The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (16 page)

“I want a gun,” said Fara, “that can be adjusted to disintegrate a body six feet in diameter in a single shot. Have you that kind?”

Without a word, the old man turned to a showcase, and brought forth a sturdy gem of a revolver that glinted with all the soft colors of the inimitable Ordine plastic. The old man said in a precise voice. “Notice the flanges on this barrel are little more than bulges. This makes the model ideal for carrying in a shoulder holster under the coat; it can be drawn very swiftly because, when properly attuned, it will leap toward the reaching hand of its owner. At the moment it is attuned to me. Watch while I replace it in its holster and—”

The speed of the draw was absolutely amazing. The old man’s fingers moved; and the gun, four feet away, was in them. There was no blur of movement. It was like the door the night that it had slipped from Fara’s grasp, and slammed noiselessly in Constable Jor’s face.
Instantaneous!

Fara, who had parted his lips as the old man was explaining, to protest the utter needlessness of illustrating any quality of the weapon except what he had asked for, closed them again. He stared in a brief, dazed fascination; and something of the wonder that was here held his mind and his body.

He had seen and handled the guns of soldiers, and they were simply ordinary metal or plastic things that one used clumsily like any other material substance, not like this at all, not possessed of a dazzling life of their own, leaping with an intimate eagerness to assist with all their superb power the will of their master. They—

With a start, Fara remembered his purpose. He smiled wryly, and said, “All this is very interesting. But what about the beam that can fan out?”

The old man said calmly, “At pencil thickness, this beam will pierce any body except certain alloys of lead up to four hundred yards. With proper adjustment of the firing nozzle, you can disintegrate a six-foot object at fifty yards or less. This screw is the adjuster.”

He indicated a tiny device in the muzzle itself. “Turn it to the left to spread the beam, to the right to close it.”

Fara said, “I’ll take the gun. How much is it?”

He saw that the old man was looking at him thoughtfully; the oldster said finally, slowly, “I have previously explained our regulations to you, Mr. Clark. You recall them, of course?”

“Eh!” said Fara, and stopped, wide-eyed. It wasn’t that he didn’t remember them. It was simply—

“You mean,” he gasped, “those things actually apply. They’re not—”

With a terrible effort, he caught his spinning brain and blurring voice. Tense and cold, he said, “All I want is a gun that will shoot in self-defense, but which I can turn on myself if I have to or – want to.”

“Oh, suicide!” said the old man. He looked as if a great understanding had suddenly dawned on him. “My dear sir, we have no objection to your killing yourself at any time. That is your personal privilege in a world where privileges grow scanter every year. As for the price of this revolver, it’s four credits.”

“Four cre . . . only four credits!” said Fara.

He stood, absolutely astounded, his whole mind snatched from its dark purpose. Why, the plastic alone was – and the whole gun with its fine, intricate workmanship – twenty-five credits would have been dirt cheap.

He felt a brief thrill of utter interest; the mystery of the weapon shops suddenly loomed as vast and important as his own black destiny. But the old man was speaking again:

“And now, if you will remove your coat, we can put on the holster—”

Quite automatically, Fara complied. It was vaguely startling to realize that, in a few seconds, he would be walking out of here, equipped for self-murder, and that there was now not a single obstacle to his death.

Curiously, he was disappointed. He couldn’t explain it, but somehow there had been in the back of his mind a hope that these shops might, just might – what?

What indeed? Fara sighed wearily – and grew aware again of the old man’s voice, saying:

“Perhaps you would prefer to step out of our side door. It is less conspicuous than the front.”

There was no resistance in Fara. He was dimly conscious of the man’s fingers on his arm, half guiding him; and then the old man pressed one of several buttons on the wall – so that’s how it was done – and there was the door.

He could see flowers beyond the opening; without a word he walked toward them. He was outside before he realized it.

Fara stood for a moment in the neat little pathway, striving to grasp the finality of his situation. But nothing would come except a curious awareness of many men around him; for a long second, his brain was like a fog drifting along a stream at night.

Through that darkness grew consciousness of something wrong; the wrongness was there in the back of his mind, as he turned leftward to go to the front of the weapon store.

Vagueness transformed to a shocked, startled sound. For – he was not in Glay, and the weapon shop
wasn’t
where it had been. In its place—

A dozen men brushed past Fara to join a long line of men farther along. But Fara was immune to their presence, their strangeness. His whole mind, his whole vision, his very being was concentrating on the section of machine that stood where the weapon shop had been.

A machine, oh, a machine—

His brain lifted up in his effort to grasp the tremendousness of the dull-metaled immensity of what was spread here under a summer sun beneath a sky as blue as a remote southern sea.

The machine towered into the heavens, five great tiers of metal, each a hundred feet high; and the superbly streamlined five hundred feet ended in a peak of light, a gorgeous spire that tilted straight up a sheer two hundred feet farther, and matched the very sun for brightness.

And it
was
a machine, not a building, because the whole lower tier was alive with shimmering lights, mostly green, but sprinkled colorfully with red and occasionally a blue and yellow. Twice, as Fara watched, green lights directly in front of him flashed unscintillatingly into red.

The second tier was alive with white and red lights, although there were only a fraction as many lights as on the lowest tier. The third section had on its dull-metal surface only blue and yellow lights; they twinkled softly here and there over the vast area.

The fourth tier was a series of signs that brought the beginning of comprehension. The whole sign was:

The fifth tier was also all sign, finally explaining:

POPULATIONS

The numbers changed, even as he looked at them, leaping up and down, shifting below and above what they had first been. People were dying, being born, moving to Mars, to Venus, to the moons of Jupiter, to Earth’s moon, and others coming back again, landing minute by minute in the thousands of spaceports. Life went on in its gigantic fashion – and here was the stupendous record. Here was—

“Better get in line,” said a friendly voice beside Fara. “It takes quite a while to put through an individual case, I understand.”

Fara stared at the man. He had the distinct impression of having had senseless words flung at him. “In line?” he started – and stopped himself with a jerk that hurt his throat.

He was moving forward, blindly, ahead of the younger man, thinking in a curious jumble that this must have been how Constable Jor was transported to Mars – when another of the man’s words penetrated.

“Case?” said Fara violently. “Individual case!”

The man, a heavy-faced, blue-eyed young chap of around thirty-five, looked at him curiously: “You must know why you’re here,” he said. “Surely, you wouldn’t have been sent through here unless you had a problem of some kind that the weapons shop courts will solve for you; there’s no other reason for coming to Information Center.”

Fara walked on because he was in the line now, a fast-moving line that curved him inexorably around the machine; and seemed to be heading him toward a door that led into the interior of the great metal structure.

So it was a building as well as a machine.

A problem, he was thinking, why, of course, he had a problem, a hopeless, insoluble, completely tangled problem so deeply rooted in the basic structure of Imperial civilization that the whole world would have to be overturned to make it right.

With a start, he saw that he was at the entrance. And the awed thought came: In seconds he would be committed irrevocably to – what?

Inside was a long, shining corridor, with scores of completely transparent hallways leading off the main corridor. Behind Fara, the young man’s voice said, “There’s one, practically empty. Let’s go.”

Fara walked ahead; and suddenly he was trembling. He had already noticed that at the end of each side hallway were a dozen young women sitting at desks, interviewing men and . . . and, good heavens, was it possible that all this meant—

He grew aware that he had stopped in front of one of the girls.

She was older than she had looked from a distance, over thirty, but good-looking, alert. She smiled pleasantly, but impersonally, and said, “Your name, please?”

He gave it before he thought and added a mumble about being from the village of Glay. The woman said, “Thank you. It will take a few minutes to get your file. Won’t you sit down?”

He hadn’t noticed the chair. He sank into it; his heart beating so wildly that he felt chocked. The strange thing was that there was scarcely a thought in his head, nor a real hope; only an intense, almost mind-wrecking excitement.

With a jerk, he realized that the girl was speaking again, but only snatches of her voice came through that screen of tension in his mind:

“—Information Center is . . .in effect . . .a bureau of statistics. Every person born . . . registered here . . . their education, change of address . . .occupation . . . and the highlights of their life. The whole is maintained by . . . combination of . . . unauthorized and unsuspected liaison with Imperial Chamber of Statistics and . . . through medium of agents . . . in every community—”

It seemed to Fara that he was missing vital information, and that if he could only force his attention and hear more—He strained, but it was no use; his nerves were jumping madly and—

Before he could speak, there was a click, and a thin, dark plate slid onto the woman’s desk. She took it up and examined it. After a moment, she said something into a mouthpiece, and in a short time two more plates precipitated out of the empty air onto her desk. She studied them passively, looked up finally.

“You will be interested to know,” she said, “that your son, Cayle, bribed himself into a commission in the Imperial army with five thousand credits.”

“Eh?” said Fara. He half rose from his chair, but before he could say anything, the young woman was speaking again, firmly, “I must inform you that the weapon shops take no action against individuals. Your son can have his job, the money he stole; we are not concerned with moral correction. That must come naturally from the individual, and from the people as a whole – and now if you will give me a brief account of your problem for the record and the court.”

Sweating, Fara sank back into his seat; his mind was heaving; most desperately, he wanted more information about Cayle. He began: “But . . . but what . . . how—” He caught himself; and in a low voice described what had happened. When he finished, the girl said, “You will proceed now to the Name Room; watch for your name, and when it appears go straight to Room 474. Remember, 474 – and now, the line is waiting, if you please—”

She smiled politely, and Fara was moving off almost before he realized it. He half turned to ask another question, but an old man was sinking into his chair. Fara hurried on, along a great corridor, conscious of curious blasts of sound coming from ahead.