Masters of Evolution Read online

  Table of Contents

  Masters of Evolution

  I

  II

  III

  IV

  V

  VI

  VII

  VIII

  Masters of Evolution

  Damon Knight

  * * *

  ACE BOOKS, INC. 23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.

  masters of evolution

  Copyright ©, 1959, by Ace Books, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Alvah Gustad – The fate of an empire rested on the condition of his stomach.

  Beej Hofmeyer – She looked like a woman, but she smelled like a Muckfoot!

  Doc Bither – When he raised a kitten, you couldn’t be sure if it would turn out to be a cat or a tiger.

  Manager Wytak – Bravery was something he always looked for in other people, but never in himself.

  Artie Brumbacher – He couldn’t read or write, but nevertheless he was a scholar.

  Jerry Finch – To his way of thinking, there was nothing unusual about being a gardener in an Iron Pit.

  I

  The most promising young realie actor in Greater New York, everyone agreed, was a beetle-browed Apollo named Alvah Gustad. His diction, which still held overtones of the Under Flushing labor pool, the unstudied animal grace of his movements and his habitually sullen expression enabled him to dominate any stage not occupied by an unclothed woman at least as large as himself. At twenty-six, he had a very respectable following among the housewives of Manhattan, Queens, Jersey and the rest of the seven boroughs. The percentage of blown fuses resulting from subscribers’ attempts to clutch his realized image was extraordinarily low—Alvah, his press agents explained with perfect accuracy, left them too numb.

  Young Gustad, who frequently made his first entrance water-beaded as from the shower, with a towel girded chastely around his loins, was nevertheless in his private life a modest and slightly bewildered citizen, much given to solitary reading, and equipped with a perfect set of the conventional virtues.

  These included cheerful performance of all municipal duties and obligations—like every right-thinking citizen, Gustad held down two jobs in summer and three in winter. At the moment, for example, he was an actor by day and a metals-reclamation supervisor by night.

  Chief among his less tangible attributes, was that emotion which in some ages has been variously described as civic pride or patriotism. In A.D. 2064, as in B.C. 400, they amounted to the same thing.

  Behind the Manager’s desk, the wall was a single huge slab of black duroplast, with a map of the city picked out in pinpoints of brilliance. As Gustad entered with his manager and his porter, an unseen chorus of basso profundos broke into the strains of The Slidewalks of New York. After four bars, it segued to New York, New York, It’s a Pip of a Town and slowly faded out.

  The Manager himself, the Hon. Boleslaw Wytak, broke the reverent hush by coming forward to take Alvah’s hand and lead him toward the desk. “Mr. Gustad—and Mr. Diamond, isn’t it? Great pleasure to have you here. I don’t know if you’ve met all these gentlemen. Commissioner Laurence, of the Department of Extramural Relations—Director Ostertag, of the Bureau of Vital Statistics—Chairman Neddo, of the Research and Development Board.”

  Wytak waited until everyone was comfortably settled in one of the reclining chairs which fitted into slots in the desk, with cigars, cigarettes, liquor capsules and cold snacks at each man’s elbow. “Now, Mr. Gustad—and Mr. Diamond —I’m a plain blunt man and I know you’re wondering why I asked you to come here today. I’m going to tell you. The City needs a man with great talent and great courage to do a job that, I tell you frankly, I wouldn’t undertake myself without great misgivings.” He gazed at Gustad warmly, affectionately but sternly. “You’re the man, Alvah.”

  Little Jack Diamond cleared his throat nervously. “What kind of a job did you have in mind, Mr. Manager? Of course, anything we can do for our city …”

  Wytak’s big face, without perceptibly moving a muscle, somehow achieved a total change of expression. “Alvah, I want you to go to the Sticks.”

  Gustad blinked and tilted upright in his chair. He looked at Diamond.

  The little man suddenly seemed two sizes smaller inside his box-cut cloth-of-silver tunic. He gestured feebly and wheezed, “Wake-me-up!” The porter behind his chair stepped forward alertly, clanking, and flipped open one of the dozens of metal and plastic boxes that clung to him all over like barnacles. He popped a tiny capsule into his palm, rolled it expertly to thumb-and-finger position, broke it under Diamond’s nose.

  A reeking-sweet green fluid dripped from it and ran stickily down the front of Diamond’s tunic.

  “Dumbhead!” said Diamond. “Not cream de menthy, a wake-me-up!” He sat up as the abashed servant produced another capsule. “Never mind.” Some color was beginning to come back into his face. “Blotter!” A wad of absorbent fibers. “Vacuum!” A lemon-sized globe with a flaring snout. “Gon-Stink!” Fresser!”

  Gustad looked back at the Manager. “Your Honor, you mean you want me to go into the Sticks? I mean,” he said, groping for words, “you want me to play for the Muckfeet?”

  “That is just exactly what I want you to do.” Wytak nodded toward the Commissioner, the Director, and the Chairman. “These gentlemen are here to tell you why. Suppose you start, Ozzie.”

  Ostertag, the one with the fringe of yellowish white hair around his potato-colored pate, shifted heavily and stared at Gustad. “In my bureau, we have records of population and population density, imports and exports, ratio of births to deaths and so on that go back all the way to the time of the United States. Now this isn’t known generally, Mr. Gustad, but although New York has been steadily growing ever since its founding in 1646, our growth in the last thirty years has been entirely due to immigration from other less fortunate cities.

  “In a way, it’s fortunate—I mean to say that we can’t expand horizontally, because it has been found impossible to eradicate the soil organisms—” a delicate shudder ran around the group—“left by our late enemies. And as for continuing to build vertically—well, since Pittsburgh fell, we have been dependent almost entirely on salvaged scrap for our steel.

  To put it bluntly, unless something is done about this situation, the end is in sight. Not alone of this administration, but of the city as well. Now the reasons for this—ah—what shall I say …”

  With his head back, staring at the ceiling, Wytak began to speak so quietly that Ostertag blundered through another phrase and a half before he realized he had been interrupted.

  “Thirty years ago, when I first came to this town, an immigrant kid with nothing in the whole world but the tunic on my back and the gleam in my eye, we had just got through with the last of the Muckfeet Wars. According to your history books, we won that war. Til tell you something —we were licked!”

  Alvah squirmed uncomfortably as Wytak raised his head and glanced defiantly around the desk, looking for contradiction. The Manager said, “We drove them back to the Ohio, thirty years ago. And where are they now?” He turned to Laurence. “Phil?”

  Laurence rubbed his long nose with a bloodless forefinger. “Their closest settlement is twelve miles away. That’s to the southwest, of course. In the west and north—”

  “Twelve miles,” said Wytak reflectively. “But that isn’t the reason I say they licked us. They licked us because there are twenty million of us today … and about one hundred fifty million of them. Right, Phil?”

  Laurence said, “Well, there aren’t any accurate figures, you know, Boley. There hasn’t been any census of the Muck-feet for almost a century, but—”

  “About one hun
dred fifty million,” interrupted Wytak. “Even if we formed a league with every other city on this continent, the odds would be heavily against us—and they breed like flies.” He slapped the desk with his open palm. “So do their filthy animals!”

  A shudder rippled across the group. Diamond shut his eyes tight.

  “There it is,” said Wytak. “Rome fell. Babylon fell. The same thing can happen to New York. Those illiterate savages will go on increasing year by year, getting more ignorant and more degraded with every generation … and a century from now—or two, or five—they’ll be the human race. And New York …”

  Wytak turned to look at the map behind him. His hand touched a button and the myriad tiny lights went out.

  Gustad was not an actor who wept readily, but he felt tears welling over his eyelids. At the same time, the thought crossed his mind that, competition being what it was in the realies, it was a good thing that Wytak had gone into politics instead of acting.

  “Sir,” he said, “what can we do?”

  Wytak’s eyes were focused far away. After a moment, his head turned heavily on his massive shoulders, like a gun turret. “Chairman Neddo has the answer to that. I want you to listen carefully to what he’s going to tell you, Alvah.”

  Neddo’s crowded small face flickered through a complicated series of twitches, all centripetal and rapidly executed. “Over the past several years,” he said jerkily, “under Manager Wytak’s direction, we have been developing certain devices, certain articles of commerce, which are designed, especially designed, to have an attraction for the Muckfeet. Trade articles. Most of these, I should say all—”

  “Trade articles,” Wytak cut in softly. “Thank you, Ned. That’s the phrase that tells the story. Alvah, we’re going to go back to the principles that made our ancestors great. Trade—expanding markets—expanding industries. Think about it. From the Arctic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico, there are some 150 million people who haven’t got a cigarette lighter or a wristphone or a realie set among them. Alvah, we’re going to civilize the Muckfeet. We’ve put together a grab-bag of modern science, expressed in ways their primitive minds can understand—and you’re the man who’s going to sell it to them! What do you say to that?”

  This was a familiar cue to Gustad—it had turned up for the fiftieth or sixtieth time in his last week’s script, when he had played the role of a kill-crazy sewer inspector, trapped by flood waters in the cloacae of Under Brooklyn. “I say—” he began, then realized that his usual response was totally inappropriate. “It sounds wonderful,” he finished weakly.-

  Wytak nodded in a businesslike way. “Now here’s the program.” He pressed a button, and a relief map of the North American continent appeared on the wall behind him. “Indicator.” Wytak’s porter put a metal tube with a shaped grip into his hand—a tiny spot on the map fluoresced where he pointed it.

  “You’ll swing down to the southwest until you cross the Tennessee, then head westward about to here, then up through the Plains, then back north of the Great Lakes and home again. You’ll notice that this route keeps you well clear of both Chicago and Toronto. Remember that—it’s important. We know that Frisco is working on a project similar to ours, although they’re at least a year behind us. If we know that, the chances are that the other Cities know it too, but we’re pretty sure there’s been no leak in our own security. There isn’t going to be any.”

  He handed the indicator back. “You’ll be gone about three months …”

  Diamond was having trouble with his breathing again… You’ll have to rough it pretty much—there’ll be room in your floater for you and your equipment, and that’s all.”

  Diamond gurgled despairingly and rolled up his eyes. Gustad himself felt an unpleasant sinking sensation.

  “You mean,” he asked incredulously, “I’m supposed to go all by myself—without even a reporter?”

  “That’s right,” said Wytak. “You see, Alvah, you and I are civilized human beings—we know there are so many indispensable time and labor saving devices that nobody could possibly carry them all himself. But could you explain that to a Muckfoot?”

  “I guess not.”

  “That’s why only a man with your superb talents can do this job for the City. Those people actually live the kind of sordid brutal existence you portray so well in the realies. Well, you can be as rough and tough as they are—you can talk their own language, and they’ll respect you.”

  Gustad flexed his muscles slightly, feeling pleased but not altogether certain. Then a new and even more revolting aspect of this problem occurred to him. “Your Honor, suppose I got along too well with the Muckfeet? I mean suppose they invited me into one of their houses to—” he gagged slightly—“eat?”

  Wytak’s face went stony. “I am surprised that you feel it necessary to bring that subject up. All that will be covered very thoroughly in the briefing you will get from Commissioner Laurence and Chairman Neddo and their staffs. And I want you to understand, Gustad, that no pressure of any kind is being exerted on you to take this assignment. This is a job for a willing, cooperative volunteer, not a draftee. If you feel you’re not the man for it, just say so now.”

  Gustad apologized profusely. Wytak interrupted him, with the warmest and friendliest smile imaginable. “That’s all right, son, I understand. I understand perfectly. Well, gentlemen, I think that’s all.”

  As soon as they were alone, Diamond clutched Gustad’s sleeve and pulled him over to the side of the corridor. “Listen to me, Al boy. We can still pull you out of this. I know a doctor that will make you so sick you couldn’t walk across the street. He wouldn’t do it for everybody, but he owes me a couple of—”

  “No, wait a minute. I don’t—”

  “I know, I know,” said Diamond impatiently. “You’ll get your contract busted with Seven Boroughs and you’ll lose a couple months, maybe more, and you’ll have to start all over again with one of the little studios, but what of it? In a year or two, you’ll be as good as—”

  “Now wait, Jack. In the first—”

  “Al, I’m not just thinking about my twenty per cent of you. I don’t even care about that—it’s just money. What I want, I want you should still be alive next year, you understand what I mean?”

  “Look,” said Gustad, “you don’t understand, Jack. I want to go. I mean I don’t exactly want to, but—” He pointed down the corridor to the window that framed a vista of gigantic columns, fiercely brilliant below, fading to massive darkness above, with a million tiny floater-lights drifting like a river of Stardust down the avenue. “Just look at that. It took thousands of years to build! I mean if I can keep it going just by spending three months …

  “And besides,” he added practically, “think of the publicity.”

  II

  The foothill country turned out to be picturesque but not very rewarding. Alvah had by-passed the ancient states of Pennsylvania and Maryland as directed, since the tribes nearest the city were understood to be still somewhat rancorous. By the end of his first day, he was beginning to regard this as a serious under-statement.

  He had brought his floater down, with flags flying, loudspeakers blaring, colored lights flashing and streamers flapping gaily behind him, just outside an untidy collection of two-story beehive huts well south of the former Pennsylvania border. He had seen numerous vaguely human shapes from the air, but when he extruded his platform and stepped out, every visible door was shut, the streets were empty, and there was no moving thing in sight, except for a group of singularly unpleasant-looking animals in a field to his fight.

  After a few moments, Gustad shut off the loudspeakers and listened. He thought he heard a hum of voices from the nearest building. Suppressing a momentary qualm, he lowered himself on the platform stair and walked over to the building. It had a single high window, a crude oval in shape, closed by a discolored pane.

  Standing under this window, Alvah called, “Hello in there!”

  The muffled voices died awa
y for a moment, then buzzed as busily as ever.

  “Come on out—I want to talk to you!” Same result.

  “You don’t have to be afraid! I come in peace!”

  The voices died away again, and Alvah thought he saw a dim face momentarily through the pane. A single voice rose on an interrogative note.

  “Peace!” Alvah shouted.

  The window slid abruptly back into the wall and, as Alvah gaped upward, a deluge of slops descended on him, followed by a gale of coarse laughter.

  Alvah’s immediate reaction, after the first dazed and gasping instant, was a hot-water-and-soap tropism, carrying with it an ardent desire to get out of his drenched clothes and throw them away. His second, as imperious as the first, had the pure flame of artistic inspiration—he wanted to see how many esthetically satisfying small pieces one explosive charge would make out that excrescence-shaped building.

  Under no conditions, said the handbook he had been required to memorize, will you commit any act which might be interpreted by the Muckfeet as aggressive, nor will you make use of your weapons at any time, unless such use becomes necessary for the preservation of your own life.

  Alvah wavered, grew chilly and retired. Restored in body, but shaken in spirit, he headed south.

  Then there had been his encounter with the old man and the animal. Somewhere in the triangle of land between the Mississippi and the Big Black, at a point which was not on his itinerary at all, but had the overwhelming attraction of being more than a thousand air-miles from New York, he had set the floater down near another sprawling settlement.

  As usual, all signs of activity in and around the village promptly disappeared. With newly acquired caution, Alvah sat tight. Normal human curiosity, he reasoned, would drive the Muckfeet to him sooner or later—and even if that failed, there was his nuisance value. How long could you ignore a strange object, a few hundred yards from your home, that was shouting, waving flags, flashing colored lights and sending up puffs of pink-and-green smoke?