to an early and unglamorous death.”

The audience shouted enthusiastically.

“What have you to say, Claude Thompson?” Terry asked.

Claude, the spokesman of the Thompsons, stepped up to the microphone. He was a thin, clean-shaven man, conservatively dressed.

“I figure,” Claude Thompson said hoarsely, “I figure we’re no worse than anybody. I mean, like soldiers in a war,
they
kill. And look at the graft in government, and the unions. Everybody’s got their graft.”

That was Thompson’s tenuous code. But how quickly, with what precision Mike Terry destroyed the killer’s rationalizations! Terry’s questions pierced straight to the filthy soul of the man.

At the end of the interview Claude Thompson was perspiring, mopping his face with a silk handkerchief and casting quick glances at his men.

Mike Terry put a hand on Raeder’s shoulder. “Here is the man who has agreed to become your victim—if you can catch him.”

“We’ll catch him,” Thompson said, his confidence returning.

“Don’t be too sure,” said Terry. “Jim Raeder has fought wild bulls—now he battles jackals. He’s an average man. He’s
the people
—who mean ultimate doom to you and your kind.”

“We’ll get him,” Thompson said.

“And one thing more,” Terry said, very softly. “Jim Raeder does not stand alone. The folks of America are for him. Good Samaritans from all corners of our great nation stand ready to assist him. Unarmed, defenceless, Jim Raeder can count on the aid and good-heartedness of
the people,
whose representative he is. So don’t be too sure, Claude Thompson! The average men are for Jim Raeder—and there are a lot of average men!”

* * * *

Raeder thought
about it, lying motionless in the underbrush. Yes,
the people
had helped him. But they had helped the killers, too.

A tremor ran through him. He had chosen, he reminded himself. He alone was responsible. The psychological test had proved that.

And yet, how responsible were the psychologists who had given him the test? How responsible was Mike Terry for offering a poor man so much money? Society had woven the noose and put it around his neck, and he was hanging himself with it, and calling it free will.

Whose fault?

“Aha!” someone cried.

Raeder looked up and saw a portly man standing near him. The man wore a loud tweed jacket. He had bincoulars around his neck, and a cane in his hand.

“Mister,” Raeder whispered, “please don’t tell!”

“Hi!” shouted the portly man, pointing at Raeder with his cane. “Here he is!”

A madman, thought Raeder. The damned fool must think he’s playing Hare and Hounds.

“Right over here!” the man screamed.

Cursing, Raeder sprang to his feet and began running. He came out of the ravine and saw a white building in the distance. He turned toward it. Behind him he could still hear the man.

“That way, over there. Look, you fools, can’t you see him yet?”

The killers were shooting again. Raeder ran, stumbling over uneven ground, past three children playing in a tree house.

“Here he is!” the children screamed. “Here he is!”

Raeder groaned and ran on. He reached the steps of the building, and saw that it was a church.

As he opened the door, a bullet struck him behind the right kneecap.

He fell, and crawled inside the church.

The television set in his pocket was saying,
“What a finish, folks, what a finish! Raeder’s been hit! He’s been hit, folks, he’s crawling now, he’s in pain, but he hasn’t given up! Not Jim Raeder!”

Raeder lay in the aisle near the altar. He could hear a child’s eager voice saying, “He went in there, Mr. Thompson. Hurry, you can still catch him!”

Wasn’t a church considered a sanctuary, Raeder wondered.

Then the door was flung open, and Raeder realized that the custom was no longer observed. He gathered himself together and crawled past the altar, out the back door of the church.

He was in an old graveyard. He crawled past crosses and stars, past slabs of marble and granite, past stone tombs and rude wooden markers. A bullet exploded on a tombstone near his head, showering him with fragments. He crawled to the edge of an open grave.

They had received him, he thought. All of those nice average normal people. Hadn’t they said he was their representative? Hadn’t they sworn to protect their own? But no, they loathed him. Why hadn’t he seen it? Their hero was the cold, blank-eyed gunman, Thompson, Capone, Billy the Kid, Young Lochinvar, El Cid, Cuchulain, the man without human hopes or fears. They worshiped him, that dead, implacable robot gunman, and lusted to feel his foot in their face.

Raeder tried to move, and slid helplessly into the open grave.

He lay on his back, looking at the blue sky. Presently a black silhouette loomed above him, blotting out the sky. Metal twinkled. The silhouette slowly took aim.

And Raeder gave up all hope forever.

“WAIT, THOMPSON!”
roared the amplified voice of Mike Terry.

The revolver wavered.

“It is one second past five o’clock! The week is up!
JIM RAEDER HAS WON!”

There was a pandemonium of cheering from the studio audience.

The Thompson gang, gathered around the grave, looked sullen.

“He’s won, friends, he’s won!”
Mike Terry cried.
“Look, look on your screen! The police have arrived, they’re taking
the Thompsons away from their victim
—
the victim they could not kill. And all this is thanks to you, Good Samaritans of America. Look folks, tender hands are lifting Jim Raeder from the open grave that was his final refuge. Good Samaritan Janice Morrow is there. Could this be the beginning of a romance? Jim seems to have fainted, friends, they’re giving him. a stimulant. He’s won two hundred thousand dollars! Now we’ll have a few words from Jim Raeder!”

There was a short silence.

“That’s odd,”
said Mike Terry.
“Folks, I’m afraid we can’t hear from Jim just now. The doctors are examining him. Just one moment…”

There was a silence. Mike Terry wiped his forehead and smiled.

“It’s the strain, folks, the terrible strain. The doctor tells me…Well, folks, Jim Raeder is temporarily not himself. But it’s only temporary! JBC is hiring the best psychiatrists and psychoanalysts in the country. We’re going to do everything humanly possible for this gallant boy. And entirely at our own expense.”

Mike Terry glanced at the studio clock.
“Well, it’s about time to sign off, folks. Watch for the announcement of our next great thrill show. And don’t worry, I’m sure that very soon we’ll have Jim Raeder back with us.”

Mike Terry smiled, and winked at the audience.
“He’s bound to get well, friends. After all, we’re all pulling for him!”

* * * *

Copyright © 1958 by Robert Sheckley.

(1913-1966)

Depending on your perspective, you might have very different views of who Paul Linebarger was. For science fiction readers, he was a quirky writer whose most frequent pseudonym was Cordwainer Smith, and whose work has seen a resurgance in popularity in recent years. For political scientists, Linebarger was the brilliant child of a diplomatic family who grew up among Chinese and European nobility, authored four books on Chinese politics, and was already a professor at Duke by age twenty-three. For military historians, he was a key figure in the development of the U.S. Army’s first psychological warfare unit during World War II and author of a seminal textbook on the field.

Although he was born in Wisconsin, Linebarger’s family moved to China when he was six, where his lawyer father was active in Nationalist politics. (Sun Yat-sen, president of China, was the boy’s godfather.) During his childhood, Linebarger’s family also lived in Germany, Japan, Russia, and elsewhere in Europe as well as in Washington, DC. He grew up fluent in various languages and (just as importantly for his SF writing) multiple cultures. He graduated high school at fourteen, earned his BA at nineteen, and a PHD in political science from Johns Hopkins at age twenty-two.

Although Linebarger had written SF beginning in high school, it wasn’t until 1950, when he was already an established expert on psychological warfare and professor of Asiatic Politics at Johns Hopkins, that he sold his first science fiction story, “Scanners Live in Vain.” Nearly all of his SF would be set in the same murky and morally ambivalent universe, a baroque and compelling environment where you’re often unsure whom to root for but nevertheless can’t stop reading. Much of his SF features animals and human-animal hybrids. Given all his other activities, it’s not surprising that Linebarger’s fictional output was slender: he completed only one SF novel (Norstrilia, only published in book form after his death) and about forty stories in the genre. (He began writing more SF in 1955 at the urging of Frederik Pohl.)

After a vacation to Australia in 1965, Linebarger made plans to retire there, but died of a heart attack before he could. For a number of years his work was largely forgotten until NESFA Press (the book arm of the nonprofit New England Science Fiction Association) and editor Jim Mann brought all of his writing back into print. One of Linebarger’s daughters started a website (www.cordwainersmith.com) about his life and work that culminated in the founding of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2001, designed to recognize forgotten SF classics.