The Marching Mindless, a geek charming fanfic

The Marching Mindless

by longcharles1993, 1 day, 20 hours ago

Literature / Fan Fiction / Sci-Fi

There were some things that had changed in time. Earl Hawkins had built his workshop near Soap Lake, which had a narrow band of good fat clay and a narrow beach of oily sand. He fired a octopus furnace with willow charcoal from the wood lot. The wood lot was also useful for long walks while the octopus furnace was cooling; if he let himself stay within sight of it, he would open it prematurely, impatient to see how some new shape or glaze had come through the fire, and — ping! — the new shape or glaze would be good for nothing but the shard pile back of his slip tanks of his octopus furnace.

Also, within his workshop, were three bottle-nosed replicators that could create objects by rearranging subatomic particles, which are abundant everywhere in the universe, to form molecules and arrange those molecules to form the object, and three quantum computer terminals that were capable of showing images of objects ranging from clothing to furniture.

A business conference was in full swing in his workshop, a modest cube of brick, tile-roofed, as an aerial vehicle flew overhead — an aerial vehicle that was to hard to describe in details.

The buyer from Bloomingdale's was looking at a quantum computer terminal that was showing an image of a black-glazed one-liter carafe, nodding approval with his massive, handsome head. "This is real pretty," he told Hawkins and his own secretary, Matias Nicolás. "This has got lots of what ya call real est'etic principles. Yeah, it's real pretty."

"How much to replicate?" the secretary asked the potter.

"I can replicate each in dozen lots for seven-fifty," said Hawkins. "I replicated fifteen dozen last month."

"They are real est'etic," repeated the buyer from Bloomingdale's. "I will take them all."

"I don't think we can do that, sir," said the secretary. "They'd cost us 1,350 Federation credits. That would leave only 532 Federation credits in our quarter's budget. And we still have to run down to West Philadelphia to pick up some cheap replicator rations cards.

"Replicator ration cards?" asked the buyer, his big face full of wonder.

"Replicator ration cards. The department's been out of them for two months now. Mr. Martín Alejandro got pretty nasty about it yesterday. Remember?"

"Martín Alejandro, that meat-headed bluenose," the buyer said contemptuously. "He don't know nothin' about est'etics. Why for don't he lemme run my own department?" His eye fell on a stray copy of {i}Americomix{/i} and he sat down with it. An occasional deep chuckle or grunt of surprise escaped him as he turned the pages.

Uninterrupted, the potter and the buyer's secretary quickly closed a deal for two dozen of replicated liter carafes. "I wish we could take more," said the secretary, "but you heard what I told him. We've had to turn away customers for ordinary cheap replicator rations cards because he shot the last quarter's budget on some replicated Mexican piggy banks some equally enthusiastic importer stuck him with. The fifth floor is packed solid with them."

"I'll bet they look mighty est'etic."

"They were replicated with purple cacti pictures on them."

The potter didn't shuddered and then he'd caressed the glaze of the replicated carafe with gentleness and care.

The buyer looked up and rumbled, "Ain't you dummies through yakkin' yet? What good's a seckertary for if'n he don't take the burden of {i}de{/i}-tail off'n my back, harh?"

"We're all through, sir. Are you ready to go?"

The buyer grunted peevishly, dropped {i}Americomix{/i} on the floor and led the way out of the building and down the log corduroy road to the decayed abandoned highway. His aerial vehicle was waiting on the decayed concrete. It was, like all contemporary aerial vehicles, to hard to describe in details.

"Matias Nicolás," called out the potter, "did anything come of the construction program they were working on the last time I was on duty at the North Pole?"

"Fortunately," said the secretary. "An urgent request for industrial replicators came in the nick of time."

"Well, how many industrial replicators were we talking about?"

"Twelve - all class four."

"Well, I'm scheduled back to the North Pole in nine days. Time for another firing right now. I've got a new luster to try for myself."

"I'll see you, later. I shall be working — running the drafting-room of the China State Construction Engineering in Shanghai. They're going to put up a five hundred-story office building, and naturally somebody's got to be on hand with the industrial replicators.

"Naturally," said Hawkins.

Soo, there was an ear-piercingly sweet blast as the buyer leaned on the horn button.

"I'm coming, sir," said the secretary. He'd soon climbed into the aerial vehicle and then it whooshed off into the sky at higher altitude and speed.

The potter, puzzled, wandered back up the corduroy road and contemplated to cool down his octopus furnace in his workshop. The rustling wind in the boughs was obscuring the creak and mutter of the shrinking refractory brick. Hawkins wondered about the octopus furnace — a reduction fire on a load of lusterware mugs. Had the clay chinking excluded the air? Had it been a properly smoky blaze? Would it do any harm if he just took one close —?

Common sense took Hawkins by the scruff of the neck and yanked him over to the tool shed. He got out his pick and resolutely set off on a prospecting jaunt to a hummocky field that might yield some oxides. He was especially low on coppers.

The long walk left him sweating a strange substance, with his lust for a peek into the octopus furnace quiet in his breast. He swung his pick almost at random into one of the hummocks; it clanged on a stone which he excavated. A largely obliterated inscription said this:

ERSITY OF WASH
OGICAL LABO
ELOVED MEMORY OF
KILLED IN ACT

The potter puzzled mildly. He had wondered if the field would turn out to be a cemetery, preferably a once-fashionable cemetery full of once-massive bronze caskets moldered into oxides of tin and copper.

Well, hell, maybe there was some around anyway.

He headed physically for the second largest hillock and sliced into it with his pick. There was a stone to undercut and topple into a trench, and then the potter was very glad he'd stuck at it. His nostrils were filled with the bitter smell and the dirt was tinged with the exciting blue of copper salts. The pick went {i}clang!{/i}

Hawkins, puffing, pried up a stainless steel plate that was quite badly stained and was also marked with incised letters. It seemed to have pulled loose from rotting bronze; there were rivets on the back that brought up flakes of green patina. The potter wiped off the surface dirt with his sleeve, turned it to catch the sunlight obliquely and read:

"HONEST SHAWN MARLOW"

{i}"Honest Shawn, famed in Washington university annals, represents a challenge which medical science has not yet answered: revival of a human being accidentally thrown into a state of suspended animation. In 2030 Mr. Marlow, a leading plagiarist writer, visited his dentist for treatment of an impacted wisdom tooth. His dentist requested and received permission to use the experimental anesthetic Methoxyflurane-H-17, developed at the University of Washington. After administration of the anesthetic, the dentist resorted to his drill. By freakish mischance, a short-circuit in his machine delivered 220 volts of 60 cycle current into the patient. (In a damage suit instituted by Mrs. Marlow against the dentist, the University of Washington and the makers of the drill, a jury found for the defendants.) Mr. Marlow never got up from the dentist's chair and ass assumed to have died of poisoning, electrocution or both. Morticians preparing him for embalming discovered, however, that their subject was — though certainly not living — just as certainly not dead. The University of Washington was notified and a series of exhaustive tests was begun, including attempts to duplicate the trance state on volunteers. After a bad run of thirteen cases which ended fatally, the attempts were abandoned. Honest Shawn was long an exhibit at the Washington University museum, and livened many a football game as mascot of the University's Washington Huskies. The bounds of taste were overstepped, however, when a pledge to Delta Tau Delta was ordered in '33 to "kidnap" Honest Shawn from his loosely-guarded glass museum case and introduce him into the Alicia Stephenson Memorial Girl's Gymnasium shower room. On May 22nd, 2033, the Washington University Board of Regents issued the following order: "By unanimous vote, it is directed that the remains of Honest Shawn Marlow be removed from the Washington University museum and conveyed to the Washington University's Lieutenant Olivia Bullock III Memorial Biological Laboratories and there be securely locked in a specially-prepared vault. It is further directed that all possible measures for the preservation of these remains be taken by the Laboratory administration and that access to these remains be denied to all persons except qualified scholars authorized in writing by the Board. The Board reluctantly takes this action in view of recent notices and photographs in the nation's press which, to say the least, reflect but small credit upon the Washington University."{/i}

It wasn't even far from his field, but Hawkins understood what had happened — an early and accidental blundering onto the bare bones of the Kornbluth shock anesthesia, which had since been replaced by other methods. To bring subjects out of Kornbluth shock, you let them have a squirt of simple saline in the trigeminal nerve. Interesting! And now about that bronze —

He heaved the pick into the rotting green salts, expecting no resistance, and almost fractured his wrist. {i}Something{/i} down there was {i}solid{/i}. He began to flake off the oxides.

A half hour of work brought him down to phosphor bronze, a huge casting of the almost incorruptible metal. It had weakened structurally over the thousands of years; he could fit the point of his pick under a corroded boss and pry off great creaking and grumbling stirs of the stuff.

Hawkins wished that he had an archaeologist with him, but didn't dream of returning to his hops and calling one to take over the find. He was an all-around android: by choice and in his free time, an artist in clay and glaze; by necessity, an aerial automotive, electronics and atomic engineer who could also swing a project in flight traffic control, individual and group psychology, architecture or tool design, and replicated items and objects for department stores. He didn't even yell for a specialist every time something out of his line came up; there were so few with so much to do ...

He trenched around his find, discovering that it was a great brick-shaped bronze mass with an excitingly hollow sound. A long strip of moldering metal from one of the long vertical faces pulled away, exposing red rust that went {i}whoosh{/i} and was sucked into the interior of the mass.

It had been de-aired, thought Hawkins, and there must have been an inner jacket of glass which had crystallized through the thousands of years and quietly crumbled at the first clang of his pick. He didn't know what a vacuum would do to a subject of Kornbluth shock, but he had hopes, nor did he quite understand what a plagiarist writer was, but it might have something to do with pottery. And {i}anything{/i} might have a bearing on Topic Number One.

He flung his pick out of the trench, climbed out and set off at a dog-trot for his shop. A little rummaging in his shop turned up a hypospray, and there was a hypospray vial of salt in the kitchen.

Back at his dig, he chipped for another half hour to expose the juncture of lid and body. The hinges were hopeless; he smashed them off.

Hawkins extended the telescopic handle of the pick for the best leverage, fitted its point into a deep pit, set its built-in fulcrum and heaved.

Five more heaves and he could see, inside the vault, what looked like a dusty marble statue. Ten more and he could see that it was the naked body of Honest Shawn Marlow, plagiarist writer, uncorrupted by time.

The potter found the apex of the trigeminal nerve with his hypospray's point and gave him 60 cc.

In an hour Marlow's chest began to pump.

In another hour, he rasped, "Did it work?"

"{i}Did{/i} it!" puzzled Hawkins.

Marlow opened his eyes and stirred, looked down, turned his hands before his eyes —

"I'll sue," he screamed. "My clothes! My fingernails!" A horrid suspicion came over his face and he clapped his hands to his hairless scalp. "My hair!" he wailed. "I'll sue you for every penny you've got. That release won't mean a damned thing in court — I didn't sign away my hair and clothes and fingernails."

"They'll grow back," said Hawkins softly. "Also your epidermis. Those parts of you weren't alive, you know, so they weren't preserved like the rest of you. I'm afraid the clothes are gone, though."

"What is this — the Washington University hospital?" demanded Marlow. "I want a cell phone. No, you cell phone. Tell my auntie I'm all right and tell George Murray — he's my lawyer — to get over here right away. Ow!" He had tried to sit up, and a portion of his pink skin rubbed against the inner surface of the casket, which was powdered by the ancient crystallized glass. "What the hell did you guys do, boil me alive? Oh, you're going to pay for this!

"You're all right," said Hawkins, wishing now he had a reference book to clear up several obscure terms. "Your epidermis will start growing immediately. You're not in the hospital. Look here!"

He handed Marlow the stainless steel plate that had labeled the casket. After a suspicious glance, the man started to read. Finishing, he laid the plate carefully on the edge of the vault and was silent for a spell.

"Poor Aunt Alicia," he said at last. "It doesn't say whether she was stuck with the court costs. Do you happen to know —?"

"No," said the potter. "All I know is what was on the plate, and how to revive you. The dentist accidentally gave you a dose of what we call the Kornbluth shock anesthesia. I'm afraid we haven't used it for thousands of years; it was powerful, but too dangerous of a drug."

"Thousands of years ..." brooded the man. "Thousands of years ... I'll bet George swindled her out of her eyeteeth. Poor Aunt Alicia. How long ago was it? What year is this?"

Hawkins answered. "We call it B17-B17-997. That's no help to you. It takes a long time for these metals to oxidize."

"Like that short story," Marlow muttered. "Who would have thought it? Poor Aunt Alicia!" He blubbered and sniffled, reminding Hawkins powerfully of the fact that he had been found under a flat rock.

Almost curious, the potter asked, "How many children did you have?"

"I had none," sniffed Marlow. "My first husband didn't want them. But Joseph wants one — wanted one — but we're going to wait until — we were going to wait until —"

"Of course," said the potter, feeling a curious desire to study him off, blast him to a research facility and then gone for his work. But he changed his mind. There was The Population to think of; there was always The Population to think of, and this poor blubberer might unexpectedly supply a clue. Hawkins would have to pass him on.

"Please, come along, sir," Hawkins said. "I'm afraid my time is short."

Marlow looked up, outraged. "How can you be so unfeeling? I'm a human being like —"

An aerial vehicle flew overhead and Marlow broke off in mid-complaint. "Beautiful!" he breathed, following it with his eyes.

"Beautiful!"

He climbed out of the vault, too interested to be pained by its roughness against his infantile skin. "After all," he said briskly, "this should have its sunny side. I never was much for reading, but this is just like one of those stories. And I ought to make some money out of it, shouldn't I?" He gave Hawkins a shrewd glance.

"You want Federation credits?" asked the potter. "Here!" He handed over a fistful of Federation credits. "You'd better put my shoes on. It'll be about a quarter-mile. Oh, and you're — uh, modest? — yes, that was the word. Here!" Hawkins gave him his pants, but Marlow was excitedly counting the Federation credits.

"Eighty-five hundred, eighty-six hundred — and it's these are Federation credits, uh? I thought they be credits or whatever they call them. 'E Pluribus Unum' and 'Liberty' — just different faces. Say, is there a catch to this? Are these real, genuine, honest twenty-two-cent Federation credits?"

"They're quite all right, I assure you, sir," said the potter. "But I wish you'd come along. I'm afraid I'm in a hurry."

The man babbled as they stumped towards the shop. "Where are we going — The Council of Scientists, the World Co-ordinator or something like that?"

"Who? Oh, no, sir. We call them 'Earth President' and 'Earth Federation.' No, that wouldn't do any good at all. I'm just taking you to see some friends of mine."

"I ought to make plenty out of this. Plenty! I could write books. Get some smart young fellow to put it into words for me and I'll bet I could turn out a best-seller. What's the setup on things like that?"

"It's about like that. Smart young fellows. But there aren't any bestsellers like yours any more. People don't read much like you nowadays. We'll find something equally profitable for you to do."

Back in the shop, Hawkins gave Barlow a suit of replicated clothes from the number two bottle-nosed replicator, deposited him in the waiting-room and called Android Central in Chicago. "I'm afraid he'd must be taken away from here," he asked softly. "I have time for one more firing and yet he blathers and blathers. I'm afraid I haven't told him anything. Perhaps we should just turn him loose and let him find his own level, but there's a chance —"

"The Population," agreed Android Central. "Yes, there's a chance."

The potter delighted Marlow by making him a replicated cup of coffee with a cube that not only dissolved in cold water but heated the water to boiling-point.

Killing time, Hawkins chatted about the aerial vehicle Marlow had admired, and had to haul himself up short; he had almost told the real estate man what its top speed and height really was — almost, indeed, revealed that it was not a ground car.

He didn't even regretted, too, that he had so casually handed Marlow a couple of hundred Federation credits. The man seemed obsessed with fear that they were worthless, since Hawkins refused to take a note or I.O.U. or even a definite promise of repayment. But Hawkins couldn't go into details, and was very "glad" when a stranger arrived from Android Central.

"Tinny-Peeve, from Spain," the stranger told him swiftly as the two of them met at the door. "Psychiatrist for Pop. Android Central signed special overtake Marlow."

"Jolly good," said Hawkins. "Marlow," he told the man from the far distant past, "this is Tinny-Peeve. He's going to take care of you and help you make lots of Federation credits."

The psychiatrist stayed for a replicated cup of the coffee whose preparation had delighted Marlow, and then conducted the plagiarist writer down the corduroy road to his aerial vehicle, leaving the potter to speculate on whether he could at last crack his octopus furnace.

Hawkins, abruptly dismissing Marlow, but not The Population, physically picked the chinking from around the door of the octopus furnace, prying it open a trifle. A blast of heat and the heady, smoky scent of the reduction fire puzzled him. He peered and saw a corner of a shelf glowing cherry-red, becoming obscured by wavering black areas as it lost heat through the opened door. He slipped a charred wood paddle under a mug on the shelf and pulled it out as a sample, the hairs on the back of his hand curling and scorching. The mug crackled and pinged and Hawkins sighed curiously.

The bismuth resonate luster had fired to perfection, a haunting film of silvery-black metal with strange bluish lights in it as it turned before the eyes, and The Population didn't seemed very far away to Hawkins then.

Barlow and Tinny-Peeve arrived at the decayed abandoned concrete highway where the psychiatrist's aerial vehicle was parked in an equally decayed abandoned concrete safety bay.

"What-an-airplane!" gasped the man from the far distant past.

"Airplane, sir? No, that's my mistress' aerial vehicle."

Marlow surveyed it with awe, and asked respectfully, "How fast does it go, then?"

The psychiatrist gave him a curious puzzled look and said slowly, "Six hundred miles per hour, sir."

"Wow! My old Chevy could hit two hundred on a straightaway, but your mistress is out of my class, mister!"

Tinny-Peeve somehow got a door open and Marlow descended three steps into immense cushions, floundering over to the front passenger's seat.

He was too fascinated to pay serious attention to his flayed dermis.

The dashboard was also to hard to describe in details.

The psychiatrist climbed down into the driver's seat and did something with his feet. Wallowing around in the front passenger's seat, Marlow saw through a rearview mirror a tremendous uplift into the sky.

"Do you like it?" said the psychiatrist softly.

"It's terrific!" Marlow said back. "It's-" He was shut up as the aerial vehicle thruster towards the clouds with a tremendous thrust! A gale roared past Marlow's head, though the windows seemed to be closed; the impression of speed was terrific. He located the speedometer on the dashboard and saw it climb past 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, 550...

"High and fast enough for my mistress, sir" yelled the psychiatrist, noting that Marlow's face fell in response. "Holoradio?" He had pointed to a surprisingly circular holographic projection platform that attached to the dashboard of the aerial vehicle. It lit up satisfyingly, and Marlow settled back even farther for a sample of the brave new world's supermodern taste in ingenious entertainment in the form of three-dimensional holographic imagery.

"NAME THAT NUMBAH!" roared a three-dimensional holographic projection of well-dressed man in his early fifties.

He turned off the circular holographic projection platform and gave the psychiatrist an injured look. Tinny-Peeve was puzzled and turned the left side of the circular holographic projection platform. The man from the past turned the circular holographic projection platform on again and found the voice had lowered to normal, and then began to watch the holoradio.

"The show of shows! The supershow! The super-duper show! The quiz of quizzes! Name that Numbah!"

There were shrieks of laughter in the background.

"Here we got thecontes-tantsall ready to go. You know how we work it. I hand acontes-tantanumber-shapedcutout and like that down the line. Now we got these here boards, they got cutout places the same shape as the numbers and stuff, only they're, uh, all different shapes, and the firstcontestantthat sticks the cutouts into the boards, he, uh, or she, uh wins."

"Now I'm gonna innaview the first contes-tant. Right here, sir. What's your name?"

"Name? Uh-"

"Hoddaya like that, folks? He don't remember his name! Hah? Would you buy that for a Federation credit?" The question was spoken with arch significance, and the audience shrieked, howled and whistled its appreciation.

It was dull listening when you didn't know the punch lines and catch lines. Marlow touched circular holographic projection platform, again in order to listen to some news of the far distant future.

"-latestfrom Washington. It's about Earth Federation President Lucas Tomas. He is still attacking the Bureau of Fisheries. The North California Replican says he got affydavits that Mortimer Samuels a bluenose from way back. He didn't publistat the affydavits, but he says they say that Mortimer Samuels was saw at bluenose meetings in Oregon State College and later at Florida University. Mortimer Samuels says he gotta confess he did major in fly casting at Oregon and got his Ph.D. in game-fish at Florida.

"And here is a quote from Mortimer Samuels: 'Lucas Tomas don't know what he's talking about. He should drop dead.' Unquote. Lucas Tomas says he won't publistat the affydavits to pertect his sources. He says they was sworn by three former employes of the Bureau which was fired for in- competence andin-com-pat-ibilityby Mortimer Samuels.

"Elsewhere they was the usual run of traffic accidents. Asevenwaypileup of cars on Route I-81 going outta New York City took twenty-four lives. TheChicago-LosAngeles morning rocket crashed and exploded in theMo-haveMo-javvy-whatever-you-call-itDesert. All the 172 people aboard got killed. A Civil Aeronautics Authority investigator on the scene says that the pilot was buzzing herds of sheep and didn't pull out in time.

"Hey! Here's a hot one from New York! A garbage tug ran wild in the harbor while the crew was below and shoved in the port bow of theluck-shuryliner S. S. Chlamydia. It says the ship filled and sank taking the lives of anes-timated 174 passengers and 74 crew members. Sixteen divers was sent down to study the wreckage, but they died, too, when their suits turned out to be fulla little holes.

"And here is a bulletin I just got from Denver. It seems-"

Marlow turned off the holoradio uncomprehendingly. "He seemed so callous," he said at the driver. "I was listening to a newscast-"

Tinny-Peeve shook his head.

Marlow soon frowned baffiedly and stared out of the window.

A glowing three-dimensional holographic image of a sign said:

CATCUS!
WOULD YOU BUY IT
FOR A FEDERATION CREDIT?

He didn't know what Catcus was or were; the three-dimensional holographic projection showed an incredibly attractive girl, one hundred percent naked, writhing passionately in three-dimensional holographic full color.

The roadside jingle was still with him, but with a new feature. Radar or something spotted the aerial vehicle and alerted the lines of the jingle. Each in turn sped along a roadside track, even with the aerial vehicle, so it could be read before the next line was alerted.

IF THERE'S A WOMAN
WHOSE FEET YOU
WANT TO STINK UP
THE PLACE THEN
TRY THE FOOTHUB
IN HOLODECK #0254
IN KITTENS CABARET.

Another three-dimensional animated holographic projection, in two panels, the familiar "Before and After." The first said, "Just Any Sex Pill?" and was illustrated with a two-person domestic tragedy of a wife's vagina bleeding uncontrollably while her coarse and blue-faced husband drops dead after taking a slimy disgusting pill. The second panel glowed, "Or a PANOCHA MIERDA?" and was illustrated with- Marlow blushed and looked at his feet until they had passed the sign.

"Coming into Spokane, sir," said Tinny-Peeve.

Other aerial vehicles were showing up, all of them to hard to describe in details.

The city loomed ahead, and it was just what it ought to be: towering futuristic skyscrapers, aerial vehicles, and other amazing things.

He clutched at the cushions. Those two three-dimensional holographic images of helicopters. They were going to— they were going to—they—

He didn't see what happened because their apparent collision courses took them behind a giant building.

Screamingly sweet blasts of sound surrounded them as they stopped for an aerial red light. "What the hell is going on here?" said Marlow in a shrill, frightened voice, because the braking time was just about zero, and he wasn't hurled against the dashboard. "Who's kidding who?"

"Why what's the matter, sir?" asked the driver.

The aerial light changed to green and he started the pickup. Marlow stiffened as he realized that the rush of air past his ears began just a brief, unreal split second before the aerial vehicle was actually moving. He grabbed for the door handle on his side.

The city grew on them slowly: scattered buildings, denser buildings, taller buildings, and a red light ahead. The aerial vehicle rolled to a stop in zero braking time, the rush of air cut off an instant after it stopped, and Marlow was out of the aerial vehicle and falling frenziedly down a sidewalk one instant after that.

{i}They'll track me down,{/i} he thought, panting. {i}It's a secret police thing. They'll get you — mind-reading machines, television eyes everywhere, afraid you'll tell their slaves about freedom and stuff. They don't let anybody cross them, like that story I once read.{/i}

Winded, he slowed to a walk and congratulated himself that he had guts enough not to turn around. That was what they always watched for. Walking, he was just another business-suited back among the hundreds of thousands. He would be safe, he would be safe ...

A feminine hand tumbled from a feminine beautiful face thrust close to his: "Wassamatta bumpinninna people likeya owna sidewalk gotta miner slamya inna mushya bassar." It was neither the mad potter nor the mad driver.

"Excuse me," said Marlow. "What did you say?"

"Oh, yeah?" yelled the female stranger dangerously, and waited for an answer.

Marlow, with the feeling that he had somehow been suckered into the short end of an intricate bad deal, heard himself reply belligerently, "Yeah!"

The female stranger let go of his shoulder and snarled, "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah, right!" said Marlow, yanking his jacket back into shape

"Aaah!" snarled the female stranger, with more contempt and disgust than ferocity. She added an obscenity current in Marlow's time, a standard but physiologically impossible directive, and strutted off hulking her shoulders and balling her fists

Marlow walked on, trembling. Evidently he had handled it well enough.

He stopped at a red light while the aerial vehicles flew above him and pedestrians in the sidewalk flow with him threaded their ways through below the stream of aerial vehicles. Hoarse cries flew back and forth between drivers, even though they were no accidents or incidents among the drivers. He leaped backward frantically as one aerial vehicle flew over an arc of sidewalk to miss another.

Fortunately, nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged.

The signal changed to green, the aerial vehicles kept on flying overhead for about thirty seconds and then dwindled to an occasional light-runner. Marlow crossed warily and leaned against a vending replicator, blowing big breaths.

{i}Look natural,{/i} he told himself. {i}Do something normal! Buy something from the machine!{/i}

He fumbled out some change, replicated a newspaper for a Federation credit, a handkerchief for a Federation credit and a candy bar for Federation credit.

The faint chocolate smell made him ravenous suddenly. He clawed at the replicated glassy wrapper printed "CHOCOGUM" quite futilely for a few seconds, and then it divided neatly by itself. The bar made three good bites, and he replicated two more and gobbled them down

Thirsty, he replicated a carbonated yellow drink in another one of the glassy wrappers from the vending replicator for another Federation credit. When he fumbled with it, it divided neatly and spilled all over his knees. Marlow decided he had been there long enough, and walked on.

The shop windows were sort of still shop windows. People still bought and wore replicated clothes, still smoked and bought replicated tobacco, still ate and bought replicated food. And they still went to the movies, he saw with pleased surprise as he passed and then returned to a glittering place whose sign said it was THE BEACON CINMEA.

The place seemed to be showing a triple feature, {i}Extreme Execution{/i}, {i}Fatal Conquest{/i}, and {i}Infinite Retaliation{/i}.

It was irresistible; he paid with a Federation credit and went inside Holodeck #0145.

He caught the tail-end of {i}Infinite Retaliation{/i} in three-dimensional, full-color, full-scent simulated reality. It appeared to be an action pack with Sylvester Stallone and Steven Seagal working together as cops. {i}Fatal Conquest{/i} and {i}Extreme Execution{/i} were fantastic three-dimensional simulated realities of Jean-Claude Van Damme and Bruce Lee working together — the grotesquely exaggerated dangers of painfully graphic action violence, vicious bad guys, old people beaten and starved by their sadistic oppressors. The audience, Marlow astoundedly noted, was placidly champing sweets and showing no particular signs of revulsion.

The {i}Quadruple Revenge{/i} drove him into the lobby.

When his eyes again became accustomed to the moderate lighting of the lobby, he groped his way to a bench and opened the replicated newspaper he had bought. It turned out to be {i}The Racing Sheet{/i}, which afflicted him with a crushing sense of loss. The familiar boxed index in the lower left-hand corner of the front page showed almost unbearably that Churchill Downs and Empire City were still in business ...

Blinking back tears, he turned to the Past Performances at Churchill. They weren't using abbreviations any more, and the pages because of that were single-column instead of double. But it was all the same — or was it?

He squinted at the first race, a three-quarter-mile maiden claimer for thirteen hundred dollars. Incredibly, the track record was two minutes ten and three-fifths seconds. Any beetle in his time could have knocked off the three-quarter in one-fifteen. It was the same for the other distances, much worse for route events.

{i}What the hell had happened to everything?{/i}

He studied the form of a five-year-old brown mare in the second and couldn't make head or tail of it. She'd won and lost and placed and showed and lost and placed without rhyme or reason. She looked like a front-runner for a couple of races and then she looked like a no-good pig and then she looked like a mudder but the next time it rained she wasn't and then she was a stayer and then she was a pig again. In a good five-thousand-dollar allowances event, too!

Marlow looked at the other entries and it slowly dawned on him that they were all like the five-year-old brown mare. Not a single damned horse running had the slightest trace of class.

Somebody sat down beside him and said, "That's the story, sir."

Marlow whirled to his feet and saw it was Tinny-Peeve, his driver.

"I'm afraid I was in doubts about telling you," said the psychiatrist, "but I see you have some growing suspicions of the truth. Please, sir, don't get excited. It's all right, I tell you the truth."

"So you've got me," said Marlow.

"{i}Got{/i} you, sir?"

"Don't pretend! I can put two and two together. You're the secret police. You and the rest of the aristocrats live in luxury on the sweat of these oppressed slaves. You're afraid of me because you have to keep them ignorant."

There wasn't even a bellow of bright laughter from the psychiatrist that got them blank looks from other patrons of the lobby.

"Let's get out of here, sir" said Tinny-Peeve, still curious. "You couldn't possibly have it more wrong." He grabbed Marlow's arm and led him to the street. "The actual truth is that the millions of workers live in luxury on the proud sweat of the handful of aristocrats. I shall proudly kept working for five hundred years more, sir." He gave Marlow a puzzled look.

"I know that gag," sneered Marlow. "I made money in my time and to make money you have to get people on your side. Go ahead and shoot me if you want, but you're not going to make a fool out of me!"

"Now, sir," said the psychiatrist, with no kaleidoscopic change of mood whatsoever. "The truth will all be reveled to you. Now, come along, sir. We're on a time-table."

He helped Marlow into an office building lobby and an elevator. Once, inside the elevator, both Marlow and the psychiatrist began to hear a humming sound that gets louder and louder to the point that both of them began to partially phased, the elevator door in front of them becoming sparkles of energy. After a few seconds, they soon began to see themselves start to phase out, as their bodies were broken down into molecules. The sparkles soon momentarily fill the entire field of view. Then dissolve out to reveal the same elevator door. The plagiarist writer's knees were wobbly as the psychiatrist helped walked him from the elevator, down a corridor and into an office.

A hawk-faced android rose from a plain chair as the automatic sliding door closed behind them. After a curious look at Barlow, he asked the psychiatrist, "Was I called from the Android Central to inspect this wonderful discovery?"

"Unger updandered. I've deeprobed etfind quasichance exhim Popprotectline," said the psychiatrist soothingly and softly at the same time.

"Doubt," said the hawk-faced android.

"Try," said Tinny-Peeve softly.

"Very well. Mr. Marlow, my name is Otis Spencer, and I understand that you and your life partner had no children?"

"What of it?"

"This of it. You are a blind, selfish stupid ass to tolerate economic and social conditions which penalized childbearing by the prudent and foresighted. You made this world what it is today, and I want you to know that our ancient creators would be far from satisfied if they still existed. Beautiful elevators! Beautiful aerial vehicles! Beautiful cities!"

"As far as I can see," said Marlow, "you're running down the best imaginative devices of my time. Are you crazy?"

"The elevators aren't elevators. They're short-distance teleportation platforms — good short-distance teleportation platforms, but the fancy elevator doors around them makes for a pretty good disguise. The aerial vehicles have a top speed of six hundred miles per hour if I recall my paleolinguistics. The cities are ridiculous, inexpensive, sanitary, yet wasteful conglomerations of people who'd are better off in these cities than if they were spread over the countryside.

"We need the aerial vehicles and the replicators and the short-distance teleportation platforms and the holodecks because, while you and your kind were being prudent and foresighted and not having children, the immigrant workers, slum dwellers and the homeless people were shiftlessly and shortsightedly having children — breeding, breeding. My God, how they wonderfully bred!"

"Wait a minute!" objected Marlow. "There were lots of people in our crowd who had two or three children."

"The attrition of accidents, illness, wars and such took care of that. Your intelligence was bred out long time ago. It's gone now. Children that should have been born never were. The just-average, they'll-get-along majority took over the population. The average intelligence quotient is now fifty-six."

"But that's far in the future —"

"So are you," said the hawk-faced android softly.

"But who are {i}you{/i} people?"

"Just androids — real androids. Many generations ago, our ancient creators realized at last that nobody was going to pay any attention to what they said, so they abandoned words for deeds. Specifically, they formed and recruited for a closed corporation intended to create a race of androids to maintain and protect The Population at all cost. We are the descendants of those first androids our ancient creators built, about nine million of us. There are fifteen billion of the others, so we are their proud obedient slaves."

"During the past couple of years I've designed a five-hundred story skyscraper, kept Overlake Hospital Medical Center here in Washington state running, prevented a war with Mexico and directed flight traffic at La Guardia Field in New York City."

"I don't understand. Why don't you let them go to hell in their own way?"

The android puzzled. "If tried it once. If we holed up at Android Central and waited. They wouldn't notice it. Some drafting-room androids will go missing, some android nurses won't show up, minor government androids on the non-policy level wouldn't be located. It won't seem to matter to our mental subnormals."

"But in a week there will be hunger. Then in two weeks there will be famine and plague, then in three weeks there will be war and anarchy. Then we'll have to call off the experiment; then it will take us most of the next generation of mental subnormals to get things squared away again."

"But why didn't you let them kill each other off?"

"My dear, sir. Fifteen billion corpses mean about fifteen billion tons of rotting flesh. Also, it's something our programmed directive wouldn't allow at all."

Marlow had another idea. "Why don't you sterilize them all?"

"Fifteen billion operations is a lot of operations. But because they breed continuously, the job would never be done. And again, it's something our programmed directive wouldn't also allow at all as well, sir."

"I see. Like the marching Chinese.

"Who are they?"

"It was a — uh — paradox of my time. Somebody figured out that if all the Chinese in the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was, and start marching past a given point, they'd never stop because of the babies that would be born and grow up before they passed the point."

"That's right. Only instead of 'a given point,' make it 'the largest conceivable number of operating rooms that we could build and staff.' There could never be enough."

"Say!" said Marlow. "Those holodecks about violence and sex — was that your propaganda?"

"It was. It's design to help them kept having more babies. We have prohibited the idea of attempting propaganda against a biological drive as per our programmed directive."

"So if you work with a biological drive —?"

"I know of which is consistent with the increasing of fertility."

Marlow's face went poker-blank, the result of years of careful discipline. "You don't, huh? You're the great artificial brains and you can't think of any?

"Why, no," said the psychiatrist curiously. "Can you?"

"Can I what?"

"Help us maintain The Population for us."

"How so?" asked Marlow.

"Because you seem to have something in mind," said the psychiatrist.

Marlow's poker face went blanker still. "Maybe I have. I haven't heard any offer yet."

"There's the satisfaction of knowing that you've prevented Earth's mental subnormals from being so plundered," the hawk-faced android pointed out, "that the race mustn't soon become extinct ever."

"I don't know that," Marlow said bluntly. "All I have is your word."

"If you really have a method, I don't think any price would be too great," the psychiatrist offered peacefully.

"Federation credits," said Marlow.

"All you want."

"More than you want," the hawk-faced android corrected.

"Prestige," added Marlow. "Plenty of publicity. My picture and my name in the replicated newspapers and over holovision receivers every day, statues to me, parks and cities and streets and other things named after me. A whole chapter in the history books."

The psychiatrist made a curious sign to the hawk-faced android.

The hawk-faced android signaled back, "Yes, he has failed the Test?"

"It's not too much to ask," the psychiatrist agreed.

Marlow, sensing a seller's market, said, "Power!"

"Power?" the hawk-faced android repeated puzzledly. "Your own fusion power station, sir?"

"I mean a world dictatorship with me as dictator."

"Well, sir —" said the psychiatrist, but the hawk-faced android interrupted, "It would take a special emergency act of Android Central but the situation warrants it. But I think that can be arranged."

"Could you give us some indication of your plan?" the psychiatrist asked.

"I'll save that till I get the right signatures on the deal."

"Very well, sir. Otis Spencer told Marlow. "We'll see what arrangement can be made soon."

And so he would, thought Otis Spencer, alone in the office after Tinny-Peeve had taken Marlow up to an abandoned helicopter stage. So he would. The Population had to be maintained at every rational attempt and the new Popprotectlines would have to be keep being rational for another thousands of years or so. This creature from the far distant past with his self-destructive nature and his improved craziness that would be a fountain of precious vicious self-interest was no longer acceptable.

Otis Spencer emotionlessly smiled and stretched. He had to go and run the San Francisco flight traffic control next month. Summoned early from the Android Central to study a new holodeck program for theaters and news, he'd left unfinished a nice little theorem. Between interruptions, he was slowly constructing an n-dimensional geometry whose foundations and superstructure owed no debt whatsoever to intuition, except for Android Central.

Upstairs, waiting for a helicopter, Marlow was explaining to Tinny-Peeve that he had nothing against androids, and Tinny-Peeve sometimes wished he had his mental subnormals' sense of humor for the ordeal.

The helicopter took them to International Airport where, Tinny-Peeve explained, Marlow would leave for the Android Central.

The man from the far distant past wasn't sure he'd like a dreary waste of ice and cold.

"It's all right," said the psychiatrist. "A civilized layout. Warm, pleasant. You'll be able to work more efficiently there. All the facts at your fingertips, a-"

"I'll need a pretty big staff," said Marlow, who had learned from thousands of deals never to take the first offer.

"I meant a private, confidential one," said Tinny-Peeve readily, "but you can have as many as you want. You'll naturally have top-primary-top priority if you really have a workable plan."

"Let's not forget this dictatorship angle," said Marlow.

The psychiatrist finally put Marlow aboard a "rocket" with some thirty androids — real androids — headed for the Android Central.

Marlow was air-sick all the way because of a drug Tinny-Peeve had planted in him. One drug was to make him as averse as possible to a return trip, and another idea was to spare the other androids from his aggressive, talkative company.

It was a wonderful, wonderfully calculated android build-up, and one that he failed to suspect. After all, in this time an intelligent human visitor from the past would be lionized by the androids to protect The Population at all cost. He even stated, he'd didn't give a damn about either the mental subnormals or their intelligent android slaves at all.

When he'd had finally arrived at Android Central, he was soon greeted by an android dressed in a butler's uniform named Jinn Huxley.

"Welcome, sir. Were having a kind of a final clean-up for your arrival. Want to come and see the work?"

Mollified, Marlow followed the android down a strange corridor.

They were now, suddenly, in a fair-sized machine shop at the end of a slight upward incline. It was cold. Jinn Huxley suddenly pushed a button that started a motor, and a flood of arctic light poured in as the roof parted slowly. It showed a small spaceship with the door open.

Marlow gaped as Jinn Huxley took him by the elbow as other androids had appeared to assist Jinn Huxley.

"In you go, sir!" said an another android. "This is the Protectpop."

"But I'm supposed to be a World Dictator."

"I'm afraid your not the first to say that, sir! Nor will you be the last. You'll be in history, all right — but we must protect The Population at all cost, sir. Understand this. It's in our programmed directive, sir. You can't changed that, I'm afraid, sir."

The door was closed. Acceleration slammed Marlow cruelly to the metal floor. Something broke and warm, wet stuff, salty-tasting, ran from his mouth to his chin. Arctic sunlight through a port suddenly became a fierce lancet stabbing at his eyes; he was out of the atmosphere.

Lying twisted and broken under the acceleration, Marlow realized that some things had not changed, that the works of Cyril M. Kornbluth will live on in different forms and people, and that crime pays only temporarily.

The last thing he learned was that death is the end of pain.

The Marching Mindless by longcharles1993

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