Search the Sky by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl (the best electronic book reader .txt) 📖

hysterically: “What’ll I do? Is he dead?”

Another Senior Citizen buzzed up and snapped: “Cut in his L-C heart, you booby!”

The boy turned on the Lindbergh-Carrel pump, trembling. The white-faced juniors of Twenty-Three watched as the tubes to the oldster’s left arm throbbed and pulsed. A massive sigh went up when the old man’s eyes opened and he sat up groggily. “What happened?”

“You died again, Sherrington,” said the other elder. “Third time this week—good thing there was a responsible person around. Now get over to the medical center this minute and have a complete checkup. Hear me?”

“Yes, Dad,” Sherrington said weakly. He rolled off in low gear.

His father turned to the youngster who stood vacantly rubbing the tire marks on his face. “Since it’s Holiday,” he grated, “I’ll let this pass. On any other day I would have seen to it that you were set back fifteen years for your disgraceful negligence.”

Ross knew by then what that meant, and shuddered with 61the rest. It amounted to a death sentence, did fifteen additional years of the grinding toil and marginal diet of a junior.

Somewhat dampened they proceeded to the Hall of Democracy, a glittering place replete with slogans, statues, and heroic portraits of the heroic aged. Twenty-Three huddled together as it joined with a stream of juniors from the area’s other factory units. Most of them were larger than the cable works; many of them, apparently, involved more wearing and hazardous occupations. Some groups coughed incessantly and were red-eyed from the irritation of some chemical. Others must have been heavy-manual-labor specialists. They were divided into the hale, whose muscles bulged amazingly, and the dying—men and women who obviously could not take the work but who were doing it anyway.

They seated themselves at long benches, with push buttons at each station. Helena, next to him, explained the system to Ross. Voting was universal and simultaneous, in all the Halls of Democracy around the planet and from all the homes of the Senior Citizens who did not choose to vote from a Hall. Simultaneously the votes were counted at a central station and the results were flashed to screens in the Centers and homes. She said a number of enthusiastic things about Democracy while Ross studied a sheet on which the candidates and propositions were listed.

The names meant nothing to him. He noted only that each of three candidates for Chief of State was one hundred thirty years old, that each of three candidates for First Assistant Chief was one hundred and twenty-seven years old, and so on. Obviously the nominating conventions by agreement named candidates of the same age for each office to keep it a contest.

Proposition One read: “To dismantle seven pediatric centers and apply the salvage value to the construction of, and the funds no longer required for their maintenance to the maintenance of, a new wing of the Gerontological Center, said wing to be devoted to basic research in the extension of human life.”

Proposition Two was worse. Ross didn’t bother to read 62the rest of them. He whispered hoarsely to Helena, “What next?”

“Ssh!” She pointed to a screen at the front of the Hall. “It’s starting.”

A Senior Citizen of a very high rank (his face was entirely hidden by an oxygen mask) was speaking from the screen. There was what seemed to be a ritual speech of invocation, then he got down to business. “Citizens,” he said through his throat mike, “behold Democracy in Action! I give you three candidates for Chief of State—look them over, and make up your minds. First, Citizen Raphael Flexner, age one century, three decades, seven months, ten days.” Senior Citizen Flexner rolled on screen, spoke briefly through his throat mike and rolled off. The first speaker said again, “Behold Democracy in Action! See now Citizen Sheridan Farnsworth, age one century, three decades, ten months, forty-two days.” Applause boomed louder; some of the younger juniors yelled hysterically and drummed their heels on the floor.

Helena was panting with excitement, eyes bright on the screen. “Isn’t it wonderful?” she gasped ecstatically. “Oh, look at him!”

“Him” was the third candidate, and the first oldster Ross had seen whose gocart was a wheeled stretcher. Prone and almost invisible through the clusters of tubing and chromed equipment, Senior Citizen Immanuel Appleby acknowledged his introduction—“Age one century, three decades, eleven months and five days!” The crowd went mad; Helena broke from Ross’s side and joined a long yelling snake dance through the corridors.

Ross yelled experimentally as protective coloration, then found himself yelling because everybody was yelling, because he couldn’t help it. By the time the speaker on the screen began to call for order, Ross was standing on top of the voting bench and screaming his head off.

Helena, weeping with excitement, tugged at his leg. “Vote now, Ross,” she begged, and all over the hall the cry was “Vote! Vote!”

Ross reached out for the voting buttons. “What do we do now?” he asked Helena.

63“Push the button marked ‘Appleby,’ of course. Hurry!”

“But why Appleby?” Ross objected. “That fellow Flexner, for instance——”

“Hush, Ross! Somebody might be listening.” There was sickening fright on Helena’s face. “Didn’t you hear? We have to vote for the best man. ‘Oldest Is Bestest,’ you know. That’s what Democracy means, the freedom of choice. They read us the ages, and we choose which is oldest. Now please, Ross, hurry before somebody starts asking questions!”

The voting was over, and the best man had won in every case. It was a triumph for informed public opinion. The mob poured out of the hall in happy-go-lucky order, all precedences and formalities suspended for Holiday.

Helena grasped Ross firmly by the arm. The crowd was spreading over the quiet acres surrounding the Center, each little cluster heedlessly intent on a long-planned project of its own. Under the pressure of Helena’s arm, Ross found himself swerving toward a clump of shrubbery.

He said violently, “No! That is, I mean I’m sorry, Helena, but I’ve got something to do.”

She stared at him with shock in her eyes. “On Holiday?”

“On Holiday. Truly, Helena, I’m sorry. Look, what you said last night—from now till tomorrow morning, I can do what I want, right?”

Sullenly, “Yes. I thought, Ross, that I knew what——”

“Okay.” He jerked his arm away, feeling like all of the hundred possible kinds of a skunk. “See you around,” he said over his shoulder. He did not look back.

Three kilos back, he told himself firmly, then the right-hand fork in the road. And not more than a dozen kilos, at the most, to the spaceport. He could do it in a couple of hours.

One thing had been established for certain: If ever there had been a “Franklin Foundation” on this planet, it was gone for good now. Dismantled, no doubt, to provide building materials for an eartrumpet plant. No doubt the little F-T-L ship that the Franklin Foundation was supposed to cover for was still swinging in an orbit within easy range of the spaceport; but the chance that anybody 64would ever find it, or use it if found, was pretty close to zero. If they bothered to maintain a radar watch at all—any other watch than the fully automatic one set to respond only to highvelocity interstellar ships—and if anyone ever took time to look at the radar plot, no doubt the F-T-L ship was charted. As an asteroid, satellite, derelict or “body of unknown origin.” Certainly no one of these smug oldsters would take the trouble to investigate.

The only problem to solve on this planet was how to get off it—fast.

On the road ahead of him was what appeared to be a combination sex orgy and free-for-all. It rolled in a yelling, milling mob of half a hundred excited juniors across the road toward him, then swerved into the fields as a cluster of screaming women broke free and ran, and the rest of the crowd roared after them.

Ross quickened his step. If he ever did get off this planet, it would have to be today; he was not fool enough to think that any ordinary day would give him the freedom to poke around the spaceport’s defenses. And it would be just his luck, he thought bitterly, to get involved in a gang fight on the way to the port.

There was a squeal of tires behind him, and a little vehicle screeched to a halt. Ross threw up a defensive arm in automatic reflex.

But it was only Helena, awkwardly fumbling open the door of the car. “Get in,” she said sourly. “You’ve spoiled my Holiday. Might as well do what you want to do.”

“What’s that?”

Helena looked where he was pointing, and shrugged. “Guard box,” she guessed. “How would I know? Nobody’s in it, anyhow.”

Ross nodded. They had abandoned the car and were standing outside a long, seamless fence that surrounded the spaceport. The main gates were closed and locked; a few hundred feet to the right was a smaller gate with a sort of pillbox, but that had every appearance of being locked too.

65“All right,” said Ross. “See that shed with the boxes outside it? Over we go.”

The shed was right up against the fence; the metal boxes gave a sort of rough and just barely climbable foothold. Helena was easy enough to lift to the top of the shed; Ross, grunting, managed to clamber after her.

They looked down at the ground on the other side, a dozen feet away. “You don’t have to come along,” Ross told her.

“That’s just like you!” she flared. “Cast me aside—trample on me!”

“All right, all right.” Ross looked around, but neither junior nor elder was anywhere in sight. “Hang by your hands and then drop,” he advised her. “Get moving before somebody shows up.”

“On Holiday?” she asked bitterly. She squirmed over the narrow top of the fence, legs dangling, let herself down as far as she could, and let go. Ross watched anxiously, but she got up quickly enough and moved to one side.

Ross plopped down next to her, knocking the wind out of himself. He got up dizzily.

His ship, in lonesome quiet, was less than a quarter of a mile away. “Let’s go,” Ross panted, and clutched her hand. They skirted another shed and were in the clear, running as fast as they could.

Almost in the clear.

Ross heard the whine of the little scooter before he felt the blow, but it was too late. He sprawled on the ground, dragging Helena after him.

A Senior Citizen with a long-handled rod of the sort Ross remembered all too well was scowling down at them. “Children,” he rumbled through his breast-speaker in a voice of awful disgust, “is this the way to act on Holiday?”

Helena, gibbering in terror, was beyond words. Ross croaked, “Sorry, sir. We—we were just——”

Crash! The rod came down again, and every muscle in Ross’s body convulsed. He rolled helplessly away, the elder following him. Crash! “We give you Holiday,” the elder boomed, “and——” crash “——you act like animals. 66Terrible! Don’t you know that freedom of play on Holiday——” crash “——is the most sacred right of every junior——” crash “——and heaven help you——” crash “——if you abuse it!”

The wrenching punishment and the caressing voice stopped together. Ross lay blinking into the terrible silence that followed. He became conscious of Helena’s weeping, and forced his head to turn to look at her.

She was standing behind the elder’s scooter, a length of wire in her hand. The senior lay slumped against his safety strap. “Ross!” she moaned. “Ross, what have I done? I turned him off!”

He stood up, coughing and retching. No one else was in sight, only the two of them and the silent, slack form of the old man. He grabbed her arm. “Come on,” he said fuzzily, and started toward the starship.

She hung back, mumbling to herself, her eyes saucers. She was in a state of grievous shock, it was clear.

Ross hesitated, rubbing his back. He knew that she might never pull out of it. Even if she did, she was certain to be a frightful handicap. But it was crystal-clear that she had declared herself on his side. Even if the elder could be revived, the punishment in store for Helena would be awful to contemplate....

Come what may, he was now responsible for Helena.

He towed her to the starship. She climbed in docilely enough, sat staring blankly as he sealed ship and sent it blasting off the face of the planet.

She didn’t speak until they were well into deep space. Then the blank stare abruptly clouded and she exploded in a fit of tears. Ross said ineffectually, “There, there.” It had no effect; until, in its own time, the storm ended.

Helena said hoarsely, “Wh-what do I do now?”

“Why, I