The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF (17 page)

Eagerly, he opened the door; and the sound crashed at him with all the impact of a sledgehammer blow.

It was such a colossal, incredible sound that he stopped short, just inside the door, shrinking back. He stood then trying to blink sense into a visual confusion that rivaled in magnitude that incredible tornado of noise.

Men, men, men everywhere; men by the thousands in a long, broad auditorium, packed into rows of seats, pacing with an abandon of restlessness up and down aisles, and all of them staring with a frantic interest at a long board marked off into squares, each square lettered from the alphabet, from A, B, C, and so on to Z. The tremendous board with its lists of names ran the full length of the immense room.

The Name Room, Fara was thinking shakily, as he sank into a seat – and his name would come up in the C’s, and then—

It was like sitting in at a no-limit poker game, watching the jewel-precious cards turn up. It was like playing the exchange with all the world at stake during a stock crash. It was nerve-racking, dazzling, exhausting, fascinating, terrible, mind-destroying, stupendous. It was—

It was like nothing else on the face of the earth.

New names kept flashing on to the twenty-six squares; and men would shout like insane beings and some fainted, and the uproar was absolutely shattering; the pandemonium raged on, one continuous, unbelievable sound.

And every few minutes a great sign would flash along the board, telling everyone:

“WATCH YOUR OWN INITIALS.”

Fara watched, trembling in every limb. Each second it seemed to him that he couldn’t stand it an instant longer. He wanted to scream at the room to be silent; he wanted to jump up to pace the floor, but others who did that were yelled at hysterically, threatened wildly, hated with a mad, murderous ferocity.

Abruptly, the blind savagery of it scared Fara. He thought unsteadily: “I’m not going to make a fool of myself. I—”

“Clark, Fara—” winked the board. “Clark, Fara—”

With a shout that nearly tore off the top of his head, Fara leaped to his feet. “That’s me!” he shrieked. “Me!”

No one turned; no one paid the slightest attention. Shamed, he slunk across the room where an endless line of men kept crowding into a corridor beyond.

The silence in the long corridor was almost as shattering as the mind-destroying noise it replaced. It was hard to concentrate on the idea of a number – 474.

It was completely impossible to imagine what could lie beyond – 474.

The room was small. It was furnished with a small, business-type table and two chairs. On the table were seven neat piles of folders, each file a different color. The piles were arranged in a row in front of a large, milky-white globe, that began to glow with a soft light. Out of its depths, a man’s baritone voice said, “Fara Clark?”

“Yes,” said Fara.

“Before the verdict is rendered in your case,” the voice went on quietly, “I want you to take a folder from the blue pile. The list will show the Fifth Interplanetary Bank in its proper relation to yourself and the world, and it will be explained to you in due course.”

The list, Fara saw, was simply that, a list of names of companies. The names ran from A to Z, and there were about five hundred of them. The folder carried no explanation; and Fara slipped it automatically into his side pocket, as the voice came again from the shining globe: “It has been established,” the words came precisely, “that the Fifth Interplanetary Bank perpetrated upon you a gross swindle, and that it is further guilty of practicing scavengery, deception, blackmail and was accessory in a criminal conspiracy.

“The bank made contact with your son, Cayle, through what is quite properly known as a scavenger, that is, an employee who exists by finding young men and women who are normally capable of drawing drafts on their parents or other victims. The scavenger obtains for this service a commission of eight percent, which is always paid by the person making the loan, in this case your son.

“The bank practiced deception in that its authorized agents deceived you in the most culpable fashion by pretending that it had already paid out the ten thousand credits to your son, whereas the money was not paid until your signature had been obtained.

“The blackmail guilt arises out of a threat to have your son arrested for falsely obtaining a loan, a threat made at a time when no money had exchanged hands. The conspiracy consists of the action whereby your note was promptly turned over to your competitor.

“The bank is accordingly triple-fined, thirty-six thousand three hundred credits. It is not in our interest, Fara Clark, for you to know how this money is obtained. Suffice to know that the bank pays it, and that of the fine the weapon shops allocate to their own treasury a total of one half. The other half—”

There was a
plop;
a neatly packaged pile of bills fell onto the table. “For you,” said the voice; and Fara, with trembling fingers, slipped the package into his coat pocket. It required the purest mental and physical effort for him to concentrate on the next words that came:

“You must not assume that your troubles are over. The reestablishment of your motor repair shop in Glay will require force and courage. Be discreet, brave and determined, and you cannot fail. Do not hesitate to use the gun you have purchased in defense of your rights. The plan will be explained to you. And now, proceed through the door facing you—”

Fara braced himself with an effort, opened the door and walked through.

It was a dim, familiar room that he stepped into, and there was a silver-haired, fine-faced man who rose from a reading chair, and came forward in the dimness, smiling gravely.

The stupendous, fantastic, exhilarating adventure was over; and he was back in the weapon shop of Glay.

He couldn’t get over the wonder of it – this great and fascinating organization established here in the very heart of a ruthless civilization, a civilization that had in a few brief weeks stripped him of everything he possessed.

With a deliberate will, he stopped that glowing flow of thought. A dark frown wrinkled his solidly built face; he said, “The . . . judge—” Fara hesitated over the name, frowned again, annoyed at himself, then went on: “The judge said that, to reestablish myself I would have to—”

“Before we go into that,” said the old man quietly, “I want you to examine the blue folder you brought with you.”

“Folder?” Fara echoed blankly. It took a long moment to remember that he had picked up a folder from the table in Room 474.

He studied the list of company names with a gathering puzzlement, noting that the name of Automatic Atomic Motor Repair Shops was well down among the A’s, and the fifth Interplanetary Bank only one of several great banks included. Fara looked up finally:

“I don’t understand,” he said: “are these the companies you have had to act against?”

The silver-haired man smiled grimly, shook his head. “That is not what I meant. These firms constitute only a fraction of the eight hundred thousand companies that are constantly in our books.”

He smiled again, humorlessly: “These companies all know that, because of us, their profits on paper bear no relation to their assets. What they don’t know is how great the difference really is; and, as we want a general improvement in business morals, not merely more skillful scheming to outwit us, we prefer them to remain in ignorance.”

He paused, and this time he gave Fara a searching glance, said at last: “The unique feature of the companies on this particular list is that they are every one wholly owned by Empress Isher.”

He finished swiftly: “In view of your past opinions on that subject, I do not expect you to believe me.”

Fara stood as still as death, for – he did believe with unquestioning conviction, completely, finally. The amazing, the unforgivable thing was that all his life he had watched the march of ruined men into the oblivion of poverty and disgrace – and blamed
them
.

Fara groaned. “I’ve been like a madman,” he said. “Everything the empress and her officials did was right. No friendship, no personal relationship could survive with me that did not include belief in things as they were. I suppose if I started to talk against the empress I would receive equally short shrift.”

“Under no circumstances,” said the old man grimly, “must you say anything against her majesty. The weapons shops will not countenance any such words, and will give no further aid to anyone who is so indiscreet. The reason is that, for the moment, we have reached an uneasy state of peace with the Imperial government. We wish to keep it that way; beyond that I will not enlarge on our policy.

“I am permitted to say that the last great attempt to destroy the weapon shops was made seven years ago, when the glorious Innelda Isher was twenty-five years old. That was a secret attempt, based on a new invention; and failed by purest accident because of our sacrifice of a man from seven thousand years in the past. That may sound mysterious to you, but I will not explain.

“The worst period was reached some forty years ago when every person who was discovered receiving aid from us was murdered in some fashion. You may be surprised to know that your father-in-law was among those assassinated at that time.”

“Creel’s father!” Fara gasped. “But—”

He stopped. His brain was reeling; there was such a rush of blood to his head that for an instant he could hardly see.

“But,” he managed at last, “it was reported that he ran away with another woman.”

“They always spread a vicious story of some kind,” the old man said; and Fara was silent, stunned.

The other went on: “We finally put a stop to their murders by killing the three men from the top down,
excluding
the royal family, who gave the order for the particular execution involved. But we do not again want that kind of bloody murder.

“Nor are we interested in any criticism of our toleration of so much that is evil. It is important to understand that
we do not interfere in the main stream of human existence
. We right wrongs; we act as a barrier between the people and their more ruthless exploiters. Generally speaking, we help only honest men; that is not to say that we do not give assistance to the less scrupulous, but only to the extent of selling them guns – which is a very great aid indeed, and which is one of the reasons why the government is relying almost exclusively for its power on an economic chicanery.

“In the four thousand years since the brilliant genius Walter S. DeLany invented the vibration process that made the weapon shops possible, and laid down the first principles of weapons shop political philosophy, we have watched the tide of government swing backward and forward between democracy under a limited monarchy to complete tyranny. And we have discovered one thing:

“
People always have the kind of government they want
. When they want change, they must change it. As always we shall remain an incorruptible core – and I mean that literally; we have a psychological machine that never lies about a man’s character – I repeat, an incorruptible core of human idealism, devoted to relieving the ills that arise inevitably under any form of government.

“But now – your problem. It is very simple, really. You must fight, as all men have fought since the beginning of time for what they valued, for their just rights. As you know, the Automatic Repair people removed all your machinery and tools within an hour or foreclosing on your shop. This material was taken to Ferd, and then shipped to a great warehouse on the coast.

“We recovered it, and with our special means of transportation have now replaced the machines in your shop. You will accordingly go there and—”

Fara listened with a gathering grimness to the instructions, nodded finally, his jaw clamped tight.

“You can count on me,” he said curtly. “I’ve been a stubborn man in my time; and though I’ve changed sides, I haven’t changed
that
.”

Going outside was like returning from life to – death; from hope to – reality.

Fara walked along the quiet streets of Glay at darkest night. For the first time it struck him that the weapon shop Information Center must be halfway around the world, for it had been day, brilliant day.

The picture vanished as if it had never existed, and he grew aware again, preternaturally aware of the village of Glay asleep all around him. Silent, peaceful – yet ugly, he thought, ugly with the ugliness of evil enthroned.

He thought: The right to buy weapons – and his heart swelled into his throat; the tears came to his eyes.

He wiped his vision clear with the back of his hand, thought of Creel’s long dead father, and strode on, without shame. Tears were good for an angry man.

The shop was the same, but the hard metal padlock yielded before the tiny, blazing, supernal power of the revolver. One flick of fire; the metal dissolved – and he was inside.

It was dark, too dark to see, but Fara did not turn on the lights immediately. He fumbled across to the window control, turned the windows to darkness vibration, and then clicked on the lights.

He gulped with awful relief. For the machines, his precious tools that he had seen carted away within hours after the bailiff’s arrival, were here again, ready for use.