L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 35 Read online

  Hailes currently lives with his wife and four boys in Salt Lake City, where he continues to draw and paint regularly. His work can be seen at www.hailesart.com.

  The Idealist

  AUTHOR'S NOTE:

  This is not a chronicle of that chaos which befell the Earth in fatal February 2893; for it would require a far more brutal pen than mine and a far longer story than this to record the political and moral debacle which ended the Last Aristocracy. It is not to be regretted that decadent profligates, such as the Eighty Great Names contained, found unmerciful death in the scorching frenzy of a maddened mass; the only regrettable thing is a law, seemingly inviolable, which states that the method of government cannot be changed no matter how many rulers are slain.

  When a billion despised and beaten workmen lifted their unshaven faces to give vent to the hideous marching song of the revolt, there were those among them who dreamed an idyllic ideal. No pity to the brawling clods who scarce knew that they lived! No pity to the drunken beasts who had abused rule for three centuries! Pity instead the idealist who discovered that he had placed power in the hands of an untutored mass who, inured to the foulness and bigotry of the Eighty Great Names, carried forward along the very principles which they had avowed to destroy. For a century, Justice had been a bland-faced mockery—the mass turned it into a careless buffoon.

  Pity, then, the idealist, the human being who, by some strange chemistry, was born a gentleman in face and figure and worker in name. The ranks of the Enlightened People’s Party held many such as this, men who tenaciously gripped light and reason to their breasts until the bullets of firing squads put out all their light and all their reason forever. Such men were the supporters of those unbelievably airy dreamers, the Anarchist Alliance. Like a round table of King Arthur, they judged the world by themselves and failed to recognize the brutalizing effect of the Eighty Great Names upon an uneducated and vengeful people.

  The first slaughter was small compared to the second. Once set burning, passions caught from man to man and human life became, out of habit, something to destroy. With the Eighty Great Names stacked in a hundred and eighty sodden piles, the Anarchist Alliance, under the direction of very able scholars, sought to reform the new government into a lasting formula for contentment. But this effort was antagonistic to the Enlightened People’s Party, for the leaders were power-crazed and lustful in their orgy of death. The Anarchist Alliance and the Communist regime parted. The latter was more numerous by ninety-five to one and it was therefore a simple matter for the Enlightened People’s Party to single out and order executed any man who might possibly menace the Communist leaders.

  Wholesale destruction steamrolled the Anarchist Alliance. Even so, there were a few, too powerful in friends to be murdered outright, who received the lingering death of the concentration camps and colonies around the System and in Outer Space.

  Pity the poor idealist! The only man who could have founded a lasting contentment for Earth! For the ideal and the man must always genuflect before the avarice and personal terror of the unshaven clown who, to the peal of the devil’s laughter, controls the crowd and sweeps it onward to greater follies. Stupidity and cupidity unfortunately rhyme.

  Kurt von Rachen

  He threw up his hands to protect his wounded face from the elbows and shoulders of the crowd. It was like drowning, being flung into this motion and sound. It was drowning, for drowning, too, is death. The place stunk of sweat and stale powder smoke and gangrene.

  Revolution, thought Steve Gailbraith, didn’t begin to kill until it was done.

  The shiny courtroom walls, so lately adorned with statues symbolizing Justice and Mercy, were dotted and slashed with slugs and shrapnel, seared and crumpled with rays, and discolored by strangling gas. Pieces of furniture crunched underfoot. The crowd surged this way and that, now a vast roar of obscene delight, then a howling wolf pack athirst for new blood. Where no commoner had stood before except under arrest, commoners now made a vicious holiday. Each new sentence was greeted with “Forever to Fagar, the Deliverer!”

  A man could die here, thought Steve, and never be discovered even if he began to stink. His wits were dulled by the swirling bedlam until it took great effort for him to see, or think, or feel anyone. He writhed with disgust for this thing he had helped bring about.

  There was expectant lust in the faces which saw him push past. But the prisoners ahead had no interest in anything. The guard shoved him into a seat and tramped away to fetch more meat for the firing squad. Steve dabbed at his bleeding face with a ragged sleeve. The glint of torn braid about his wrist caught his eye for an instant and he grinned.

  Colonel Steve Gailbraith.

  Long live the Revolution!

  There were other uniforms to the right and left, but just now the prisoner’s box was jammed, in the main, with civilians—eight or nine women, men with the ascetic faces of scholars, hefties with a truculent swagger—

  Evidently, thought Steve, they were running out of military criminals and easing off into counter-revolutionists. It was about time they started shooting some civilians.

  The high bench was spread with the elbows of the judges. They sat in comfortable indifference and passed judgment without bothering to look or listen. Even murder, thought Steve, gets to be a habit.

  The chief judge was an insolent rogue whose face consisted of unshaven folds of fat and a pair of lewd eyes. He had on a grimy suit of workman’s slipovers and a borer’s lantern cap; his hands were like lumps of lard and his paunch so soft that the bench dented it. For eight days Guis had been sitting there with his cohorts dispensing with those who had aided, but now might obstruct, the new governmental system which had swept the Continent from Frisco to New York with a bloodstained broom.

  Two factions of workers, one Communistic and the other Anarchistic, had united to wipe out the mental aristocracy which had abused its workmen and slaves. And then the Communistic faction, the stronger, had found it expedient to cancel out the Anarchistic partner. With the aristocracy lying in congealed clots at crossroads throughout the land, the Enlightened People’s Government found it simple to increase the heaps with Anarchistic corpses. It was being done smoothly. The people had not yet begun to realize that Anarchist and counter-revolutionist were being made synonymous. It would not do to excite the people too much. There were even Anarchists who could not be touched because of their great popularity.

  Communism, thought Steve, is a method of repaying service with death. When he, as a member of the Anarchistic party’s better element—which also included most of the brains in the land—had taken over the temporary government of California, he had supposed his own popularity sufficient to protect him. But when he had seen fit to spare a few aristocratic families, he had been disabused of his own invulnerability.

  Ah, well, thought Steve, it was too swift a rise anyway. What goes up—and he had gone up. From an Air Force lieutenant he had zoomed to a colonelcy and, having done spectacular work in the revolt, his colonelcy had resulted in a governorship.

  And here he sat watching Judge Guis gnaw a Havana with snagged teeth and spit out sentences amid clouds of smoke. It was unlikely that Guis caught half the names tossed up to him by cringing lawyers.

  “Professor Jean Mauchard,” barked the clerk. “Accused of heading the organization known as the Sons of Science, said organization having been found guilty of plotting to sustain a counter-revolutionary program.”

  Jean Mauchard was a straight, stiff fellow, thirty and disdainful. His lip was curled as he spoke up at Guis. “Guilty. Firing squad.”

  Guis stopped grinning and removed the cigar. He leaned forward to better view the prisoner. “Is that mockery, my fine scientist?”

  “I save you your wind,” said Jean Mauchard. “I wonder that you do not get a parrot to keep blatting those words for you.”

  Guis almost got angry and then, sitting back, he repla
ced the cigar. “No parrot for you, scientist. You Anarchists have very strange ideas, but you are not without your points. I have been waiting for your case. You are, I think, leader of the Sons of Science?”

  “Correct.”

  “That outfit of disaffected aristocrats, composed of men with too many formulas and too few brains.” Guis chuckled at his own wit and some of the other judges grinned down at Jean Mauchard.

  Guis whispered to his cohorts on either side, and they whispered down the line. The grins increased.

  They are relieved, thought Steve. I wonder what hell stew they’re cooking now. They wouldn’t dare shoot Jean Mauchard out of hand. But there he left the observation, for the confusion of the place made his already aching head spin. People in the box were jostling him and the guards had hurled several new prisoners in and the clerk was bellowing for more fodder.

  When Steve next glanced toward the high bench it was in reply to a call for a name as familiar as Jean Mauchard’s.

  “Dave Blacker!”

  A husky buccaneer was made to obey the summons. A guard thrust Dave Blacker toward the high bench and then, suddenly, the guard went loping into the crowd and Dave Blacker ostentatiously dusted his hands and settled his loud topcoat about his hulking shoulders. He swaggered up before the bench.

  “I’m Dave Blacker, you pot warmer. And when you sing for me again, say it slow and respectful. I’m Dave Blacker, get it? D-A-V-E, Dave; B-L-A-C-K-E-R, Blacker. And when I roar a hunnert thousand men cheer their heads off. If you got business with me, get it out and get it done because this place stinks and you stink and when I want to wallow with hogs I’ll go find some hogs more to my liking. Get going, Guis. You’re goin’ to charge me with sedition, mayhem and immorality—if you’ve got the nerve.”

  Guis removed the cigar for the second time that day. His shapeless lips were lopsided on his face. “You may be Dave Blacker in the West, but here in Washington you’re a renegade that’s guilty of plotting to overthrow the Enlightened People’s Government. Once a hunnert thousand of your brick-tossing hefties might have cheered you to a man, but right now, when you talk about things stinking, take a smell of this pile of evidence against you!”

  Dave Blacker spat and crossed his arms. “Shoot me, you dollar-a-day mucker, and you’ll have to shoot half the longshoremen on the Pacific Coast. We done our part in this scrap and we can do plenty more.”

  Another judge leaned toward and whispered to Guis and then all the judges began to hiss like a platoon of snakes. Some of them appeared worried, but soon Guis wiped away their frowns. Whatever he proposed pleased them very much for two or three laughed outright.

  “Blacker,” said Guis, “we brought you here to test your metal. We’ve got a job for you. A big job. You and some three hundred of your men. And”—here Guis could barely suppress his own guffaws—“we’ve got a job for Mauchard. For Mauchard and his people. A job for the two of you.”

  “I’m not takin’ no job with Mauchard!” roared Blacker, abruptly enraged by the mere thought of close contact with those devils, the scientists, who had sought to oust the honest laboring element from the Anarchists and dominate the show—a move which had resulted in the weakening and now the loss of all Anarchistic power to the death of thousands.

  “Nor I with scum like Blacker,” said Jean Mauchard with a chill glare in the labor leader’s direction.

  “Oh, but I’m sure you’ll both like this job,” said Guis. “We mean to honor you. Why, we’re not even going to transport you to the labor colonies. We’re going to give you a colony of your own. And on a beautiful planet. We’re going to give you supplies and equipment. You gentlemen are valuable assets to our civilization and you can’t be spared. Yes, that is what we are going to do. Jean Mauchard and Dave Blacker, you are going to head your respective groups in the colonization of Sereon of Sirius. You’ll leave tomorrow morning.”

  Before they could vent the violence of their protests, the clerk was bawling, “Stephen Gailbraith!”

  Steve was pulled out of the box and thrust against the front wall of the bench. He was getting used to being thrust about and so he merely straightened his tattered tunic and looked up at Guis with an amused and tolerant smile.

  “Gailbraith,” read the clerk. “Colonel, Air Force. As Emergency Governor of California, spared lives of aristocracy, compromised with subversive element and generally acted contrary to the best interests of the people.”

  “Guilty,” said Guis. “Firing— Wait a moment. You have a familiar face, whatever-your-name-is.”

  “Gailbraith.”

  “Oh, yes. Colonel Gailbraith. You took San Francisco about five months ago, didn’t you? Good piece of work even if you are a counter-revolutionist now. I suppose … well, you must have quite a few friends in the army, haven’t you?”

  “A few.”

  “Ah, yes. A few.” Guis whispered to the other judges for a moment, and they all whispered back and nodded. “Colonel Gailbraith, this court is going to be lenient with you. We are going to permit you, because of your extraordinary military skill, to accompany the Sereon Expedition. Next case.”

  The court clerk intoned, “Miss Fredericka Stalton. Miss Fredericka Stalton.”

  A guard pulled Steve away, and he almost collided with a slight but pretty girl whose face was a study in cold contempt for Guis. But it was a face which leaped out of the pool of faces for only an instant, and then was gone.

  The court clerk was reading, “Fredericka Stalton, propagandist for the Anarchist party. Accused of counter-revolutionary …”

  Steve Gailbraith was glad to get into the corridor. His head was aching and he felt as if he had been hauled out of a swamp. Expedition to Sereon. With Dave Blacker and Jean Mauchard.

  He didn’t realize, just then, what a neat way it was of doing away with men who might have had objectors to their outright execution. He wasn’t thinking at all. Only half conscious, he had the strange hallucination of a pretty face set with cold contempt—a face which blurred out and came clear again and hung upon nothingness before him. Vaguely, he wondered about it much as one might wonder about a buzzing fly. Expedition to Sereon. Who cared?

  But he did care. And for all his effort to diminish the ache of disappointment by disavowing any interest in present events, his wound alone could not have accounted for the aching lethargy of him; heartbreak alone could have caused that. He was as a man in love whose sweetheart he has discovered to be a harlot. The empty misery of knowing had no balm.

  And those first monotonous days of the voyage to Sereon of Sirius discovered no spark of will to live in Steve Gailbraith. As a soldier and the son of soldiers he had never understood. He had tasted his initial gagging sample of the Eighty Great Names when, as a cadet, he had been ordered to a prison island as an officer of the guard. There he had seen women clubbed into submission by callous RNZA guards, and had seen prisoners drown their children rather than bring them up in the incredible squalor and torture of a camp. Men whose only crime had been a deserved curse at an aristocrat were thrown into pens, naked and ill, to be left to starve on garbage which, in itself, was death. He had seen scholars who had refused to swerve from a discovery, broken bone by bone by steel-shod rayrifle butts. And there he had witnessed the execution of his own uncle, charged with the writing of inflammatory pamphlets.

  There had been born his first disaffection for the Eighty Great Names for, childlike and sincere, he thought it worth his life to attempt to bring freedom to his tortured race. And when he had transferred to the Terrestrial Fleet he had spent his days in feeding upon the political sciences and the sociological doctrines. Among the Sons of Science he had gained many friends. Amid the Anarchist Alliance’s labor element he had had much respect. And when the clarion cry for liberty had rung around the globe, he had been the first of Air Force officers to lead a squadron against the Eighty Great Names. He had dreamed; he had fought;
he had striven. His banner had been “Emancipation.”

  And now that banner was clotted with the mire of ignorance. And he had won only to find that Fagar, rapacious and stupid, a former slaughterhouse killer of beef, had elevated himself like the resurrected carcass of one of his beeves into the leadership of the world. Fagar, whose brag was that he had never bathed. Fagar, who had disemboweled the emperor’s wife before the emperor’s very eyes. Fagar! The very thought of the man made Steve Gailbraith retch. And Fagar was risen to command this stupid mass of brutes to send down with a crash all the crystal dreams of those very men who had made the revolt possible.

  Steve Gailbraith sat with his back to a bulkhead, his arms upon his knees and his face buried in his sleeves. He gave heed to the roaring and trembling of the spaceship no more than he gave heed to the guards or his fellow members, who idled about under the dirty highlight which canopied the promenade with glass.

  When he had first come aboard he had bestowed a quiet laugh upon the Fury—a laugh without humor, but not without some sympathy. For this very ship had once been flag vessel of the RNZA Fleet and proud had been the glowflags upon her sides when she had borne the emperor on his first visit to Mars. How brightly had these bulkheads gleamed, how white had been these decks! How clear the highlight overhead, not barring the light from any star.

  Steve Gailbraith had seen the ghost of himself, a sub-lieutenant in flawless plastiron, all blue and girded with golden belts, his thumbs smartly touching his rayrods on either side, his beardless face serious with a child’s make-believe seriousness, his whole being rigid and respectful and somehow joyous from glittering helm to winged boot. Eyes straight ahead as the emperor passed. Blushing like a girl when the emperor paused and spoke to him. How thrilled he had been on that voyage, forgetting all his dark unrest, worshiping for once with all his heart before the majesty of pomp and dignity. Ai, the ghost of a child still stood there by the boarding shield, thumbs smartly touching his rayrods on either side. Ai, and the ghost of an emperor strolling upon this deck and pausing to speak with the child.