People Minus X

by Raymond Z. Gallun

Freeman had a small radio receiver beside him. Ed Dukas did not try to read the meaning of its blaring vibrations, for he was aware of their general tone. To him the instrument was chiefly a possible bridge of communication between himself and Freeman.

But Ed was not now given the chance to make such contact. For something else happened. From the pages of an opened book in Abel Freeman's hands coiled a thread of smoke, as charred words were written rapidly across the paper. Ed was close enough in the air to read them, too: "I am Mitchell Prell, who helped make your kind possible. I am one of you now—though undersize. Help keep the peace. Make no moves to start trouble."

Ed himself was startled. His uncle was here, then! They had arrived at almost the same time. And Prell had chosen a more dramatic means of communication—not ink, not an amplified voice, but the spiderweb-thin beam of his Midas Touch used as a long stylus, while he clung, perhaps, to a hair on the back of Freeman's hand!

For an instant, Abel Freeman was gripped by surprise. But then, with rattlesnake-swift movement, his own Midas Touch was in his hand. His whole self seemed to take on the smooth flow of perfect alertness which nothing but an utterly refined machine could have equaled.

"Prell or a liar?" he challenged. "Or Prell with a conscience—for his own first people and against his brain children? Yes, I've heard how little you might be now."

Ed had only glimpsed his uncle far off among the scattered motes of the air—another mote among them—a foot away he must be, at least. But Ed hadn't waited for contact. Instead he darted quickly inside Freeman's radio, touched the contacts of his microphone to the proper surface, and spoke: "Maybe you'll remember me, too, Freeman. I'm Dukas, Prell's nephew. You and I have talked before, man to man. Prell is no liar. And the conscience is there—for everybody, android or otherwise. Yes, I'm with him, the same size. And there's a problem, everybody's problem, the toughest one that I've ever heard of. So where do we get any answer that makes sense? Some of it has got to come quickly, I'm afraid, Freeman."

Amplified, Ed's voice had boomed out till it was like an earthquake to him. Once again a plastic box was opened above him and a gigantic face was overhead. In the tinkling overtones of smallness, there was almost a silence for a moment. Then came the rattle of Freeman's hard, amused laugh, as he said, "I'll be damned! Smaller than snuff and made the cheap way. People. Something better. Yep, it must be so, even if I can't even see you. That puts us way ahead, I guess. And it ain't a whisky vision. Well, I guess it still don't make any difference. The old-time kind of folks hate us, and they'll never stop while both of us and them are alive. And us Phonies have been crowded all we can take. They've fired on us here, just barely trying to miss. Could be we've done the same to them. It's a mighty ticklish proposition. In winktime they could finish us all here, nice and clean and no grease left. So could we burn them quicker than gunpowder. So who gets trigger crazy and does it first? We've fixed them: an answer, under the ground. Maybe they can spoil our other weapons, like it seems they can, but not this one. It's buried deep enough. Let 'em try to hit us hard, and it'll set everything off. Your old Moonblast will be beat a thousand times. Us Phonies are bullheaded. We were made on Earth, same as them. It's ours as much as theirs. We came alive, and we can fade out again, young fella!"

The vibrations of Freeman's tones rose and fell, with humor, fatalism and stubbornness. Two races, one born of the knowledge originated by the other, seemed to have driven each other into corners of no return. At some indefinite instant, the Big Zero would come.

Ed saw this garish picture more clearly than ever before. His strange little body fairly quivered with it. He looked at Mitchell Prell, who had come beside him now, where the pieces of apparatus that made up the interior of a small receiving set loomed, and he saw in his face the puzzled, tired fear of a scientist whose researches had always aimed at doing good. Just then Ed Dukas, micro-android, was far from separated from the Big Earth as he used to know it. So now, in desperation, he clutched at a vision which had once seemed almost a fact.

"Freeman," he said, "maybe men can't back down or co-operate with supermen. Doing that can seem like embracing extinction. But hasn't there always been an obvious thing for us to do?"