EDMUND COOPER

A young and endlessly fertile writer, Edmund Cooper is perhaps best known in this country for his wonderful new science-fiction novel, DEADLY IMAGE, the story of the doppelgangers that may rule tomorrow’s sad new world and of the crude man from the twentieth century who teaches them what humankind has always known. More than that, Cooper is an urbane and thoughtful creator of short stories in the marvelous English science-fiction school, a fit companion to Clarke and Wyndham and Christopher—as witness this one, from his forthcoming collection of the same name-

TOMORROW’S GIFT

Tomorrow’s gift of joy or pain

renews the problem of desire.

Behind each vacant pair of eyes

lurks the sad prisoner of fire.

Anonymous Elizabethan Poet

Circa 1950.

From the twenty-seventh story of the Central Administrative Building, the city looked like an enormous target, or a complex geometrical amoeba whose nucleus combined the functions of stomach, heart and brain.

Within this duodenal cerebrum were the Coordinators, the architects of Nova Mancunia, the self-appointed masters of its fate. Their circular colony was exactly one mile in diameter, for though there were no more than fifty Coordinators to the total population of fifty thousand, they were careful to emphasize the privileges of rank.

Each Coordinator lived according to his taste. Pre-Elizabethan farmhouses mingled with late Windsor mansions. A Norman church—rebuilt stone by stone, with the obvious addition of central heating and a swimming pool styled as a South Sea lagoon—lay facing an opaque glass windmill whose sails actually revolved. The most striking residence, perhaps, was that of the Director. He chose to live in a replica of a nineteenth century mill chimney, which perpetually belched forth a harmless synthetic smoke.

The Central Administrative Building, the only functional element in the whole area, was no more than a hundred feet square and five hundred feet high. It was built entirely of stainless metal and plastic.

Surrounding the entire digestive brain-center of the city was a green belt, also a mile wide. It was a natural park where herds of deer appreciated, by simple analogy, the concept of a finite universe.

Beyond this again lay the mile-wide band which was the domain of five hundred Technicians. Their accommodation was less ambitious than that of the Coordinators and occupied less space. They lived in four different types of houses, according to status. There was the semi-detached cottage, the cottage, the cottage-residence and the residence. Alpha Technicians alone enjoyed the luxury of a residence and its indoor swimming pool. Altogether, there were fifty residences.

Exactly ninety-five per cent of the Technicians’ belt was occupied by electronic factories, power units and a hydroponics plant that, by itself, accounted for a thousand acres. The hydroponics installation, subdivided for convenience into five separate groups, produced Nova Mancunia’s entire food supply—from yeast to yams, from apples to apricots, from milk substitute to synthetic mutton.

With the Technicians’ belt, the vital region of the city ended. Outside it, there was another green belt and then the Prefrontals’ Reservation—the territory reserved for numerous failed human beings. It was the home of men and women who were not Illiterates but who were maladjusted. Some of them had been, potentially or actually, Alpha Technicians—even Alpha Coordinators. But they had become unhappy. Partial readjustment was simple; even the old pre-atomic surgeons were able to perform the operation of prefrontal leucotomy. A few brain fibers to be severed, the removal of a small amount of cerebral garbage—anxiety, doubt, resentment, despair—and then there was nothing to worry about. (Except that the patient was automatically sentenced to a life of happy retirement, his services being no longer required.)

Beyond the Prefrontals’ Reservation was the epidermis of Nova Mancunia, the final layer of skin, the mass of the people. They lived in twenty-five glass and concrete hives, each containing one thousand flats. They lived and procreated and died. Their enormous blocks of flats were equally fertility symbols and tombstones.

Not being Coordinators, or Technicians, or Prefrontals, they were classified as Illiterates. Some of them were craftsmen or painters; some wrote imaginative histories or old-fashioned poems; some worked the land and produced unhygienic, unnecessary food; some designed clothes that would eventually wear out; and enough of them committed suicide to relieve the Coordinators of the population problem.

Encircling this outer ring of hives was the wilderness, spotted here and there with other concentric cities; spotted also with round lakes whose waters would never drain away through their beds of glass and diamond. These were the monuments of the old Hydrogen Wars.

Six miles to the north was Lake Manchester. It had been one of the first cities to die.

Dr. Krypton gazed through his office window on the twenty-seventh storey of C.A.B. and watched the sails of the Deputy Director’s glass windmill go round. It was his business to look for obscure meanings, and he wondered for the hundredth time if there was one here. Perhaps it was the Deputy Director’s method of subtly announcing his deviationist tendencies. Certainly, the sails described a revolution, impelled by a material force. Certainly, the law governing the revolution had its sociological parallel. But would the Deputy Director be so subtle? Would he, also, with tested Happiness Quotient of a hundred and fifty, and an Intelligence Quotient of a hundred and eighty, seek to change the status quo? Dr. Krypton dismissed these idle speculations with a shrug, and turned to face the man in the room.

The visitor was a young man, under thirty—more than seventy years younger than the Alpha psychiatrist who now confronted him.

He wore an air of aggressive resentment. But practically all Dr. Krypton’s visitors did. It was either that or injured innocence.

What was the man’s name? All Dr. Krypton could remember was that it was one he should have remembered. He glanced at the passport in his hands. Byron, Mark Antony: Ph. D. Elec.: Technician Beta: H. Q. 105, I.Q. 115: D.O.B. 2473: Male.

That was all the information. It was all that need be known. It was more than enough to distinguish Byron, Mark Antony from Byron, Caesar Augustus—if there was one. For it was the story of a life.

“Why has your passport reached my office?” asked Dr. Krypton suddenly.

For a moment the young man’s expression was blank, then he jerked out an answer: “I don’t know, sir. I was about to ask you the same question.”

It was the usual reaction. Dr. Krypton studied his patient objectively, wondering whether he would be likely to bore or entertain. A recommendation for immediate prefrontal would take care of the first possibility, and an observation visa would provide for the latter.

“You know who I am, of course?” asked the psychiatrist briskly.

“Yes, sir. Coordinator Alpha, consultant psychiatrist and neurosurgeon.”

“You are aware of my H.Q./I.Q.?”

“One three five, and one seventy.”

“Good, we shall perhaps save time. I have the advantage, I see, of fifty-five intelligence points. I have also the ultimate privilege of deciding your fate.”

“I understand.”

“I hope so. You, on the other hand, theoretically retain the choice of working with or against me. If you feel able to lie successfully, do so by all means. It will be a game of chess. You will play without a queen.”

Dr. Byron appeared to pull himself together. He gazed at the psychiatrist coolly. “I presume my passport was sent to you because my efficiency is questioned?”

Dr. Krypton shook his head. “Reasons are never given. While I hold your passport, you are my patient. You will provide the reasons.”

“I could suggest a conspiracy.”

‘That would be tedious. Everyone does—even, on occasion, Coordinators Alpha. Fear temporarily decreases intelligence by perhaps twenty per cent.”

“Suppose I have no fear?”

Dr. Krypton sighed. “When a man no longer has fear, he is acutely unhappy. I invariably recommend prefrontal.”

Dr. Byron seemed suddenly to relax. He smiled. “As I am no longer afraid, I accept both your diagnosis and treatment, sir. When may I expect the operation?”

The psychiatrist became interested. Here, at least, was an unusual approach. Many of those whose passports reached Dr. Krypton anticipated his recommendation and prepared for it in various ways—some by opening an artery, and some by getting drunk. But here was one who seemed willing to short-circuit the entire analysis.

“You are in a hurry,” observed Dr. Krypton. “Why do you want your present personality to die?”

The younger man appeared to restrain himself from laughing. “Isn’t it already dead?”

“Demonstrably not”

“Then there is no time to lose. In the interests of communal stability, you should amputate it as soon as possible.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Dr. Byron calmly, “it generates delusions.”

“Perhaps there is no future for anyone without them,” suggested Krypton in a dry voice.

Dr. Byron raised his eyebrows. “Do you say that officially?”

It was the psychiatrist’s turn to laugh. “Heresy has been permitted for the elite ever since the Christian Church began the fashion. Officially, I may find it necessary.”

Byron was silent for a moment. Then he spoke at great speed. “In the Country of the Blind, the one-eyed man is merely a psychotic. I am a psychotic, Dr. Krypton, because I do not share the reality of blindness. I am obsessed by the delusion of sight. I can see nothing but a slow disintegration in this stupid system of caste. On a planet that once supported three thousand million human beings there are now only ten million. They live in a couple of hundred hygienic Nova Mancunian. They do not procreate; they merely reproduce. I have discovered that there is a subtle difference. Has it occurred to you that in the last hundred years history has stopped? Nothing happens any more—nothing is lost and nothing is gained. All the Nova Mancunias everywhere are as dead and sterile as the lakes of the Hydrogen Wars. They are toy civilizations slowly running down. And there is no one to wind them up.”

“Except you,” said Krypton with sarcasm. “Why didn’t you find a Technician Beta Female, marry her, and sublimate these quixotic notions in an orderly domestic rhythm?”

“The classification of Technician Beta Female supersedes that of Woman,” returned Byron. “In any case, I have not found that any variation on the theme of mating is a permanent cure for ideals.”

“What do you define as ‘ideals’?”

“Irrelevancies,” said Byron, “such as truth, love, beauty. And humanity.”

“The first three are nonsensical abstractions. The last is a collective noun. No one has agreed on the meanings of any of them, yet they have caused more destruction than the Hydrogen Wars. That is why, in our city-states, we have sacrificed ‘ideals’ on the altar of stability.”

“Assuming that it is better to be a happy pig than an unhappy Socrates?” demanded Byron.

Dr. Krypton shrugged. “Pigs—lamentably now extinct— never had a reasonable Happiness Quotient. At best, they experienced contentment. Socrates, on the other hand, enjoyed himself hugely—if the old-accounts are to be believed.”

“But happiness consists in adjusting oneself to the world. I do not think-”

“On the contrary, you do think, Dr. Byron. But not expertly. Otherwise you would see that only contentment is obtained by adjusting oneself to the world—a proposition supported by the extinct pig, which was a creature adequately conditioned to its environment. Conversely, Socrates preferred to adjust the world to himself—and derived the greatest happiness. As you know, he died tranquilly—which is to say, happily. Death, for him, was the final luxury. He was fulfilled.”

Dr. Byron looked perplexed. “Perhaps a prefrontal will turn me into a happy Socrates,” he said.

Krypton smiled. “Or it may save you from being an unhappy pig. Here is your passport. You will need it because tonight you will visit Illiterates Block Seven, where the girl Thalia doubtless awaits you. One is reluctant to believe that all philosophy derives from sex, but the confirmation is provided daily.”

For the first time, Byron displayed fear. “What do you know about Thalia?”

“My dear fellow, I warned you that you would have to play without a queen. You came to me yesterday, also, and I gave you deep hypnosis. Believe me, it is less tiring for all concerned. Not only did you tell me all about this Thalia, but you described her charms so minutely that I would have no difficulty in recognizing her in the flesh. She is twenty-three and affects subjective painting. Her H.Q. is about twenty points higher than yours, and her I.Q. about twenty-five lower. Her father was a Technician Alpha Prefrontal, and her mother an Illiterate. She is volatile and resilient. Need I say more?”

“What are you going to do about her?” Byron could not keep the anxiety from his voice.

“I am a psychiatrist, not an inquisitor. She is an Illiterate. I need take no action.”

The younger man was genuinely puzzled. “Why, then, are you allowing me to see her again?”

“I should have thought that was self-evident. By leaving you free to visit her I weaken your resistance. If you take advantage of this final opportunity you will be emotionally exhausted when you come to me tomorrow. If you do not see her you will be frustrated by an unresolved conflict. Either is advantageous, for I shall have to decide what to do with you tomorrow. It will be useful to observe you under stress.”

“Why do you tell me this?”

“I can afford to have no secrets. Good morning, Dr. Byron. Here, you are forgetting your passport!”

“Will he give you a prefrontal?” she asked quietly.

They were walking hand in hand through the few acres of carefully designed woodland between Block Seven and Block Eight. Lights, shining from the uncurtained windows of flats, appeared to dance between the leaves of birch, oak and sycamore. Here and there, in symmetrical grassy hollows, Illiterates Male lay with Illiterates Female, transforming the mechanics of coition into an old subjective mystery.

“I expect so,” he answered. “There is no other solution.”

“We could run away,” she said. “We could try to reach the Primitives in the Highlands. They say there are several thousand of them north of the Grampians.”

He shook his head. “The Coordinators would allow an Illiterate to escape, but not a Technician. Besides, we can’t even be sure that the Primitives exist.”

“Are you afraid?” asked Thalia.

“Yes, for both of us. It will be better when I am sent to the Reservation. Then we shall be able to meet frequently.”

She gripped his hand tightly. “After the operation, you may not love me any more.”

“You can teach me all over again.”

“I—I may not want to. You’ll feel different about things. With the Prefrontals, nothing matters deeply. You’ll get bored, and make love to some Prefrontal woman, and won’t be able to understand how I feel about it.”

He stopped, put his arm round her and whispered: “Look at the stars. They’re the memory patterns of the cosmos. They are patterns of inconceivable purpose on the brain of space. To them, Nova Mancunia is nothing. It is not even the characteristic of a diseased astrospore! The constellations are outside our time. They shone with the same brilliance when Lake Manchester was a teeming city. They will continue to shine when Nova Mancunia is a more doubtful legend than Troy.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” she said slowly. “But when you talk like that I want to believe without understanding.”

“Do the stars,” he asked, “seem still and tranquil?”

“When we look at them together,” she answered, “I begin to think we might borrow their stillness.”

She heard him laugh softly. “They are hurtling by at millions of kilometers an hour,” he said. “They are burning themselves to death to illuminate a journey without destination. They are racing headlong to extinction, or else they are the only still points in a whirlpool of space. Which is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Neither do I; and that, my darling, is the greatest secret in the world. Just as they might be dying by the trillion, so we might expand one moment of life into eternity.”

Slowly, insistently, he pulled her down into the grassy hollow where they stood. Down through a tunnel of darkness to the oldest innocence of all. Presently, in its own compelling ritual, love became a communicable experience of death.

There they lay, a Technician Beta Male and an Illiterate Female; each, in a different fashion, awaiting the slow metabolism of resurrection.

Dr. Krypton stared absently through his office window at the Deputy Director’s glass windmill. The enigma remained. Some day, perhaps, the sails would cease to turn, and the passport of a Coordinator Alpha would lie on the psychiatrist’s desk.

Revolution or evolution? It seemed to be the peculiar genius of twenty-fifth-century man to be an enemy of both.

The psychiatrist heard the door open and said, without turning round: “Good morning, Dr. Byron. If one and a half squirrels ate one and a half nuts in one and a half minutes, how many nuts would nine squirrels eat in nine minutes?”

“Fifty-four,” said Byron, after a short pause.

“Three seconds,” observed Krypton. “You are moderately alert. … I trust you achieved catharsis last night?”

“I did. I killed her!”

Dr. Krypton turned to face his visitor. “That is interesting. Why did you not kill yourself also?”

“Because I needed to live in order to kill you.”

“You are probably stronger than I am,” said the psychiatrist calmly. “It appears that Nova Mancunia will presently need a new Coordinator Alpha. And neurosurgeons are difficult to replace. Unfortunately, Dr. Byron, you cannot kill the system.”

“I can try.”

“You can fail. That is all. Now you had better begin your failure by killing me.”

Byron moved forward, then suddenly stopped. He moved forward again, then stopped. His whole body was trembling. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead.

“I am afraid,” said the psychiatrist, “that I took advantage of the deep hypnosis to rearrange, temporarily, your pattern of compulsion and tabu. As you see, it was quite justified. If you can lay a hand on me, I assure you there will be no resistance. I have considered your case since yesterday. There does not seem to be any alternative to a prefrontal leucotomy —officially.”

“And unofficially?” asked Byron, staring at him dully.

“I shall operate on you, Dr. Byron, but I shall merely make an incision, then close it. There will be no severance of brain fiber.”

“Why?”

“Because, my dear fellow, the human race needs you. Until that need is manifest, you will live in the Prefrontal Reservation.”

“One of us is quite mad,” said Byron slowly.

“I am,” admitted Krypton. “It is incurable. You see, I too have no faith in Nova Mancunia. The present society is not static, and there will come a time when it will fail. That will be the signal for a return to humanity.”

“Did you make me kill her?” demanded Byron abruptly.

“I did. You, perhaps, will need to die before a new society is established. I have merely made it easier for you.”

For a minute, Dr. Byron remained silent. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, his manner calm. “When will you operate?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

“Are you really not going to cut the fiber, or is that suggestion part of the treatment?”

Dr. Krypton smiled as he ushered his guest out “It is an interesting point, because you will never know.”

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