"Wisdom," Malachi Jones once said, "is not the daughter of intelligence but the child of experience. Some call it common sense."
The sign on the door said:
LAIRDS OF LUNA
"We Insure Anything"
The girl inside the office was taking it literally. Rand Ridgway leaned back in his chair at the side desk and whistled.
"One hundred million dollars!"
From her dark, unfathomable eyes, the girl gave him a glance that could have meant anything. Malachi Jones, seated behind the desk across from her, was, on the other hand, taking it very calmly.
"A large sum, Rand, but not impossible. Depending, naturally, upon the value of what is to be insured."
"It is," the girl said, "a life insurance policy."
"Hm-m-m," Malachi hummed skeptically. "For whom?"
"I cannot divulge that," the girl said immediately.
Malachi's eyes were not unfathomable; they were a transparent, guileless blue. Now they were obviously puzzled as they gazed upon the strikingly beautiful girl, whose face was like cream against the blackness of coffee.
"Miss—" Malachi offered, but the girl, without emotion, watched the word quiver painfully in the air and then, discouraged, droop to the floor.
Without embarrassment, Malachi went on.
"Our motto, Miss, which you no doubt observed on the door, is 'we insure anything.' It means just that. But common sense says that we must insure something."
"I wish," the girl said quietly, "to insure the survival of my race."
Malachi waited for her to continue, but in vain.
"And what race is that?" he prompted, finally.
"I cannot answer that question."
Malachi's mild eyes blinked.
"We seem to be working at cross purposes. Apparently, Miss, you do not understand the operation of an insurance company. For instance, who is to be the beneficiary of this policy?"
"I am," the girl said.
"And how are we to know when the policy is payable?"
"I will tell you."
"And how are we to check on this information?"
"You will know."
The silence in the room was palpable with misunderstanding. Rand and Malachi were staring at the girl. The girl was staring at Malachi.
What she saw could not have been inspiring. Malachi was a dapper, wizened little man with thin, graying hair and the dried look of a skin that has been left too long in the sun. Dapper though he was, his clothes would not have been in style even a century before. He was dressed in what was once called a conservative business suit—while in the corner, on an antique hatrack, hung the rest of his attire, a dark cane and a dark head covering. The latter Malachi called a derby.
"Of all the preposterous—!" Rand began.
"I believe," said the girl, getting up with feline grace and decision, "that I have been misinforced. Good-by, Mr. Jones."
Malachi waited until she was almost to the door. "Of what were you informed?"
"You have a great reputation," the girl said, pausing. "It has reached even the remotest corners of the galaxy. I'm afraid, however, that you cannot be of help to me."
"Common sense," Malachi said dryly, "says that you should not judge the dinner until you have at least sampled the soup. I have done many strange things in my lifetime. I once insured an extra brain for a person named Gosseyn. Lairds never had to pay off. Perhaps I can even do something for you. I will, however, have to have a little more information."
Without hesitation the girl returned to the desk.
"Will any information I give you be confidential?"
"I am not," Malachi said judiciously, "a priest or a doctor or a lawyer. Nevertheless, I have my own quaint sense of honor. What you say will not go beyond this room."
The girl shot a speculative glance at Rand.
"I will guarantee the silence of my assistant," Malachi added.
The girl returned her gaze to Malachi and began to speak in a low, steady voice.
"My race is one of mutants confined to the planet New Earth of the sun Polaris. The mutation is natural, and we have deduced that its beginnings lay in the passage of a spaceship carrying immigrants through an unsuspected nucleonic storm several hundred years ago. Our numbers, however, are still small, and word of our existence has somehow leaked out."
"What distinguishing characteristics?" Malachi asked.
"None."
"What does the mutation consist of?"
"Increased intelligence."
"Then how do you know—?" Rand broke in.
A brief smile curled the corners of the girl's mouth.
"We know," she said, and there was obviously no doubt in her mind. "Hysteria on New Earth has led to the most oppressive of measures. No one suspected of being a mutant is permitted to leave the planet; anyone on whom a reasonable—or unreasonable—doubt rests is executed. Even babies must have compulsory intelligence tests; if their results are too high, they are disposed of. The only reason we have survived so long is the relative smallness of the population in comparison to the size of New Earth."
Malachi nodded and pressed a button which raised a small keyboard above the surface of the desk. But before he could begin to punch the keys, the girl had spun around the corner of the desk and had gripped his wrists.
"What are you going to do?" she asked in a low, hard voice.
"My dear," Malachi said gently, "I must compute the premium. Common sense should suggest that having trusted us with your secret you must trust us to preserve it. If we wished to stop you, a word to the authorities as soon as you leave this office would prevent you from getting off the moon. And now, if you will release me?"
He shook his arms gently. She let go and stepped back, a trifle baffled.
"You may see that the coded information is cleared as soon as I am finished," Malachi said.
Malachi's fingers were busy for a moment. Scarcely had they finished when the typewriter began to click. Malachi glanced down, and then, carefully, so that the girl could see, pressed the clear button.
"That will be," he said calmly, "twenty-five million dollars."
Wordlessly, the girl pulled a slip of paper out of the side pocket of her fitted plastic dress, filled in the amount, and let it flutter to the desk top.
"The odds are better than I thought," she said coldly.
Malachi smiled.
"That, of course, figures in the aid of our special service. Lairds not only insures against certain contingencies, it sees that those contingencies do not occur. You'll never know what I had to go through with that fellow Gosseyn. Service on your policy will begin as soon as this check has cleared the banks."
The girl's face hardened, contemptuously.
"I knew of the service feature, which is why I came to you, without, I might add, the knowledge or consent of the others of my race. I realize, however, better than the others, what humans will do for money."
With blue, fathomable eyes, Rand watched her slender, firmly rounded figure as she turned lithely and covered the distance to the door only too quickly. Then he reached for the visiphone switch.
As they were approaching New Earth, Rand was still complaining about it.
"I'll never understand why you wouldn't let me inform the authorities. If a race of supermen gets loose in the galaxy, nothing can stop them. You saw what she thought of humans; what fate awaits us if her kind ever gets control?"
"Common sense," Malachi said, "says that honor cannot be relative. The time to qualify a promise is before it is made, not after."
"Honor!" Rand sneered. "What's honor to them? Do you think they'd hesitate if they saw a chance to make their future secure? They'd wipe us out like vermin, like the inferior creations they consider us."
"Now, Rand," Malachi observed absently, from the depths of his comfortable lounge chair, "you have no way of knowing that."
Passionately, Rand leaned toward the little insurance man.
"It's instinctive, I tell you. Before I even knew what she was—when she first walked in—something curled up inside me. There was an air of something about her—a superhuman confidence, as if she and her race were the inheritors of the universe. And knew it."
"Well, well, Rand. Tell me more about what curled up inside you." Malachi smiled amiably.
"Laugh!" Rand protested. "You've talked so much about common sense that you can't feel any more. But it's intelligence that rules the universe. It's intelligence that gave man the power to conquer first earth and then the galaxy. It's intelligence that enabled him to wipe out all the hazards and all the inconveniences—from the carnivores to the housefly—except those that are kept for study. And it's greater intelligence that will eventually conquer man."
"Don't overrate intelligence," Malachi said mildly.
"Overrate it! Don't underrate it! It's the one thing that distinguishes man from all the rest of creation. It's the one thing that has made him great. It's the one thing that can humble him. And you say, don't overrate intelligence."
"So I did," said Malachi, wonderingly.
"I felt when I saw her like the lion, the king of the jungle, must have felt when he saw the first true man in front of him—awed, terrified, already beaten. I felt like leaping at her and tearing her to pieces before she could work some strange magic upon me. I felt as if my intelligence were nothing, that I must make use of brute force to conquer this living menace before it conquered me."
"Well, well," said Malachi, his eyes wide.
"Talk all you will of tolerance; talk all you will of common sense. This thing strikes deeper than those things. It strikes at the roots of human existence. If They win, it is the end of man as a species. He must go the way of the carnivores—or the housefly. For that is how much we will mean to Them. He must give way to the better man, to the better-thinking man, to the superman. Oh, perhaps there may be a few of us left—for study. But the rest of us will die—either because They will destroy us or through a fatal inferiority complex."
"Hm-m-m," Malachi mused. "I didn't know that it was fatal."
Rand's handsome face grew still and intense, and his voice became low, vibrant, and packed with meaning.
"She speaks of the survival of her race. I tell you, Malachi, upon this depends the survival of ours."
Malachi was silent for a long moment.
"You have been reading again," he said finally.
Rand's face fell with frustrated emotion.
"What of it?" he admitted defiantly.
"Those fictional adventures?" Malachi asked.
"Yes," Rand muttered. "But that doesn't mean that the ideas are worthless."
"Common sense," Malachi observed cheerfully, "says that fiction is meant to entertain, not instruct. And there is only one thing that fictional adventures lack."
"What is that?" asked Rand.
"Common sense," said Malachi, and he returned to the study of his guide book, while Rand sat staring stern-faced and unseeing at the visiplate on the lounge wall which showed New Earth growing large and lovely.
"Listen to this," said Malachi, licking his lips. "New Earth is noted for its many excellent restaurants. Especially to be recommended are: the Interstellar Bar and Grill for its Galactic Smorgasbord (rare delicacies from many worlds), the Old Earth Tearoom for its taste-tempting salads (crisp greens like none found elsewhere in the inhabited planets), the Spaceman's Cafe—"
"Malachi!" Rand wailed. "How can you think of food when the race is in danger of extinction?"
"Common sense," said Malachi with real earnestness, "says that the race would be in real and pressing danger of extinction if someone didn't think of food. Besides, if I must go the way of the carnivore, I would prefer to go having eaten my fill."
He leaned back, folded his hands across his chest, and closed his eyes, ruminating, no doubt, about strange and familiar dishes, past and future, all cooked to perfection. "Laugh," said Rand, laughing humorlessly. "Joke. Be gay. And maybe you can laugh this away. You, Malachi, are a traitor to the human race."
Malachi opened one eye.
"Common sense—" he began.
"Common sense!" Rand interrupted. "Perhaps common sense can tell you where that girl got twenty-five million dollars."
Malachi didn't answer.
"How," Rand continued, "if the mutants can be detected, are you going to keep them from being wiped out and collecting the policy?"
Malachi's mouth remained as tightly closed as his eyes.
"Why, if these mutants are not dangerous, are the human beings on New Earth bent on exterminating them?"
Malachi might have been asleep.
"How, if there is no means of detecting them, are they going to be kept from spreading throughout the galaxy?"
Malachi didn't stir.
"And how," Rand thundered, "with their superior intelligence and strange, new powers, are they to be kept from assuming control of the universe?"
Malachi once more opened one eye.
"Remember, Rand," he said mildly. "She came to me."
With the whispering of New Earth's atmosphere around the huge ship began a subtle and indefinable sense of tension that gripped the passengers, waiting in the main lounge with their hand luggage, and caused them to eye their neighbors suspiciously. It showed itself in different ways. In one corner a man began to twitch; a woman quarreled violently with a ship's officer; somewhere a child screamed for its mother.
They had been called together for final landing instructions, for directions on leaving the ship and claiming their baggage. They had been counted, and now the chief steward was rattling off a prepared speech which was receiving scant attention. Landing time was no more than twenty minutes away.
At that moment the jets sputtered and died—indisputably, finally. The gentle vibration that had pervaded the ship for these several weeks was still—as still as the crowd in the lounge, stunned with the suddenness of a death sentence from which there was no appeal. Once cut off, the jets could not be started again in the few minutes remaining before the ship crashed into the great concrete landing field below. Almost everyone recognized the finality of their doom in that instant, and those who were slow caught the unspoken news from the frozen panic of those near them.
Just before the ice-jam broke, Malachi caught a flicker of movement near the door, and then it was gone as terror exploded in the crowd. A woman shrieked wordlessly, a girl began to sob, a man cursed with soft and steady earnestness that was worse than violence.
From the elegant platform the chief steward bravely tried to calm the crowd, to achieve some kind of order that would prevent a stampede, but his voice went unheard.
"God!" said Rand. "God, oh, God!"
Then he saw Malachi and stopped to stare in amazement. Malachi's actions were not so strange; they were what hundreds of others were doing. He was dashing first this way and then that, his mouth open as if he were shouting madly. But he wasn't shouting.
"Stay cool," he was saying calmly. "We'll get out of this. Be brave. The jets'll be fixed in time. No need to worry. Be cool.…"
His words and actions were having their effect. Some persons were soothed; others just stopped to watch him. An eddy of comparative quiet grew in the midst of the turbulent pool of milling, screaming people.
Then somebody yelled, "The lifeboats," and immediately those near the door formed a jammed, clawing mass of human flesh trying to get through. Malachi changed his cautionings to urge his little group to wait calmly, that there was no chance of getting out yet. Rand trotted along beside Malachi in the little man's strange, excited, haphazard dashings that contrasted so sharply with his words. He tried to figure it out for a moment, and then shook his head.
"Malachi!" he shouted hoarsely. "Let's get out of here."
Malachi shook his head.
"We'll crash within ten minutes," Rand argued savagely. "We've got to do something."
Malachi ignored him, as he ignored the rest of his frantic, subsequent exhortations, and went on his own mad way. Slowly the crowd thinned out, until they, too, could follow through the door.
There was no stopping Rand then. He grabbed Malachi by the arm and dashed off, dragging the little man in the improbable suit, with the useless cane and the impossible hat, willy-nilly along behind.
They came to the first lifeboat entrance. The scene at the lounge door was being repeated—a funneled mass of humanity tried to drain itself through a narrow neck into the boat, and few were succeeding. Malachi glanced at his watch.
"Seven minutes," he said calmly.
Off they dashed again. Malachi uncomplainingly allowing himself to be pulled along like a man whose shoes have run away with him; unable to do anything about it, he resigns himself to the incomprehensible.
The mob was as great at the second lifeboat and the third.
"Six minutes," said Malachi.
Around and around they went, past one shouting, swirling, struggling mass of humanity after another. As they completed the circuit, arriving back opposite the main lounge door, Malachi dug in his heels and leaning back like an ancient buggy driver with a runaway horse, pulled Rand to a puffing, panting standstill.
"See here, Rand," Malachi said. "Those boats can't get clear."
"I know," said Rand, his shoulders sinking dejectedly. "I've been trying not to think about it."
"Five minutes," said Malachi. "We might as well be graceful about this. Common sense says that death is as final one way as another."
"You can be graceful about death," Rand said bitterly. "I can't." And then he struck his forehead a sharp blow with the heel of his hand. "The parachutes! Me once a pilot and I forget the parachutes! They always have a few 'chutes in the lock for passenger and freight drops at small planets."
Malachi smiled.
"Ah, yes."
"What are you waiting for?" Rand shouted, and began to resume the runaway-horse routine.
Malachi pulled him up before he got started.
"There's only four minutes left."
"No time," Rand muttered. "Not enough time now."
From close at hand came a loud metallic clang, followed closely by another, like the gong of Time, inexorably announcing the departure of hope and the entrance of doom. But Rand's head lifted with a wild surmise, his ears filled with a throaty roar communicated through the hull. The passenger shell sank, and Malachi and Rand found themselves pressed down with sudden weight.
"Jets!" Rand shouted wonderingly, and then, "Tugs! They caught us."
The landing was a little rough, but not nearly as rough as they had expected. Even the unloading procedure was curtailed, and they were out of the ship within minutes of their arrival, stretcher bearers passing them on the way in to take out the injured.
On the broad concrete landing field a parachute lay in a tumbled mass. A few hundred feet away a group of guards was marching a man toward the large control building. The man was looking straight ahead, his bearing proud and disdainful. Malachi watched the scene, shaking his head.
Rand looked bewildered.
"What is the meaning of all this?" he demanded bewilderedly, making an all-encompassing gesture. "Why did you act so strange on the ship? What—?"
"That," Malachi said gently, "was an intelligence test. And he was the only one who passed."
They were out on the streets of New Earth's capital and largest city, Utopia, before Rand had recovered sufficiently to question the wizened insurance man.
"What do you mean," he asked, finally, "an intelligence test?"
"Look at it this way," Malachi said absently, staring at the clean purity of lines that marked the architecture of Utopia and the spotless condition of the streets that emphasized them. "What would be the perfect intelligence test?"
"I don't understand," Rand said, his forehead puckering.
"How would you test the intelligence of a person," Malachi went on patiently, "who didn't want to reveal his intelligence?"
Rand puzzled over it for awhile.
"I guess," he said finally, "I'd make it a life-or-death matter. He'd have to figure it out if he wanted to live."
"But if you couldn't kill him if he failed? And if he knew it?"
Rand's face cleared.
"Oh, I see. They can't kill everybody—the mutants who pass and the humans who fail. So it has to look like an accident."
"Exactly." Malachi nodded. "It has to be an accident to all except a very few. There are two essential parts to the perfect intelligence test: it must test intelligence and nothing else, and it must make it certain that the intelligence be displayed."
"So the failure of the jets was that test."
"Everyone had about one second to recognize the situation, to estimate the possibilities, and to initiate the only action that had any hope of success."
"The 'chutes," Rand muttered.
"Yes," Malachi agreed. "There was just enough time, if one started immediately after the jets stopped, to make it to the lock, get into a parachute, and jump—with a few minutes extra, so that you weren't inevitably killed when the ship exploded."
"But we might have been killed!" Rand said suddenly. "Those tugs catching us was about as risky a business as there is!"
"A necessary part of the test," Malachi pointed out. "Otherwise it would have had no chance of success. Which must have influenced the one-who-passed. And it shows how desperate the authorities are—they are willing to risk a ship and a shipload of passengers and cargo to catch one mutant."
"That wouldn't work every time," Rand objected. "They'd soon catch on."
"Of course. There must be a whole corps of men working on these things—all one-shot. The mutant must have realized that the situation might be a test, but as soon as he made his first move he might as well have gone through with it. There were probably hidden cameras trained on us every minute. And who knows what valuable information he was carrying? It must have been something priceless for him to risk leaving New Earth and returning."
Rand's eyes narrowed.
"What about you? Why didn't you head for the 'chutes?"
Malachi chuckled. "Me? I'm no mutant."
"Don't kid me," Rand said. "You knew what was going on all the time, from the first moment."
"Well," said Malachi drily, "I had no overpowering need for self-preservation. And besides—I was in the center of the room."
They walked a few seconds in silence. Then Rand suddenly thrust his fist hard into his palm.
"That girl—the mutant—she came a few days ahead of us. She must have been caught."
Malachi shrugged. "Perhaps. What of it?"
"What of it?" Rand repeated sternly. "They've probably executed her."
"But you hated her, remember?" Malachi reminded. "Instinctively? Something curled up inside you."
"I know," Rand muttered. "But one—against so many. What chance did she have?"
Rand brooded about it for awhile. Ahead of them a small, well-dressed group of people were congregating, forming a tight circle about something. There was nothing particularly conspicuous about it at first—except for the tautness of the backs and the low mutter which held an ugly minor note.
The mutter began to grow louder and uglier; it seemed out of place among the good clothes and the intelligent faces. Rand and Malachi were almost even with the circle now. Malachi nudged his assistant.
"What is it?" he whispered.
"A girl," Rand whispered back, peering over the heads of the crowd. "Dark hair. I can't see her face."
Someone finally said it.
"Mutant!" a woman spat out.
The word was like a match to tinder. "Mutant!" came from all sides and the circle pressed inward.
Malachi stepped forward and pulled at the arm of the nearest man in the group.
"Pardon me," he began, and when the man pulled away impatiently, Malachi grabbed him again. "Pardon me, but could you tell me where—?"
The man turned, but Rand was already wading in from the other side, sending his battlecry ahead of him like a knight of old.
"Let her alone!" he shouted, his arms flailing. "A mob—against one girl!"
"Here's another one," someone said, swearing.
The air became a kaleidoscope of arms and fists and feet; screams and curses resounded along the street.
"I'll get you out," shouted Rand from the midst, his voice somewhat muffled.
Malachi sighed.
When the officers arrived and broke up the fight, Rand was stretched out on the pavement, his clothes in shreds, his face bruised, one eye swollen, a knot raising on his forehead, and he was muttering through puffed lips:
"I'm coming. Don't give up!"
He looked up at Malachi, who was leaning on his cane, cool and impeccable, gazing down at Rand and shaking his head sorrowfully.
"Where were you?" Rand mumbled reproachfully.
"Common sense," said Malachi, "says that more battles are won by tactics than by violence."
"Where's the girl?"
"She came out this side when you went in the other. You'll have to pardon my friend, officers. He's a little impetuous."
"That may be," replied one of the uniformed men. "But we'll have to take you in to security headquarters. Maybe that was a mutant got away, maybe not. We can't take chances."
"Fine," Malachi said, jauntily swinging his cane. "That's where we were heading. Will you call a car? I think my friend would prefer to ride."
The security officer at headquarters, a calm, shrewd-looking man, eyed them carefully when they first were ushered in. He said to Malachi, "You seem all right, but I don't like the looks of this other character."
Rand was not a pleasant sight. A glance at their passports, however, soon convinced him that they were born far from the center of infection.
"Lairds of Luna, eh?" he commented. "It will be convenient having an office on New Earth."
"Oh, I'm not opening an office," Malachi said carelessly. "This is just a visit."
"Didn't you know?" asked the security officer, surprised. "This planet is closed. You came in on the last ship. Nothing comes in; nothing goes out. You'd better pick out a nice human wife and settle down."
"What do you mean?" Rand gasped. "Closed for how long?"
"Till this emergency is over," said the officer casually, squinting speculatively at the ceiling. "You might be able to leave here, if you're lucky, in—say forty-fifty years."
After the galactic smorgasbord at the Interstellar Bar and Grill, a meal over which Malachi lingered long and lovingly, much to Rand's disgust, they headed for the government center—a huge, towering building housing all planetary governmental activities and containing living quarters as well.
"What I can't figure out," said Rand, patched into some semblance of presentability but speaking and eating with difficulty, "is how that mob knew they had caught a mutant."
"Hysteria," Malachi said, "if the information we've been given is accurate."
It was, the official at the center informed them; he was only too happy to be of service to the Malachi Jones from Lairds. After inviting them to make the fullest use of the center's facilities and to accept accommodations in the visiting dignitaries section of the building, he said, "There is no sure test. We do the best we can, but even we cannot expect one-hundred-per-cent accuracy. All we can look forward to is a long, painful struggle."
"Isn't there anything at all?" asked Malachi.
The official hesitated. "Only when one of them is caught in circumstances that almost preclude doubt. Then--there is a certain cold pride which makes them refuse to deny that they are mutants. If it isn't another trick to take us off our guard. There are some who don't and—and then we can't be certain," he ended unhappily.
"Do you really execute them?" Rand blurted out. "Babies and all?"
The official looked at him for a long moment.
"Where did you get that information?"
"Oh—around," Rand said lamely. "You know—what people say."
"We cannot divulge our methods," the official said.
"Is information restricted on the origin of the mutants?" Malachi asked, steering the conversation into safer channels.
"Not restricted," the official admitted, "—unknown. Oh, there's some story about an early spaceship and a nucleonic storm, but it's unverifiable."
"The danger must be extreme to make you quarantine the planet," Rand observed.
"Yes," the official said coldly, and on that note the conversation concluded.
As they stepped out of the elevator into the hall that led to their designated quarters, the door of the next elevator was just closing. Within the car they had a glimpse of a girl with dark hair and a face like cream against the blackness of coffee. On each side of her was a tall, hard-faced man with cold, watchful eyes. Rand grabbed Malachi by the arm.
"There she is. They've caught her."
Malachi carefully peeled Rand's fingers from what he called—for lack of a better name—his biceps. He massaged the arm as he glanced ruefully at the lean, muscular ex-pilot.
"Jumping at conclusions again," he complained. "Aren't you bruised enough?"
"We've got to do something," Rand went on, unheeding. "We've got to get her away."
"Common sense," said Malachi, "says that she is much more capable of taking care of herself than are either of us."
"One against so many," Rand muttered. "How can you say that, Malachi?"
"Oh, I don't know," Malachi said. "I'm foolish, I guess."
"They'll kill her. After all, we have an obligation to her."
"She's the beneficiary," Malachi objected. "Not the insured."
"Stop splitting hairs," said Rand.
Malachi sighed and turned away. In his room, he sat for a long time, staring out the window over the broad expanse of city, while Rand paced back and forth mumbling to himself.
"How to find her? Where could she be?"
Malachi finally raised himself from his chair.
"I have to do some work. Coming with me?"
Rand shook his head. "I'll comb the building," he muttered. "I'll roam the halls until I find her."
Malachi snorted. The building was two-hundred floors high and covered four city blocks.
Malachi spent several hours in the historical library, dividing his time fairly equally between early archives and recent events. He was in the office of the New Earth News for about half an hour. When he returned to his room Rand was nowhere to be seen. There was no evidence, in fact, of his ever having been there. Malachi shrugged and went to bed. It had been an eventful day.
The buzzing of the visiphone awoke him. It was still dark, and when he snapped on the bedlight, he found that it was three o'clock. Malachi yawned, and flicked the visiphone switch. The screen stayed blank, but a woman's hard, suspicious voice filled the room.
"Malachi Jones?"
"Yes."
"There's a strange young man in my bedroom. He says that you can vouch that his purpose is not what I think it is."
When Malachi arrived, a few minutes later, in the luxurious suite twenty-five floors above, the girl who had claimed to be a mutant was sitting up in bed, her eyes cold, but no colder than the eye of the pistol that was staring implacably in the direction of a shrinking Rand Ridgway by the door.
"Malachi," Rand said hoarsely, "tell this girl—"
"My friend here," said Malachi, "is a quixotic fool, Miss Hastings—not a lustful one."
"Miss Hastings!" Rand exclaimed.
"Miss Hastings," Malachi went on, "as you might have discovered, Rand, had you investigated, is the daughter of the president."
"But—" said Rand.
"Her motives are no concern of ours," said Malachi.
"But—" said Rand.
"And now let us return to our room," said Malachi.
"But—" said Rand.
Malachi saw that Rand was securely tucked into bed before he slipped between his own sheets and turned out the light.
"Get some sleep," he said. "If everything goes well, we should be leaving New Earth tomorrow."
"What?" said Rand.
But Malachi was snoring—or pretending to.
Things began to happen soon after the delivery of the New Earth News to their door. Rand took one look at the full-page ad on page three and gasped.
ARE YOU A MUTANT?
Anyone tracing his ancestry as far back as the Mayflower, in its 2075 voyage, carries mutant blood in his veins and can be expected to display exceptional intelligence. En route to New Earth, the Mayflower passed through an unusual nucleonic storm which subtly altered the genes of the passengers. In a few centuries mutated recessives began to appear…
"You've betrayed them!" Rand said accusingly.
"Hah!" said Malachi.
The door opened silently. Two men and a girl slipped into the room, their guns pointing steadily in the direction of Malachi and Rand.
"Ah, Miss Hastings," said Malachi. "I've been expecting you and your delegation."
"Traitor!" the girl spat out. "I hope your company breaks you for this. I can't see what you expect to gain by it."
"That is where intelligence must take a back seat to common sense," said Malachi. "As for what I expect to gain--that is self-evident."
"You—or your company—have just lost one hundred million dollars," the girl said bitterly. "I don't doubt that the government has offered you more than that to sell us out."
"On the contrary, my dear—" Malachi began.
"We have no choice now," said the girl, "but to go underground—although it will do little good. All our efforts, all our plans are worthless. The government can track us down one by one, dig us out, exterminate us."
"How did you find out that it was the Mayflower?" asked one of the men, with a cold, hard face and colder eyes.
"Yes," said the girl. "The government researchers have been trying to find that out for years."
Malachi smiled ingenuously.
"It was a little logic and a lot of sentiment," he admitted. "Perhaps the same mixture that motivated you—or your predecessors. However, that is not important."
"Not important!" exclaimed the girl in anguish. "When you have just sentenced our race to extinction?"
One of the strange men moved his gun impatiently. Rand jerked. "They're going to kill us."
"Oh, come now, Rand," said Malachi. "These are admittedly extra-intelligent people. They will realize that violence defeats itself. Besides, I have taken the only course possible."
"You are mistaken," the girl said. "We are going to kill you before we go—and soon."
"Come now," said Malachi in amazement. "Revenge, even if it were justified—which it is not--is profitless."
"We are not going to kill you for revenge," said the girl, "but to safeguard whatever chance for survival remains to us. We do not underestimate your intelligence, Malachi Jones. What I underestimated"—she cast an uneasy, flickering glance at her companions—"was your sense of honor. Were it not for the fact that your heredity is obviously clear of New Earth influence, we might suspect you of being one of us."
"Oh, no," Malachi protested, smiling. "Not that."
"Talk is useless," said the stranger, who had been silent until now. "The council has decided."
"You have been condemned," said the girl.
The three guns, which had been pointed downward, began to raise.
"Let me ask you one thing—" Malachi began.
Rand threw the pillow with fluttering accuracy. Straight at the two men it flew, spoiling their aim. In the same moment Rand dove headlong across the room at the girl. As if she had all the time in the world, she hesitated and then, effortlessly, brought the muzzle of her gun down on Rand's head. The ex-pilot crumpled at her feet, blood welling through his curly blond hair. The girl stared down at him expressionlessly.
One of the men turned to eye her coldly.
"Why didn't you shoot?" he asked without emotion.
She cast him a sidelong glance.
"I—don't know. He's a fool—worthless."
"Ah, yes," said Malachi, sighing. "My friend can never get it beaten into his head—although he and others have tried hard—that the ends violence wins are worthless in themselves. But then, he is a likable fool."
The girl, her expression breaking, slowly sank to the floor as if her body had suddenly acquired a puzzling will of its own. She placed Rand's blood-stained head in her lap and gently inspected his wound.
"You were going to say something," one of the strangers remarked, raising his gun again, "before we shot you."
"Oh, yes," said Malachi. "I was going to ask you a very pertinent question. Did you ever hear the story of the fairy changling?"
The finger that was tightening on the trigger relaxed. The men looked at Malachi as if the insurance agent had suddenly gone mad.
"If this is your idea of a joke—"
But a knock at the door prevented the completion of the ultimatum the mutant was about to give. Without waiting for permission, Malachi strode—or would have strode had his short legs been longer—quickly to the door.
"Oh, yes," he said, flinging open the door. "I was expecting you gentlemen."
Turning back to the room, he nodded toward the tableau formed by the three mutants and Rand.
"Miss Hastings, friends," he said formally, "may I present certain officials and a few members of the security police."
One was large and fleshy, but not soft. He preceded the four others through the door. Behind him was a tall, cadaverous eagle of a man with a questing beak and sharp, restless eyes. The three who followed were holding guns.
"My friends here," Malachi said, completing the introductions, "claim to be mutants."
"Georgia!" said the large man, missing or ignoring the last remark. "What are you doing here?"
The girl looked up from the blond head she held in her lap. Her eyes were puzzled.
"I don't know," she said.
"We should have shot the little bastard when we first came in," said one of the mutant gunmen, coldly, as if it were a simple statement of fact, not something to be brooded about. "Then we might have had a chance."
"Mutants!" said the big man, swinging back to Malachi. "Mutants, did you say?"
"That's what he said," came from the Eagle.
"Those two and your daughter, President Hastings," Malachi said lightly. "Not the unconscious one in the position he would undoubtedly find interesting if he were aware of it."
"Georgia!" exclaimed the President. "That's absurd."
Georgia met her father's eyes. Slowly, not changing her gaze or expression, she rotated her head back and forth. At the mention of mutants, the three members of the security police had drawn close to the President and the Eagle had suddenly materialized a gun in his fist.
"If you force our hands," a mutant gunman said coldly, "we will have to kill the President."
"No," said Georgia, her voice equally as cold.
"President Hastings is the one man who has prevented outright massacre," said the Eagle. "Injure him and you destroy your race."
The moment held, taut, vibrant, like the stretching of a piano wire—four guns on one side; two, perhaps three, on the other. But the reflexes behind the two guns were just a little quicker—everyone in the room knew that. They weren't, on the other hand, very much quicker; they were just enough quicker that no one in the room could expect to leave it alive. And the moment stretched into another, lengthened, drew out impossibly.…
"Well, well, well," Malachi's voice tinkled cheerfully, plucking an airy harpsichord melody out of a string tuned for a dirge. "Now that we're all together I hope you aren't going to make the same kind of mistake my friend made who is now lying bleeding in Miss Hastings' lovely lap. Not that it isn't an enviable position, but Rand, alas, is in no condition to appreciate it."
Without any definable reason, the forces that had been pulling at opposite ends of the piano wire relaxed, and the wire collapsed in a tangle.
"Georgia," said the President, brokenly. "What's got into you?"
"Nothing but what my heredity put there," Georgia said. "I can't help it if I'm a mutant."
She hastily bent her dark head over the fair one in her lap.
"I was just asking these--er-mutants," Malachi said, "if they had ever heard the story of the fairy changling."
"What has that got to do with the situation?" the Eagle asked.
"Ah," said Malachi, smiling. "That is the first intelligent question I have heard in this room yet. Before I answer it, however, let me sum up the general situation, a situation which, if I am right, the persons here have not originated but inherited."
The Eagle nodded.
"It is, I might say by way of preface, an impossible situation," Malachi continued, "one which can only result in the deterioration of this world into insignificance and eventual poverty--economic and intellectual. It has already resulted in the quarantine of New Earth for forty or fifty years."
President Hastings, recovered from his emotional shock, spoke now with speed and precision. "A desperation move, we admit."
"We have a condition of armed warfare," Malachi said, "underground movements, spies and counterspies, plots and counterplots. Meanwhile the principal work of life goes undone while both sides fight for survival. Both sides," Malachi emphasized, fixing the mutants on a gaze which was fully as steely as their own.
Georgia looked up and glanced at her gunmen. They shrugged slightly and Georgia turned her eyes on Malachi.
"The ideal solution of your problem," Malachi said, still looking at the mutants, "is removal of the threats to your existence and the restrictions which hamper your activities."
Georgia agreed silently.
"The ideal solution of your problem," Malachi went on, turning to the President's party, "is not, as you might at first be tempted to suggest, the elimination of the mutants."
"Why not?" asked the Eagle sharply.
Malachi shook his head sorrowfully.
"I am disappointed in you. I thought I had found a kindred spirit. No, the wiping out of the 'mutants' would cripple the intellectual potential of New Earth so severely that it would be centuries in recovering. Your ideal solution is the integration of the 'mutants' into your race."
"Exactly," President Hastings said, nodding. Then an expression of discouragement flickered across his face. "But this is, I'm afraid, impossible. We can never change the deep-rooted prejudice of the people. It is too strong, too old. The counter-measures we have hinted at, but never"—he stared defiantly at the mutant group—"carried out, are only those which would appease the blood-thirst, the primeval fear, of the public."
"I think," Malachi said softly, "you might find that attitude changed as of this morning."
These words brought the deadly stares of eight pairs of hot eyes upon Malachi. The insurance agent bore it with nonchalance, even, perhaps, with unawareness.
"You," he said, indicating the mutants, "came here prepared to execute me for revealing information you considered essential to your survival.
"You," he went on, turning to the President's group, "came here to force my source of information from me and to see what else I might not have revealed.
"Both of you are mistaken. I know nothing." The eight hot stares became blank. "Only people," Malachi added softly.
When the silence had lasted long enough, Malachi cleared his throat.
"I looked up the most likely spaceship in the early immigration history of New Earth. As a matter of fact, there were four--all equally probable, all having passed through an area of unexplained radioactivity in space. A frequent occurrence, by the way. We ourselves passed through one on our way here."
"Are you trying to say that the history of the mutations is a myth!" Georgia exclaimed hotly.
"I didn't say that," Malachi pointed out. "You did. However, now that you have brought it up, perhaps it is. Your 'infallible' test of mutation is of the same class as that of your opponents. A level of intelligence."
Georgia's face flushed in admission.
"Perhaps you have more certain ways of determining intelligence, but the important factor is that there is no significant difference between mutant and human—it is not a question of kind but of degree. The fact you overlook is that there have always been a certain number of unusually intelligent persons."
"But never so many," Georgia objected, "nor so high a level."
"A matter of evolution, my dear," Malachi said. "Intelligence mates with intelligence, on the whole. The number of geniuses has risen, according to statistics, all over the galaxy. As," he added sadly, "have the number of mentally deficient. This factor, together with the fact that only the more intelligent tend to emigrate to other planets, has misled you and your group."
"But what," asked the Eagle, "of the instinctive hatred of the people?"
"That answer has already been given—ingrained prejudice against the extra-intelligent. And, you know, the mobs are usually wrong in their diagnoses, aren't they?"
The Eagle nodded reluctantly.
"The mutant group probably began as a fad," Malachi said reflectively. "When word of it leaked out, the people rose up—instinctively, perhaps, as you say--and cast the so-called different ones out. Then began the psychology of the outcast; in self-defense the fad became a cult, the cult a religion. Remember—no one feels like an outcast until he is cast out. But, to get back to my little announcement in the News, I imagine you have already noticed a reaction?"
The President nodded.
"If that is the cause of this morning's activities. The streets are unusually quiet. Disturbances are at a minimum. There hasn't been a lull like this since my first term of office began. It's had us worried."
"It needn't have," Malachi said dryly. "Everyone is at home looking up his genealogy."
"I can't imagine what you have gained," said the Eagle, "besides confusion of the issue." But the President was quicker.
"I see. Everyone—"
"Well," Malachi qualified, "not everyone—but every third generation child on New Earth can trace his ancestry back to the Mayflower, which was one of the first ships to reach New Earth."
"But they aren't all mutants," Georgia gasped. "It takes a certain combination of recessives—"
"Are we back on that again?" Malachi complained.
Georgia flushed once more and fell silent.
"I mentioned the story of the fairy changling," Malachi went on. "At this point it becomes significant. Every child, at some stage in his life, has nursed the secret belief that he is really a prince, a princess—or a mutant—in disguise, and not the child of his actual parents at all. Witness your own child, President Hastings, as a case in point. Everyone considers himself superior, and anyone, given half a chance, will snatch at the belief that he is of a superior race. Nothing, once this belief is firmly implanted, will shake it. You might read an ancient work called Star-Begotten by a man named H.G. Wells for artistic confirmation."
Every person in the room, with the exception of Malachi Jones, insurance agent extraordinary, was shaken.
"You will probably be annoyed for a long time," Malachi observed, "by superiority complexes. But that is better than what you have had."
The exchange of glances around the room was wary but promising.
"Let this then," said Malachi, "be a lesson to successful, superior mutations. Common sense says that the best survival policy is not secrecy but publicity."
Rand, stirring, twitched his bruised face, wrinkled his puffy lips, reached back to feel his bloody and broken head, and painfully opened the black eye below the knot on his forehead. Then he saw the face bending solicitously above him, sighed, and went back to sleep, smiling.
"There's one point I still can't understand," Rand said, two and one-half light years out from New Earth. "What if they really are mutants?"
"Your own experience with Georgia," Malachi said, "should convince you that now, once the segregation of the outcast is over, they will never be able to keep their mutation pure. Intelligent young men fall illogically in love with stupid young women, and intelligent young women fall in love with—well—"
"That's all right, Malachi," Rand said. "You can't hurt my feelings. Not now."
And he returned across the lounge toward the smiling girl whose face was like cream against the blackness of coffee.
Malachi gazed after him, shaking his head and smiling.
"What this universe needs is not greater intelligence," he said to himself, "but more common sense."