Science Fiction

Public Hearing

With an increasing sense of unease, Alan Wallace studied his client as they neared the public hearing room on the second floor of the old Senate Office Building. The guy was too relaxed.

“Bill, I’m worried about this,” Wallace said. “You could damn well lose your grazing rights here in this room today.”

They were almost into the gauntlet of guards, reporters, and TV cameramen before Wallace got his answer. “Who the hell cares?” Custer asked.

Wallace, who prided himself on being the Washington-type lawyer—above contamination by complaints and briefs, immune to all shock—found himself tongue-tied with surprise.

They were into the ruck then, and Wallace had to pull on his bold face, smiling at the press, trying to soften the sharpness of that necessary phrase: “No comment. Sorry, no comment.”

“See us after the hearing if you have any questions, gentlemen,” Custer said.

The man’s voice was level and confident. He has himself overcontrolled, Wallace thought. Maybe he was just joking … a graveyard joke.

The marble-walled hearing room blazed with lights. Camera platforms had been raised above the seats at the rear. Some of the small UHF stations had their cameramen standing on the window ledges.

The reporters noted, then picked up tempo as William R. Custer—“The Baron of Oregon,” they called him—entered with his attorney, passed the press tables, and crossed to the seats reserved for them in the witness section.

Ahead and to their right, the empty chair at the long table stood waiting with its aura of complete exposure.

“Who the hell cares?”

That wasn’t a Custer-type joke, Wallace reminded himself.

For all his cattle-baron pose, Custer held a doctorate in agriculture and degrees in philosophy, math, and electronics. His western neighbors called him “The Brain.” It was no accident the cattlemen had chosen him to represent them here.

Wallace glanced covertly at the man, studying him. The cowboy boots and string tie added to a neat, dark business suit would have been affectation on most men. They merely accented Custer’s craggy good looks—the sunburned, windblown outdoorsman. He was a little darker of hair and skin than his father had been, still light enough to be called blond but not as ruddy and without the late father’s drink-tumescent veins.

But then, young Custer wasn’t quite thirty.

Custer turned, met the attorney’s eyes. He smiled.

“Those were good patent attorneys you recommended, Al,” Custer said. He lifted his briefcase to his lap, patted it. “No mincing around or mealymouthed excuses. Already got this thing on the way.” Again he tapped the briefcase.

He brought that damn light gadget here with him? Wallace wondered. Why? He glanced at the briefcase. Didn’t know it was that small … but maybe he’s just talking about the plans for the crazy device.

“This is the only thing that’s important.”

Into a sudden lull in the room’s high noise level, the voice of someone in the press section carried across them: “… greatest political show on earth.”

“I brought this as an exhibit,” Custer said. Again he tapped the briefcase. (It did bulge oddly.)

Exhibit? Wallace asked himself.

It was the second time in ten minutes that Custer had shocked him. This was to be a hearing of a subcommittee of the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee. The issue was Taylor grazing lands. What the devil could that … gadget have to do with the battle of words and laws to be fought here?

“You’re supposed to talk overall strategy with your attorney,” Wallace whispered. “What the devil do you…?”

He broke off as the room fell suddenly silent.

Wallace looked up to see the subcommittee chairman, Senator Haycourt Tiborough, stride through the wide double doors followed by his coterie of investigators and attorneys. The senator was a tall man who had once been fat. But he had dieted with such savage abruptness that his skin had never recovered. His jowls and the flesh on the back of his hands sagged oddly. The top of his head was shiny bald and ringed by a three-quarter tonsure that had purposely been allowed to grow long and straggly so that it fanned back over his ears.

The senator was followed in close lockstep by syndicated columnist Anthony Poxman, who was speaking fiercely into Tiborough’s left ear. TV cameras tracked the pair.

If Poxman’s covering this one himself instead of sending a flunky, it’s going to be bad, Wallace told himself.

Tiborough took his chair at the center of the committee, noting how many other members were present. Senator Spealance was absent, Wallace noted, but he had party organization difficulties at home, and the senior senator from Oregon was, significantly, not present.

Illness, it was reported.

A sudden attack of caution, that common Washington malady, no doubt. He knew where his campaign money came from … but he also knew where the votes were.

They had a quorum, though.

Tiborough cleared his throat, said, “The committee will please come to order.”

The senator’s voice and manner gave Wallace a cold chill. We were nuts trying to fight this one in the open, he thought. Why’d I let Custer and his friends talk me into this? You can’t butt heads with a United States senator who’s out to get you. The only way’s to fight him on the inside.

And now Custer suddenly turning screwball.

Exhibit!

“Gentlemen,” said Tiborough, “I think we can … that is, today we can dispense with preliminaries … unless my colleagues … if any of them have objections?”

Again he glanced at the other senators—five of them. Wallace swept his gaze down the line behind that table—Plowers of Nebraska (a horse trader), Johnstone of Ohio (a parliamentarian—devious), Lane of South Carolina (a Republican in Democrat disguise), Emery of Minnesota (new and eager—dangerous because he lacked the old inhibitions), and Meltzer of New York (poker player, fine old family with traditions).

None of them had objections.

They’ve had a private meeting—both sides of the aisle. It was another ominous sign.

“This is a subcommittee of the United States Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs,” Tiborough said, his tone formal. “We are charged with obtaining expert opinion on proposed amendments to the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934. Today’s hearing will begin with testimony and … ah, questioning of a man whose family has been in the business of raising beef cattle in Oregon for three generations.”

Tiborough smiled at the TV cameras.

The son of a bitch is playing to the galleries, Wallace thought. He glanced at Custer. The cattleman sat relaxed against the back of his chair, eyes half-lidded, staring at the senator.

“We call, as our first witness today, Mr. William R. Custer of Bend, Oregon,” Tiborough said. “Will the clerk please swear in Mr. Custer?”

Custer moved forward to the “hot seat,” placed his briefcase on the table. Wallace took a chair beside his client, noting how the cameras turned as the clerk stepped forward, put the Bible on the table, and administered the oath.

Tiborough ruffled through some papers in front of him, waited for full attention to return to him, then said, “This subcommittee … we have before us a bill, this is a United States Senate bill entitled SB-1024 of the current session, an act amending the Taylor Grazing Act of 1934 and … the intent is, as many have noted … we would broaden the base of the advisory committees to the act and include a wider public representation.”

Custer was fiddling with the clasp of his briefcase.

How the hell could that light gadget be an exhibit here? Wallace asked himself. He glanced at the set of Custer’s jaw, noted again the determined confidence he’d seen in Custer’s eyes. The sight failed to settle Wallace’s own nerves.

“Ah, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “Do you … did you bring a preliminary statement? Your counsel …”

“I have a statement,” Custer said. His big voice rumbled through the room, requiring instant attention and the shift of cameras that had been holding tardily on Tiborough, expecting an addition to the question.

Tiborough smiled, waited, then said, “Your attorney … is your statement the one your counsel supplied the committee?”

“With some slight additions of my own,” Custer said.

Wallace felt a sudden qualm. They were too willing to accept Custer’s statement. He leaned close to his client’s ear, whispered, “They know what your stand is. Skip the preliminaries.”

Custer ignored him, said, “I intend to speak plainly and simply. I oppose the amendment. ‘Broaden the base’ and ‘wider public representation’ are phrases of political double-talk. The intent is to pack the committees, to put control of them into the hands of people who don’t know the first thing about the cattle business and whose private intent is to destroy the Taylor Grazing Act itself.”

“Plain, simple talk,” Tiborough said. “This committee … we welcome such directness. Strong words. A majority of this committee … we have taken the position that the public range lands have been too long subjected to the tender mercies of the stockmen advisors, that the lands … stockmen have exploited them to their own advantage.”

The gloves are off, Wallace thought. I hope Custer knows what he’s doing. He’s sure as hell not accepting advice. Wallace glimpsed shiny metal in the case before the flap was closed.

Christ! That looked like a gun or something!

Then Wallace recognized the papers—the brief he and his staff had labored over … and the preliminary statement. He noted with alarm the penciled markings and marginal notations. How could Custer have done that much to it in just twenty-four hours?

Again, Wallace whispered in Custer’s ear, “Take it easy, Bill. The bastard’s out for blood.”

Custer nodded to show he had heard, glanced at the papers, and looked up directly at Tiborough.

A hush settled on the room, broken only by the scraping of a chair somewhere in the rear and the whirr of cameras.

“First, the nature of these lands we’re talking about,” Custer said. “In my state …” He cleared his throat, a mannerism that would have indicated anger in the old man, his father. There was no break in Custer’s expression, though, and his voice remained level. “… in my state, these were mostly Indian lands. This nation took them by brute force—right of conquest. That’s about the oldest right in the world, I guess. I don’t want to argue with it at this point.”

“Mr. Custer.” It was Nebraska’s Senator Plowers, his amiable farmer’s face set in a tight grin. “Mr. Custer, I hope …”

“Is this a point of order?” Tiborough asked.

“Mr. Chairman,” Plowers said, “I merely wished to make sure we weren’t going to bring up that old suggestion about giving these lands back to the Indians.”

Laughter shot across the hearing room. Tiborough chuckled.

Custer looked at Plowers, said, “No, Senator, I don’t want to give these lands back to the Indians. When they had these lands, they only got about three hundred pounds of meat a year off eighty acres. We get five hundred pounds of the highest-grade protein—premium beef—from only ten acres.”

“No one doubts the efficiency of your factorylike methods,” Tiborough said. “You can … we know your methods wring the largest amount of meat from a minimum acreage.”

Ugh! Wallace thought. That was a low blow—implying Bill’s overgrazing and destroying the land value.

“My neighbors, the Warm Springs Indians, use the same methods I do,” Custer said. “They are happy to adopt our methods because we use the land while maintaining it and increasing its value. We don’t permit the land to fall prey to natural disasters such as fire and erosion. We don’t …”

“No doubt your methods are meticulously correct,” Tiborough said. “But I fail to see where …”

“Has he … has Mr. Custer finished his preliminary statement yet?” Senator Plowers asked.

Wallace shot a startled look at the Nebraskan. That was help from an unexpected quarter.

“Thank you, Senator,” Custer said. “I’m quite willing to adapt to the Chairman’s methods and explain the meticulous correctness of my operation. Our lowliest cowhands are college men, highly paid. We travel ten times as many jeep miles as we do horse miles. Every outlying division of the ranch—every holding pen and grazing supervisor’s cabin—is linked to the central ranch by radio. We use the …”

“I concede that your methods must be the most modern in—”

He broke off at a disturbance by the door. An Army colonel was talking to the guard there. He wore Special Services fourragere—Pentagon.

Wallace noted with an odd feeling of disquiet that the man was armed—a .45 at the hip. The weapon was out of place on him, as though he had added it suddenly in an emergency.

More guards were coming up outside the door now—Marines and Army. They carried rifles.

The colonel said something sharp to the guard, turned away from him, and entered the committee room. All the cameras were tracking him now. He ignored them, crossed swiftly to the Senator, and spoke swiftly into Tiborough’s ear.

The senator shot a startled glance at Custer, accepted a sheaf of papers the colonel thrust at him. He forced his attention off Custer and studied the papers, leafing through them. Presently, he looked up, stared at Custer.

A hush fell over the room.

“I find myself at a loss, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “I have here a copy of a report … it’s from the Special Services branch of the Army … through the Pentagon, you understand. It was just handed to me by, ah … the colonel here.”

He looked up at the colonel who was standing, one hand resting lightly on the holstered .45. Tiborough looked back at Custer, and it was obvious the senator was trying to marshal his thoughts.

“It is,” Tiborough said, “that is … this report supposedly … and I have every confidence it is what it is represented to be … here in my hands … they say that … uh, within the last few weeks there have been certain demonstrations on your lands. A new kind of weapon. According to the report …” He glanced at the papers, back to Custer, who was staring at him steadily. “… this, uh, weapon, is a thing that … it is extremely dangerous.”

“It is,” Custer said.

“I … ah, see.” Tiborough cleared his throat, glancing up at the colonel, who was staring fixedly at Custer. The senator brought his attention back to Custer.

“Do you, in fact, have such a weapon with you, Mr. Custer?” Tiborough asked.

“I have brought it as an exhibit, sir.”

“Exhibit?”

“Yes, sir.”

Wallace rubbed his lips, found them dry. He wet them with his tongue, wishing for the water glass, but it was on the other side of Custer. Christ! That stupid cowpuncher! He wondered if he dared whisper to Custer. Would the senators and that Pentagon lackey interpret such an action as meaning he was part of Custer’s crazy antics, too?

“Are you threatening this committee with your weapon, Mr. Custer?” Tiborough asked. “If you are, I may say special precautions have been taken—extra guards on this room, and we … that is, we will not allow ourselves to worry too much about any action you may take, but ordinary precautions are in force.”

Wallace could no longer sit quietly. He tugged Custer’s sleeve, got an abrupt shake of the head. He leaned close, whispered, “We could ask for a recess, Bill. Maybe we—”

“Don’t interrupt me,” Custer said. He looked at Tiborough. “Senator, I would not threaten you or any other man. Threats in the way you mean them are a thing we can no longer tolerate.”

“You … I believe you said this device is an exhibit,” Tiborough said. He cast a worried frown at the report in his hands. “I fail … it does not appear germane.”

Senator Plowers cleared his throat. “Mr. Chairman,” he said.

“The chair recognizes the Senator from Nebraska,” Tiborough said, and the relief in his voice was obvious. He wanted time to think.

“Mr. Custer,” Plowers said, “I have not seen the report, the report my distinguished colleague alludes to; however, if I may … is it your wish to use this committee as some kind of publicity device?”

“By no means, Senator,” Custer said. “I don’t wish to profit by my presence here—not at all.”

Tiborough had apparently come to a decision. He leaned back and whispered to the colonel, who nodded and returned to the outer hall.

“You strike me as an eminently reasonable man, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “If I may …”

“May I?” Senator Plowers said. “May I—just permit me to conclude this one point. May we have the Special Services report in the record?”

“Certainly,” Tiborough said. “But I was about to suggest …”

“May I?” Plowers said. “May I—would you permit me, please, Mr. Chairman, to make this point clear for the record?”

Tiborough scowled, but the heavy dignity of the Senate overcame his irritation. “Please continue, Senator. I had thought you were finished.”

“I respect … there is no doubt in my mind of Mr. Custer’s sincerity and integrity.” His tone and expression made him look grandfatherly, a kindly elder statesman. “I would like, therefore, to have him explain how this … ah, weapon, can be an exhibit in the matter before our committee.”

Wallace glanced at Custer, saw the hard set to the man’s jaw, and realized the cattleman had gotten to Plowers somehow. This was a set piece.

Tiborough was glancing at the other senators, weighing the advisability of high-handed dismissal … perhaps a star-chamber session. No … they were all too curious about Custer’s device, his purpose here.

The thoughts were plain on the senator’s face.

“Very well,” Tiborough said. He nodded to Custer. “You may proceed, Mr. Custer.”

“During last winter’s slack season,” Custer said, “two of my men and I worked on a project we’ve had in the works for three years—to develop a sustained-emission laser device.”

Custer opened his briefcase, slid out a fat aluminum tube mounted on a pistol grip with a conventional-looking trigger.

“This is quite harmless,” he said. “I didn’t bring the power pack.”

“That is … this is your weapon?” Tiborough asked.

“Calling this a weapon is misleading,” Custer said. “The term limits and oversimplifies. This is also a brush cutter, a substitute for a logger’s saw and axe, a diamond cutter, a milling machine … and a weapon. It is also a turning point in history.”

“Come now, isn’t that a bit pretentious?” Tiborough asked.

“We tend to think of history as something old and slow,” Custer said. “But history is, as a matter of fact, extremely swift. Think of the sudden turning points: an atomic bomb explodes over a city, a dam breaks, or a revolutionary device is announced.”

“Lasers have been known for quite a few years,” Tiborough said. He looked at the papers the colonel had given him. “The principle dates from 1956 or thereabouts.”

“I don’t wish it to appear that I’m taking credit for inventing this device,” Custer said. “Nor am I claiming sole credit for developing the sustained-emission laser. I was merely one of a team. But I do hold the device here in my hand, gentlemen.”

“Exhibit, Mr. Custer,” Plowers reminded him. “How is this an exhibit?”

“May I explain first how it works?” Custer asked. “That will make the rest of my statement much easier.”

Tiborough looked at Plowers, then back to Custer. “If you will tie this all together, Mr. Custer,” Tiborough said. “I want to … the bearing of this device on our—we are hearing a particular bill in this room.”

“Certainly, Senator,” Custer said. “A ninety-volt radio battery drives this particular model. We have some that require less voltage, some that use more. We aimed for a construction of simple parts. Our crystals are common quartz. We shattered them by bringing them to a boil in water and then plunging them into ice water … repeatedly. We chose twenty pieces of very close to the same size—about one gram, slightly more than fifteen grains each.”

Custer unscrewed the back of the tube, slid out a round length of plastic trailing lengths of red, green, brown, blue, and yellow wire.

Wallace noted how the cameras of the TV men centered on the inner workings of the device.

We’re gadget-crazy people, Wallace thought.

“The crystals were dipped in thinned household cement and then into iron filings,” Custer said. “We made a little jig out of a fly-tying vise and opened a passage in the filings at opposite ends of the crystals. We then made some common celluloid—nitrocellulose, acetic acid, gelatin, and alcohol—all very common products, and formed it in a length of garden hose just long enough to take the crystals end to end. The crystals were inserted in the hose, the celluloid poured over them, and the whole thing was seated in a magnetic waveguide while the celluloid was cooling. This centered and aligned the crystals. The waveguide was constructed from wire salvaged from an old TV set and built following the directions in the Radio Amateur’s Handbook.”

Custer re-inserted the length of plastic into the tube, adjusted the wires. There was an unearthly silence in the room with only the cameras whirring. It was as though everyone were holding his breath.

“A laser requires a resonant cavity, but that’s complicated,” Custer said. “Instead, we wound two layers of fine copper wire around our tube, immersed it in the celluloid solution to coat it, and then filed one end flat. This end took a piece of mirror cut to fit. We then pressed a number eight embroidery needle at right angles into the mirror end of the tube until it touched the side of the number one crystal.”

Custer cleared his throat.

Two of the senators leaned back. Plowers coughed. Tiborough looked at the banks of TV cameras, and there was a questioning look in his eyes.

“We then calibrated the system using a standard oscilloscope, but any radio amateur could do it without the oscilloscope. We constructed an oscillator of that master frequency, attached it at the needle and a bare spot scraped in the opposite edge of the waveguide.”

“And this … ah … worked?” Tiborough asked.

“No.” Custer shook his head. “When we fed power through a voltage multiplier into the system, we produced an estimated four hundred–joule emission and melted half the tube. So we started all over again.”

“You are going to tie this in?” Tiborough asked. He frowned at the papers in his hands, glanced toward the door where the colonel had gone.

“I am, sir, believe me,” Custer said.

“Very well, then,” Tiborough said.

“So we started all over,” Custer said. “But for the second celluloid dip we added bismuth—a saturated solution, actually. It stayed gummy, and we had to paint over it with a sealing coat of the straight celluloid. We then coupled this bismuth layer through a pulse circuit so that it was bathed in a counter wave—180 degrees out of phase with the master frequency. We had, in effect, immersed the unit in a thermoelectric cooler that exactly countered the heat production. A thin beam issued from the unmirrored end when we powered it. We have yet to find something that thin beam cannot cut.”

“Diamonds?” Tiborough asked.

“Powered by less than two hundred volts, this device could cut our planet in half like a ripe tomato,” Custer said. “One man could destroy an aerial armada with it, knock down ICBMs before they touched the atmosphere, sink a fleet, pulverize tanks. One has to boggle at the enormous power focused in …”

“Shut down those TV cameras!”

It was Tiborough shouting, leaping to his feet and making a sweeping gesture to include the banks of cameras. The abrupt violence of his voice and gesture fell on the room like an explosion. “Guards!” he called. “You there, at the door. Cordon off that door and don’t let anyone out of here! Where’s that damn colonel? Oh, there you are! Clear those halls, but don’t let anyone out who heard this fool!” He whirled back to face Custer. “You irresponsible idiot!”

“I’m afraid, Senator,” Custer said, “that you’re locking the barn door many weeks too late.”

For a long minute of silence, Tiborough glared at Custer. Then: “You did this deliberately, eh?”

“Senator, if I’d waited any longer, there might have been no hope for us at all.”

Tiborough sank back into his chair, still keeping his attention fastened on Custer. Plowers and Johnstone on his right had their heads close together, whispering fiercely. The other senators were dividing their attention between Custer and Tiborough, their eyes wide and with no attempt to conceal their astonishment.

Wallace, growing conscious of the implications in what Custer had said, tried to wet his lips with his tongue. Christ! he thought. This stupid cowpoke has sold us all down the river!

Tiborough signaled an aide, spoke briefly with him, then beckoned the colonel from the door. There was a buzzing of excited conversation in the room. Several of the press and TV crew were huddled near the windows on Custer’s left, arguing. One tried to leave, but he was stopped by a committee aide. They began a low-voiced argument with violent gestures.

A loud curse sounded from the door. Paxman, the syndicated columnist, was trying to push past the guards there.

“Paxman!” Tiborough called. The columnist turned. “My orders are that no one leaves,” Tiborough said. “You are not an exception.” He turned back to face Custer.

The room had fallen into a semblance of quiet, although there were still pockets of muttering, and there was the sound of running feet and a hurrying about in the hall outside.

“Two channels went out of here live,” Tiborough said. “Nothing much we can do about them, although we will trace down as many of their viewers as we can. Every bit of film in this room and every sound tape will be confiscated, however.” His voice rose as protests sounded from the press section. “Our national security is at stake. The president has been notified. Such measures as are necessary will be taken.”

The colonel came hurrying into the room, crossed to Tiborough, said something in a low voice.

“You should’ve warned me!” Tiborough snapped. “I had no idea that—” The colonel interrupted with a whispered comment.

“These papers—your damned report is not clear!” Tiborough said. He looked around at Custer. “I see you’re smiling, Mr. Custer. I don’t think you’ll find much to smile about before long.”

“Senator, this is not a happy smile,” Custer said. “But I told myself several days ago that you’d fail to see the implications of this thing.” He tapped the pistol-shaped device he had brought as an exhibit. “I knew you’d fall into the old, useless pattern.”

“Is that what you told yourself? Really?” Tiborough said.

Wallace, hearing the venom in the Senator’s voice, moved his chair a few inches farther away from Custer.

Tiborough looked at the laser projector. “Is that thing really disarmed?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If I order one of my men to take it from you, you will not resist?”

“Which of your men will you trust with it, Senator?” Custer asked.

In the long silence that followed, someone in the press section emitted a nervous guffaw.

“Virtually every man on my ranch has one of these things,” Custer said. “We fell trees with them, cut firewood, and make fence posts. Every letter written to me as a result of my patent application has been answered candidly. More than a thousand sets of schematics and instructions on how to build this device have been sent out to various places in the world.”

“You vicious traitor!” Tiborough rasped.

“You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, Senator,” Custer said. “But I warn you, I’ve had time for considerably more and considerably more painful thought than you’ve applied to this problem. In my estimation, I had no choice. Every week I waited to make this thing public—every day, every minute—merely raised the odds that humanity would be destroyed by—”

“You said this thing applied to the hearings on the grazing act,” Plowers protested, and there was a plaintive note in his voice, as if he hoped to get back to normal business.

“Senator, I told you the truth,” Custer said. “There’s no real reason to change the act now. We intend to go on operating under it—with the agreement of our neighbors and others concerned. People are still going to need food.”

Tiborough glared at him. “You’re saying we can’t force you to …” He broke off at a disturbance in the doorway. A rope barrier had been stretched there, and a line of Marines stood with their backs to it, facing the hall. A mob of people was trying to press through. Press cards were being waved.

“Colonel, I told you to clear that hall!” Tiborough barked.

The colonel ran to the barrier. “Use your bayonets if you have to!” he shouted.

The disturbance subsided at the sound of his voice. More uniformed men could be seen moving in along the barrier. Presently, the noise receded.

Tiborough turned back to Custer. “You make Benedict Arnold look like the greatest friend the United States ever had,” he said.

“Cursing me isn’t going to help you,” Custer said. “You are going to have to live with this thing, so you’d better try understanding it.”

“That appears to be simple,” Tiborough said. “All I have to do is send twenty-five cents to the patent office for the schematics and then write you a letter.”

“The world already was headed toward suicide,” Custer said. “Only fools failed to realize—”

“So you decided to give us a little push,” Tiborough said.

“H.G. Wells warned us,” Custer said. “That’s how far back it goes, but nobody listened. It’s a simple and obvious graph. The growth curve on the amount of raw energy becoming available to humans—and the diminishing curve on the number of persons required to use that energy. For a long time now, more and more violent power was being made available to fewer and fewer people. It was only a matter of time until total destruction was put into the hands of single individuals.”

“And you didn’t think you could take your government into your confidence,” Tiborough said. “You thought you were some kind of god, eh?”

There’s the question that’ll hang him, Wallace thought.

“The government was already committed to a political course diametrically opposite the one this device requires,” Custer said. “Virtually every man in the government has a vested interest in not reversing that course. It was obvious from the few people in government that I did query that they couldn’t distinguish between truth and personal advantage.”

“So you set yourself above the government?” Tiborough demanded.

“I’m probably wasting my time,” Custer said, “but I’ll try to explain it. Virtually every government in the world is dedicated to manipulating something called the ‘mass man.’ That’s how governments have stayed in power. But there is no such man. When you elevate the non-existent ‘mass man,’ you degrade the individual. And obviously, it was only a matter of time until all of us were at the mercy of the individual.”

“You talk like a goddamn commie!” Tiborough snapped.

“They’ll say I’m a goddamn capitalist pawn,” Custer said. “Let me ask you, Senator, to visualize a poor radio technician in a South American country. Brazil, for example. He lives an imaginative, essentially unseen existence. What is he going to do when this device comes into his hands?”

“Murder, robbery, and anarchy,” Tiborough growled.

“You could be right,” Custer said. “But we might reach an understanding out of ultimate necessity—that each of us must cooperate in maintaining the dignity of all.”

Tiborough stared at him, began to speak musingly. “We’ll have to control the essential materials for constructing this thing … and there may be trouble for awhile, but—”

“You’re a vicious fool,” Custer said.

In the cold silence that followed, Custer said, “It was too late to try that ten years ago. I’m telling you that this thing can be patchworked out of a wide variety of materials that are already scattered over the earth. It can be made in basements and mud huts, in palaces and shacks. The key item is the crystal, but other crystals will work, too. That’s obvious. A patient man can grow crystals … and this world is full of patient men, Senator.”

“I’m going to place you under arrest,” Tiborough said. “You have outraged every rule of decency and—”

“You’re living in a dream world,” Custer said. “I refuse to threaten you, but I’ll defend myself from any attempt to oppress or degrade me. If I cannot defend myself, my friends will defend me. No man who understands what this device means will permit his dignity to be taken from him. In other words, Senator, you can no longer threaten anyone with impunity.”

Custer allowed a moment for his words to sink in, then added, “And don’t twist these words to imply a threat. Refusal to threaten a fellow human is an absolute requirement in the day that has just dawned on us.”

“A single man is powerful with this thing. A hundred are …”

“All previous insults aside,” Custer said, “I think you are a highly intelligent man, Senator. I ask you to think long and hard about this device. Use of power is no longer the deciding factor because one man is as powerful as a million. Restraint—self-restraint—is now the key to survival. Each of us is at the mercy of his neighbor’s good will. Each of us, Senator—the man in the palace and the man in the shack. We’d better do all we can to increase that goodwill—not attempting to buy it, but simply recognizing that individual dignity is the one inalienable right of—”

“Don’t you preach at me, you commie traitor!” Tiborough rasped. “You’re a living example of—”

“Senator!”

It was one of the TV cameramen in the left rear of the room. Wallace turned, stared at the man—a tall, blond man standing on a ledge beside his silenced camera.

“Let’s stop insulting Mr. Custer and hear him out,” the cameraman said.

“Get that man’s name,” Tiborough told an aide. “If he—”

“I’m an expert electronics technician, Senator,” the man said. “You can’t threaten me anymore.”

Custer smiled, turned to face Tiborough.

“The revolution begins,” Custer said. He waved a hand as the Senator started to whirl away. “Sit down, Senator.”

Wallace, watching the Senator obey, saw how the balance of control had changed in the room.

“Ideas are in the wind,” Custer said. “There comes a time for a thing to develop. It comes into being. The spinning jenny came into being because it was its time. There are many other examples in history. This is just the next step.”

“What have you done?”

Tiborough’s voice was subdued, and Wallace noted that the Senator had his full attention focused on Custer.

“It was bound to come,” Custer said. “But the number of people in our world who’re filled with hate and frustration and violence has been growing with terrible speed. You add to that the enormous danger that this might fall into the hands of just one group or nation or …” Custer shrugged. “This is too much power to be confined to one man or group with the hope they’ll administer it wisely. I didn’t dare delay. That’s why I spread this thing now and announced it as broadly as I could.”

Tiborough leaned back in his chair, his hands in his lap. His face was pale, and beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.

“We won’t make it,” he muttered.

“I hope you’re wrong, Senator,” Custer said. “But the only thing I know for sure is that we’d have had less chance of making it tomorrow than we have today.”

The Daddy Box

[This story recently appeared in The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert, Tor Books, 2014.]

 

To understand what happened to Henry Alexander when his son, Billy, came home with the ferosslk, you’re going to be asked to make several mind-stretching mental adjustments. These mental gymnastics are certain to leave your mind permanently changed.

You’ve been warned.

In the first place, just to get a loose idea of a ferosslk’s original purpose, you must think of it as a toy designed primarily for educating the young. But your concept of toy should be modified to think of a device which, under special circumstances, will play with its owner.

You’ll also have to modify your concept of education to include the idea of occasionally altering the universe to fit a new interesting idea; that is, fitting the universe to the concept, rather than fitting the concept to the universe.

The ferosslk originates with seventh-order multidimensional beings. You can think of them as Sevens. Their other labels would be more or less incomprehensible. The Sevens are not now aware and never have been aware that the universe contains any such thing as a Henry Alexander or his human male offspring.

This oversight was rather unfortunate for Henry. His mind had never been stretched to contain the concept of a ferosslk. He could conceive of fission bombs, nerve gas, napalm, and germ warfare. But these things might be thought of as silly putty when compared with a ferosslk.

Which is a rather neat analogy because the shape of a ferosslk is profoundly dependent upon external pressures. That is to say, although a ferosslk can be conceived of as an artifact, it is safer to think of it as alive.

To begin at one of the beginnings, Billy Alexander, age eight, human male, found the ferosslk in tall weeds beside a path across an empty lot adjoining his urban home.

Saying he “found” it described the circumstances from Billy’s superficial point of view. It would be just as accurate to say the ferosslk found Billy.

As far as Billy was concerned, the ferosslk was a box. You may as well think of it that way, too. No sense stretching your mind completely out of shape. You wouldn’t be able to read the rest of this account.

A box, then. It appeared to be about nine inches long, three inches wide, and four inches deep. It looked like dark green stone except for what was obviously the top, because that’s where the writing appeared.

You can call it writing because Billy was just beginning to shift from print to cursive and that’s the way he saw it.

Words flowed across the box top: “This is a daddy box.”

Billy picked it up. The surface was cold under his hands. He thought perhaps this was some kind of toy television, its words projected from inside.

(Some of the words actually were coming out of Billy’s own mind.)

Daddy box? he wondered.

Daddy was a symbol-identifier more than five years old for him. His daddy had been killed in a war. Now Billy had a stepfather with the same name as his real father’s. The two had been cousins.

New information flowed across the top: “This box may be opened only by the young.”

(That was a game the ferosslk had played and enjoyed many times before. Don’t try to imagine how a ferosslk enjoys. The attempt could injure your frontal lobes.)

Now the box top provided Billy with precise instructions on how it could be opened.

Billy went through the indicated steps, which included urinating on an anthill, and the box dutifully opened.

For almost an hour, Billy sat in the empty lot, enraptured by the educational/creative tableau thus unveiled. For his edification, human shapes in the box fought wars, manufactured artifacts, made love, wrote books, created paintings and sculpture … and changed the universe. The human shapes debated, formed governments, nurtured the earth, and destroyed it.

In that relative time of little less than an hour, Billy aged mentally some five hundred and sixteen human years. On the outside, Billy remained a male child about forty-nine inches tall, weight approximately fifty-six pounds, skin white but grimy from play, hair blond and mussed.

His eyes were still blue, but they had acquired a hard and penetrating stare. The motor cells in his medulla and his spinal cord had begun increasing dramatically in number with an increased myelinization of the anterior roots and peripheral nerves.

Every normal sense he possessed had been increased in potency, and he was embarked on a growth pattern that would further heighten this effect.

The whole thing made him sad, but he knew what he had to do, having come very close to understanding what a ferosslk was all about.

It was now about 6:18 PM on a Friday evening. Billy took the box in both hands and trudged across the lot toward his back door.

His mother, whose left arm still bore bruises from a blow struck by her husband, was peeling potatoes at the kitchen sink. She was a small blonde woman, once doll-like, fast turning to mouse.

At Billy’s entrance, she shook tears out of her eyes, smiled at him, glanced toward the living room, and shook her head—all in one continuous movement. She appeared not to notice the box in Billy’s hands, but she did note the boy appeared very much like his real father tonight.

This thought brought more tears to her eyes, and she turned away, thus failing to see Billy go on into the living room despite her silent warning that his stepfather was there and in a bad mood.

The ferosslk, having shared Billy’s emotional reaction to this moment, created a new order of expletives, which it introduced into another dimension.

Henry Alexander sensed Billy’s presence in the room, lowered the evening newspaper, and stared over it into the boy’s newly aged eyes. Henry was a pale-skinned, flabby man, going to fat after a youth spent as a semiprofessional athlete. He interpreted the look in Billy’s eyes as a reflection of their mutual hate.

“What’s that box?” Henry demanded.

Billy shrugged. “It’s a daddy box.”

“A what?”

Billy remained silent, placed the box to his ear. The ferosslk had converted to faint audio mode, and the voices coming from the box for Billy’s ears alone carried a certain suggestive educational quality.

“Why’re you holding the damn thing against your ear?” Henry demanded. He had already decided to take the box away from the boy but was drawing the pleasure-moment out.

“I’m listening,” Billy said. He sensed the precise pacing of these moments, observed minute nuances in the set of his stepfather’s jaw, the content of the man’s perspiration.

“Is it a music box?”

Henry studied the thing in Billy’s hand. It looked old … ancient, even. He couldn’t quite say why he felt this.

Again, Billy shrugged.

“Where’d you get it?” Henry asked.

“I found it.”

“Where could you find a thing like that? It looks like a real antique. Might even be jade.”

“I found it in the lot.” Billy hesitated on the point of adding a precise location to where he’d found the box but held back. That would be out of character.

“Are you sure you didn’t steal it?”

“I found it.”

“Don’t you sass me!” Henry threw his newspaper to the floor.

Having heard the loud voices, Billy’s mother hurried into the living room, hovered behind her son.

“What’s … what’s the matter?” she ventured.

“You stay out of this, Helen!” Henry barked. “That brat of yours has stolen a valuable antique, and he—”

“China? He wouldn’t!”

“I told you to stay out of this!” Henry glared at her. The box had assumed for him now exactly the quality he had just given it: valuable antique. Theft was as good as certain—although that might complicate his present plans for confiscation and profit.

Billy suppressed a smile. His mother’s interruption, which he assumed to be fortuitous since he did not completely understand the functioning of a ferosslk, had provided just the delay required here. The situation had entered the timing system for which he had maneuvered.

“Bring that box here,” Henry ordered.

“It’s mine,” Billy said. As he said it, he experienced a flash of insight that told him he belonged as much to the box as it belonged to him.

“Look here, you disrespectful brat—if you don’t give me that box immediately, we’re going to have another session in the woodshed!”

Billy’s mother touched his arm, said, “Son … you’d better …”

“Okay,” Billy said. “But it’s just a trick box—like those Chinese things.”

“I said bring it here, dammit!”

Clutching the box to his chest now, Billy crossed the room, timing his movements with careful precision. Just a few more seconds … now!

He extended the box to his stepfather.

Henry snatched the ferosslk, was surprised at how cold it felt. Obviously stone. Cold stone. He turned the thing over and over in his hands. There were strange markings on the top—wedges, curves, twisting designs. He put it to his ear, listened.

Silence.

Billy smiled.

Henry jerked the box away from his ear. Trick, eh? The kid was playing a trick on him, trying to make him look like a fool.

“So it’s a box,” Henry said. “Have you opened it?”

“Yes. It’s got lots of things inside.”

“Things? What things?”

“Just things.”

Henry had an immediate vision of valuable jewels. This thing could be a jewel box.

“How does it open?” he demanded.

“You just do things,” Billy said.

“Don’t you play smart with me! I gave you an order: tell me how you open this thing.”

“I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t!”

“I can’t.”

“Why?” It was as much an accusation as a question.

Again, Billy shrugged. “The box … well, it can only be opened by kids.”

“Oh, for Chrissakes!” Henry examined the ends of the box. Damn kid was lying about having opened it. Henry shook the box. It rattled suggestively, one of the ferosslk’s better effects.

Helen said, “Perhaps if you let Billy …”

Henry looked up long enough to stare her down, then asked, “Is dinner ready?”

“Henry, he’s just a child!”

“Woman, I’ve worked all day to support you and your brat. Is this the appreciation I get?”

She backed toward the kitchen door, hesitated there.

Henry returned his attention to the box. He pushed at the end panels. Nothing happened. He tried various pressures on the top, the sides, and the bottom.

“So you opened it, eh?” Henry asked, staring across the box at Billy.

“Yes.”

“You’re lying.”

“I opened it.”

Having achieved the effect he wanted, Henry thrust the box toward Billy. “Then open it.”

Having achieved one of the moments he wanted, and right on time, Billy went for the effect. He turned the box over, slid an end panel aside, whipped the top open and closed it, then restored the end panel and presented the closed box to Henry.

“See? It’s easy.”

The ferosslk, having achieved an education node, convinced Henry that he’d seen gold and jewels during the brief moment when the box had been opened.

Henry grabbed the box, wet his lips with his tongue. He pushed at the end panel. It refused to move.

“Grown-ups can’t open it,” Billy said. “It says so right on the top.”

Henry brought a claspknife from his hip pocket, opened it, and tried to find an opening around the top of the box.

Billy stared at him.

Billy’s mother still hovered fearfully in the kitchen doorway.

Henry had the sudden realization that they both hoped he’d cut himself. He closed the knife, returned it to his pocket, and extended the box toward Billy. “Open it for me.”

“I can’t.”

Ominously, Henry asked, “And … why … not?”

“I can’t let go of it when it’s open.”

The ferosslk inserted a sense of doubt into the situation here without Billy suspecting. Henry nodded. That just might be true. The box might have a spring lock that closed when you let go of it.

“Then open it and let me look inside while you hold it,” Henry said.

“I can’t now without doing all the other things.”

“What?”

“I can open it twice without the other things, but …”

“What other things?”

“Oh … like finding a grass seed and breaking a twig … and I’d have to find another anthill. The one I—”

“Of all the damn fool nonsense!” Henry thrust the box towards Billy. “Open this!”

“I can’t!”

Billy’s mother said, “Henry, why don’t you—”

“Helen, you get the hell out of here and let me handle this!”

She backed farther into the kitchen.

Henry said, “Billy, either you open this box for me, or I’ll open it the hard way with an axe.”

Billy shook his head from side to side, dragging out the moment for its proper curve.

“Very well.” Henry heaved himself from the chair, the box clutched in his right hand, angry elation filling him. They’d done it again—goaded him beyond endurance.

He brushed past Billy, who turned and followed him. He thrust Helen aside when she put out a pleading hand. He strode out the back door, slamming it behind him, then heard it open, the patter of Billy’s footsteps following.

Let the brat make one protest! Just one!

Henry set his jaw, headed across the backyard toward the woodshed—that anachronism that set the tone and marked the age of this house—“modest older home in quiet residential area.”

Now Billy called from behind him, “What’re you going to do?”

Henry stifled an angry retort, caught by an odd note in Billy’s voice … an imperative.

“Daddy?” Billy called.

Henry stopped at the woodshed door, glanced back. Billy never called him daddy. The boy stood in the path from the house; his mother waited on the back porch.

Now, why was I angry with them? Henry wondered.

He felt the box in his hand, looked at it. Jewels? In this dirty green little piece of stoneware? He was filled with the sense of his own foolishness, an effect achieved by a sophisticated refinement of ferosslk educational processing. Given a possible lesson to impart, the instructor could not resist the opportunity.

Once more, Henry looked at the two who watched him.

They’d done this deliberately to make him appear foolish! Damn them!

“Daddy, don’t break the box,” Billy said.

It was a nicely timed protest, and it demonstrated how well he had learned from the ferosslk.

His anger restored, Henry whirled away, slammed the box onto the woodshed’s chopping block, and grabbed up the axe.

Don’t break the box!

“Wait!” Billy called.

Henry barely hesitated, a lapse which put him in the precise phasing Billy wanted.

Taking careful aim, Henry brought the axe hissing down. He still felt foolish because it’s difficult to shake off a ferosslk lesson, but anger carried him through.

At the instant of contact between blade and box, an electric glimmer leaped into existence around the axe head.

To Billy, watching from the yard, the blade appeared to slice into the box, shrinking, shining, drawing inward at an impossible angle. There came an abrupt, juicy vacuum-popping noise—a cow pulling its foot out of the mud. The axe handle whipped into the box after the blade, vanished with a diminishing glimmer.

Still clutching the axe handle, Henry Alexander was jerked into the box—down, down … shrinking …

Whoosh!

The pearl glimmering winked out. The box remained on the chopping block where Henry had placed it.

Billy darted into the woodshed, grabbed up the box, and pressed it to his left ear. From far away came a leaf-whispering babble of many angry and pleading voices. He could distinguish some of the names being called by those voices—

“Abdul!”

“Terrik!”

“Churudish!”

“Pablo!”

“James!”

“Sremani!”

“Harold!”

And, on a low and diminishing wail, “Bill-eeeeeeeeeee …”

Having taught part of a lesson, the ferosslk recognized that the toy-plus-play element remained incomplete. By attaching a label at the proper moment, Billy had achieved a daddy-linkage, but no daddy existed now for all practical purposes. There were voices, of course, and certain essences—an available gene pattern from which to reconstruct the original. Something with the proper daddyness loomed as a distinct possibility, and the ferosslk observed an attractive learning pattern in the idea.

A golden glow began to emerge from one end of the box. Billy dropped it and backed away as the glow grew and grew and grew. Abruptly, the glow coalesced, and Henry Alexander emerged.

Billy felt a hand clutch his shoulder, looked up at his mother. The box lay on the ground near the chopping block. She looked from it to the figure that had emerged from it.

“Billy,” she demanded, “what … what happened?”

Henry stooped, recovered the box.

“Henry,” she said, “you hit that box with the axe, but it’s not broken.”

“Huh?” Henry Alexander stared at her. “What’re you talking about? I brought the damn thing out here to make sure it was safe for Billy to play with.”

He thrust the box at Billy, who took it and almost dropped it. “Here—take it, son.”

“But Billy was pestering you,” she said. “You said you’d …”

“Helen, you nag the boy too much,” Henry said. “He’s just a boy, and boys will be boys.” Henry winked at Billy. “Eh, son?” Henry reached over and mussed Billy’s hair.

Helen backed up, releasing Billy’s shoulder. She said, “But you … it looked like you went into the box!”

Henry looked at the box, then at Helen. He began to laugh. “Girl, it’s a good thing you got a man who loves you, because you are weird. You are really weird.” He stepped around Billy, took Helen gently by the arm. “C’mon, I’ll help you with dinner.”

She allowed herself to be guided toward the house, her attention fixed on Henry.

Billy heard him say, “Y’know, honey, I think Billy could use a brother or a sister. What do you say?”

“Henry!”

Henry’s laughter came rich and happy. He stopped, turned around to look at Billy, who stood in the woodshed doorway, holding the box.

“Stay where you can hear me call, Bill. Maybe we’ll go to a movie after dinner, eh?”

Billy nodded.

“Hey,” Henry called, “what’re y’ going to do with that funny box?”

Billy stared across the empty lot to the home of his friend Jimmy Carter. He took a deep breath, said, “Jimmy’s got a catcher’s mitt he’s been trying to trade me. Maybe he’d trade for the box.”

“Hey!” Henry said. “Maybe he would at that. But look out Jimmy’s old man doesn’t catch you at it. You know what a temper he has.”

“I sure do,” Billy said. “I sure do … Dad.”

Henry put his arm around Helen’s shoulder and headed once more for the house. “Hear that?” he asked. “Hear him call me Dad? Y’know, Helen, nothing makes a man happier than to have a boy call him Dad.”