were silent, and the recording counters had probably jammed in all of them. There’d be something of interest when the first drone came back. He dragged his mind back to the present, and went to work with Alexis Pitov.
They were at it all night, checking, evaluating, making sure that the masses of data that were coming in were being promptly processed for programming the computers. At each of the increasingly frequent coffee-breaks, he noticed Pitov looking curiously. He said nothing, however, until, long after dawn, they stood outside the bunker, waiting for the jeep that would take them back to their bungalow and watching the line of trucks—Argentine army engineers, locally hired laborers, load after load of prefab-huts and equipment—going down toward the target-area, where they would be working for the next week.
“Lee, were you serious?” Pitov asked. “I mean, about this being like the one at Auburn?”
“It was exactly like Auburn; even that blazing light that came rushing down out of the sky. I wondered about that at the time—what kind of a missile would produce an effect like that. Now I know. We just launched one like it.”
“But that’s impossible! I told you, between us we know everything that was happening in nuclear physics then. Nobody in the world knew how to assemble atoms of negamatter and build them into masses.”
“Nobody, and nothing, on this planet built that mass of negamatter. I doubt if it even came from this Galaxy. But we didn’t know that, then. When that negamatter meteor fell, the only thing anybody could think of was that it had been a Soviet missile. If it had hit around Leningrad or Moscow or Kharkov, who would you have blamed it on?”
It’s All Yours
by Sam Merwin, Jr.
It was a strange and bitter Earth over which the Chancellor ruled—a strange and deformed world. There were times when the Chancellor suspected that he really was a humanistic old fool, but this seemed to be his destiny and it was difficult to be anything else. Human, like all other organic life on Earth, was dying. Where it spawned, it spawned monsters. What was to be the answer?
It was a lonely thing to rule over a dying world—a world that had become sick, so terribly sick . . . .
The Chancellor’s private washroom, discreetly off the innermost of his official suite of offices, was a dream of gleaming black porcelain and solid gold. Each spout, each faucet, was a gracefully stylized mermaid, the combination stall shower-steam room a marvel of hydraulic comfort and decor with variable lighting plotted to give the user every sort of beneficial ray, from ultraviolet to black heat.
But Bliss was used to it. At the moment, as he washed his hands, he was far more concerned with the reflection of his face in the mirror above the dolphin-shaped bowl. With a sort of wry resignation, he accepted the red rims of fatigue around his eyes, the batch of white at his left temple that was spreading toward the top of his dark, well-groomed head. He noted that the lines rising from the corners of his mouth to the curves of his nostrils seemed to have deepened noticeably during the past few days.
As he dried his hands in the air-stream, he told himself that he was letting his imagination run away with him—imagination had always been his weakness, and a grave failing for a head of state. And while he drew on his special, featherweight gloves, he reminded himself that, if he was aging prematurely, it was nobody’s fault but his own. No other man or woman approaching qualification for the job would have taken it—only a sentimental, humanistic fool like himself.
He took a quick sip from the benzedral fountain, waited for the restorative to do its work. Then, feeling moderately refreshed, he returned to his office, sank into the plastifoam cushions of the chair behind his tabletop mountain of a desk and pressed the button that informed Myra, his confidential secretary, he was ready.
There were five in the delegation—by their collars or robes, a priest, a rabbi, a lama, a dark-skinned Watusi witchman and a white robed abbess draped in chaste, flowing white. Automatically, he surveyed them, checking. The priest’s right shoe was twice as broad as his left, the rabbi’s head, beneath the black cap that covered it, was long and thin as a zucchini squash. The witchman, defiantly bare and black as ebony from the waist up, had a tiny duplicate of his own handsome head sprouting from the base of his sternum. The visible deformities of the lama and abbess were concealed beneath their flowing robes. But they were there—they had to be there.
Bliss rose as they entered and said, waving a gloved hand at the chairs on their side of the desk, “Greetings, sirs and madam—please be seated.” And, when they were comfortable, “Now, to what do I owe the honor of this visit?”
He knew, of course—sometimes he thought he knew more than any man should be allowed or able to know—but courtesy and custom demanded the question. It was the witchman who answered. Apparently he was spokesman for the group.
He said, speaking beautiful Cantabrigian English, “Honorable sir, we have come as representatives of the religions of the world, not to protest but in a spirit of enquiry. Our flocks grow increasingly restive, when they are not leaving us altogether, our influence grows less. We wish to know what steps, if any, are being taken toward modification or abrogation of the sterility program. Without hope of posterity, mankind is lost.”
While the others murmured their agreement, Bliss focused his gaze on the sealed lids of the tiny face sprouting from the Watusi’s breastbone. He wondered if there were eyes behind them, if there were a tongue behind those tiny clamped lips, and what words such a tongue would utter if it could speak.
“We are waiting, honorable sir,” the spokesman said.
Shaking himself free of the absorption, Bliss glanced at the teleprompter on his desk. Efficient as ever, Myra had their names there before him. He said, “Gentle R’hau-chi, I believe a simple exposition of our situation, and of what programs we are seeking to meet and mitigate it with, will give you the answers. Not, perhaps, the answers you seek, but the answers we must accept . . . ”
Although the reports from World Laboratories changed from day to day, he knew the speech by heart. For the problem remained. Humanity, like virtually all other organic life on Earth, was dying. Where it spawned, it spawned monsters. On three-dimensional vidar rolls, he showed them live shots of what the laboratories were doing, what they were trying to do—in the insemination groups, the incubators, the ray-bombardment chambers, the parthenogenesis bureau.
Studying them, he could see by their expressions, hear by the prayers they muttered, how shocking these revelations were. It was one thing to know what was going on—another for them to see for themselves. It was neither pretty—nor hopeful.
When it was over, the rabbi spoke. He said, in deep, slightly guttural, vastly impressive intonations, “What about Mars, honorable sir? Have you reached communication with our brothers and sisters on the red planet?”
Bliss shook his head. He glanced at the alma-calendar at his elbow and told them, “Mars continues to maintain silence—as it has for two hundred and thirty-one years. Ever since the final war.”
They knew it, but they had to hear it from him to accept it even briefly. There was silence, long wretched silence. Then the abbess spoke. She said, “Couldn’t we send out a ship to study conditions first hand, honorable sir?”
Bliss sighed. He said, “The last four spaceships on Earth were sent to Mars at two-year intervals during the last perihelions. Not one of them came back. That was
