James Causey

“ We need your terrifying concept of individuality. We need to lose our old ways. The dance of harvest time. The Queen-Mother. One by one the rituals drop away. The old life, the good tribal life, is dying. You sift out us misfits who chafe at tribal oneness, you offer us the planets!"
The antennae flashed an angry scarlet. "You think to keep us chained a millennium. A hundred years will suffice. We will leave you. We exiles you have made, we who would be destroyed if we dared return to the tribe, we shall rule this world! You aliens drive a hard bargain, but the dream is worth it!" ”

“ In the nursery, Harry Junior was contentedly playing with his blocks. The prism lay glinting in the corner.
Major Nord picked it up carefully, scrutinized Harry Junior. His voice was very soft.
"You said he was—playing with it?"
Some vestigial maternal instinct prompted Melinda to shake her head vigorously. The little man stared hard at Harry Junior, who began whimpering. Trembling, Melinda scooped up Harry Junior.
"Is that all you have to do—run around frightening women and children? Take your old distorter and get out. Leave decent people alone!" ”

“ From the blue forest, people ran. Beautiful people, with great golden eyes and scarlet tunics. They could have been Amenth's brothers and sisters. They stared, horror and revulsion twisting their faces. They started toward him.
Vogel understood.
If destroying beauty on this world was a crime, then killing ugliness must be a duty. ”

“ Gently, Saxon began to probe.
In only six generations the colonists has scattered throughout the entire hemisphere. Although the matrix of their culture seemed to be the individual family unit, they lived according to whim. Some lived in small communal groups. Some lived alone. Some, by choice, were wanderers, rovers. They had science. Their philosophy seemed nebulous, based on a benevolent ecology, brotherhood with all living things.
Saxon frowned.
Six generations ago, the ecology on this world hardly had been benevolent for man. ”

“ There never would be a white marble villa on Venus. It was a harmless dream, a substitute for what I had lost. But it didn't matter! Those superimposed patterns had been removed, that thoughtcaster had crippled my thinking, but, by Heaven, I was still an Amalgamated man! They couldn't take that away.
But Starza had been wrong about Carmody.
Nothing definite. But when you dedicate your life into extrapolating curves, frozen chunks of time and motion, into the thunder of jets lifting Amalgamated ships from Terminorb, your mind becomes a very efficient analogue computor, if you know how to use. ”

“ The lifeboat came in on the night side of Eden XI, and hung above the blue mountains like a basking shark. Saxon checked his coordinates. This had been the original landing site, almost two hundred years ago. He switched the infra-view on maximum, and began to cruise in widening spirals. These sixth generation hops were usually routine. If nomadic, a few political shifts could help warp the culture into a set pattern. A simple matter to play the visiting deity, pick one warped psychotic, and invest him with power. A dictatorship was by far the best way of inhibiting a young culture. ”

“ Terms scuttled like gigantic spiders over the great silver hulls, their antennae glowing in a pattern of swift bright harmony, right on standard, good cost. Harvey's face was rapt as he watched them. I said harshly:
"Give me your third Production Axiom."
Harvey's shoulders squared. He said stiffly: "Beauty is functional. The quintessence of grace is the clean, soaring beauty of a spaceship's hull—"
"Extrapolate, Harvey."
His lips were tight. "What I see is ugly. Terms must be taught individuality. What I see is a fascinating, deadly beauty—deadly because it's useless. ”

“ It meant the white spire of the Stasis Administration Center at New Washington, and the words graven over the golden portals:
Know thyself, Man. Or die!
Was the dream worth it?
Or was Man doomed to die like a brawling ape, playing with lightning?
Saxon could not answer.
Meanwhile the colonies had to be inhibited. One interplanetary war could smash the fragile structure so painstakingly built over the last few hundred years. This was the turning point, the final cross-roads of Man's destiny.
Saxon smiled bleakly.
Ultimately there would be a colony they could neither inhibit or destroy. ”

“ Harry Junior was peering into the shifting crystal depths with a somewhat strained expression.
"Speeds up the neural flow," explained the little man proudly. "Helps tap the unused eighty per cent. The pre-symptomatic memory is unaffected, due to automatic cerebral lapse in case of overload. I'm afraid it won't do much more than cube his present IQ, and an intelligent idiot is still an idiot, but—"
"How dare you?" Melinda's eyes flashed. "My son is not an idiot! You get out of here this minute and take your—things with you." As she reached for the prism, Harry Junior squalled. Melinda relented. ”

“ Saxon's palm flashed and Madsen fell writhing. There were shouts, hands clawing at him as he tore free, sprinting for the ship.
Always running, he thought bitterly. I'm getting old.
He walked through the silent corridors of the ship, a lonely figure in the black uniform of the Inhibition Corps, and once he stared through the porthole at Eden XXI, a mottled sphere receding into the star-frosted night. His mouth twisted. Conceive a colony in fear, breed it in terror. Watch it adapt, grow. If it grows too fast, hurt it. Hurt it with disease, famine, dictatorship. If it keeps growing—destroy it. ”

“ Melinda had heard it all before. She asked him to see if Harry Junior was covered, and Big Harry went unsteadily into the nursery, sat down by his son's crib.
"Poor little guy," he mused. "Your old man's a bum, a useless tinker. He thought he could send Man to the stars on a string of helium nuclei. ”

“ For a moment, I was afraid he was going to make a speech about Earth's suffocating billions, the screaming tension of the cold war, and the sacred necessity of Our Mission. If he had, I'd have gotten the weeping shrieks. Some responsibilities are too great to think about. ”

“ Starza chuckled. "Why, slacken line speeds, lower production standards, fifty percent at least. By tomorrow we'll be down to forty jobs an hour. They want loose standards, we'll give it to them."
"But my cost?"
"Obscenity your cost. Look, Jake, no matter how you set an operation up, the Terms manage to work in some glittering little ritual. They have to create beauty. Their esthetic sense must be fed. They can't adjust to quick change. Supposing you cut line speeds by ten per cent. They adjust, but it almost kills them. ”

“ Anyone can make an error, but the higher the society ... the more disastrous the mistake! Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS Half an hour before, while she had been engrossed in the current soap opera and Harry Junior was screaming in his crib, Melinda would naturally have slammed the front door in the little man's face. However, when the bell rang, she was wearing her new Chinese red housecoat, had just lustered her nails to a blinding scarlet, and Harry Junior was sleeping like an angel. ”

“ Amenth put on the helmet with a feverish haste. Vogel chuckled. Amenth stood motionless. Then as his hand darted toward a stand, Vogel said sharply, "Don't!"
Amenth stared at the gun.
"Take it off!" Vogel's voice was iron.
Amenth slowly took off the helmet. His eyes were golden with tears. "Please," he said.
"Mars or Venus?" Vogel said. "Which?"
"N-neither. You could not grasp the concept. Let me go. Please!"
"Where?" Vogel prodded. "Another dimension?"
"You would call it that," the alien whispered. Hope brightened his face. "You want something? Wealth? Power?" ”

“ Armitage practically stood at attention while Farragut's voice boomed from the transmitter.
It was very emetic. The Senator said the entire hemisphere was waiting for us to announce the planet was safe for immigration. He said the stars were a challenge to Man. He spoke fearfully of the Coming World Crisis. Epsilon was Man's last chance for survival. Armitage assured him our progress was satisfactory, that within a few days we would have something tangible to report. The Senator said we were heroes.
Finally it was over. Max yawned. "Wonder how many voters start field work at once." ”

“ The Terms stood shriveled, mute. Starza was fumbling at the base of the statue, and he said in a thick horrible voice, "Look." The loudspeaker. The coiled wiring.
The Terms stirred.
Starza leaped to the lap of the statue. He bawled, "Listen! This is sacrilege! You have been victims of a hoax—"
Not listening, they filed in silent groups out of the arena. Their antennae were the color of ashes. Starza jumped down. He pounded after them. He was shouting at Los Tichnat.
"I know," Tichnat droned. He kept walking. "You are right. It does not matter that you are right. The Queen-Mother called." ”

“ We were due to return almost thirty years ago, but we found your colony."
"Did you—"
"Isolation," she murmured. "The ghetto. They're sick," she said. "Infected with the culture plague. We couldn't leave them and we couldn't help them." Her gaze was very steady. "Until you came."
It came to him. Man, clutching at the knees of Gods, envying, striving futilely, finally hating.
Only Man can help Man.
"It's not fair," Saxon breathed. He took Veena by the shoulders, made her look at him. "I'm happy here. You and Lang—Merl—I'm just beginning to learn! ”

“ The lambent colors crept through the air like a mood, like a dream, and deepened into a shimmering cataract of rainbow fire, a paean of light and glory that whirled and spun in a joyous rhythm as old as the race itself. ”

“ He memorized Amenth's address and returned the application.
Vogel always ate lunch in the office with his expediters. That noon two of them got into an argument about the planets.
"I say there is life on Mars," Pete Stone insisted stubbornly. "When the polar ice cap melts, the water runs along the canals and traces of green from growing vegetation can be spotted."
"Which proves nothing," Harvey Lamb yawned. Lamb was chief expediter. "Man couldn't live there, anyway. There's not enough oxygen."
"You would be amazed," Amenth said quietly, "at the adaptability of Man." ”

“ An hour ago, at dinner, John Armitage proposed a toast, especially for my benefit. He loves to play the gallant. Big man, silver mane, very blue eyes, a porcelain smile. The head of WSC, the perfect example of the politician-scientist.
"To the colony," he announced, raising his glass. "May Epsilon love them and keep them. May it only be transmittal trouble."
"Amen," Max said.
We drank. Taylor Bishop put down his glass precisely. Bishop is a gray little man with a diffident voice that belies his reputation as the best biochemist in the system. "Has Farragut hinted otherwise?" ”