Bryce Walton

“ They had seen other Anarchs, each with his or her ivory tower and force shields. But wherever they had gone and whomever or whatever they had seen, the story was the same: No human being was free from the psychic fear blockage against any kind of evolutionary change.
In contrast to this disease of unchange, they had seen the ferocious, terribly accelerated trail of the Beasts streaking with frightening speed ahead along their roadway of evolution. And none of the humans cared. They had rationalized their position. They cared nothing about the continued survival of their species. ”

“ Deker was on his feet now, standing close to her, looking straight into her eyes. "Unless you help us, Perl!"
She trembled with repugnance and horror.
"You are primitive and brutal indeed. You actually would destroy?"
"For survival, Perl! You have the knowledge, the power the Beasts don't have—yet. Use it now before the Beasts overtake and surpass you scientifically. You've got to help or humanity's finished. You think you can survive in your individual egoistic shell, but you're dying the same as the Utopes. Man can't live isolated. I found that out one time. You can't survive. ”

“ It was difficult to make out details characterizing the horde groveling on the slope that stretched from the vault into a dark valley of warped metal and molten plastic. The vault was still covered with the mountain of protective sheeting. Brenn had indeed prepared well for the holocaust.
The small filthy-bearded man who had been exhorting the horde, ran and fell on his face at Deker's feet. The moonlight reflected his gleaming fanatical eyes. Eyes with little intelligence; only superstitious awe. An aged cracked voice climbed up in trembling ecstasy. ”

“ The machinery droning over and over into his brain, month after futile month those words:
"The lathe worker is the most necessary worker in the Federation. No other worker is so important as those who operate the lathes. I'm proud to be a lathe worker." Or: "I'm so very, very glad I'm a lathe worker." Or again: "I could never, never be anything but a lathe worker."
Deker looked at Jak. "You labeled me a negativist. Because after five years of that, I decided that being a lathe worker was about the most sorry job a human being could have, in this socialized futility." ”

“ World City we prefer to call it rather than the City of Perl. One tremendous city. A perfect architectural symbol of man's omnipotence. We have found ruins of other cities scattered over the earth, a very inferior pre-dawn age culture, of course. At one time a former stage of pseudo-civilized humanity heavily populated the earth, living in many cities. The perfect cooperative socialized pattern and standardization of effort such as we have must have been impossible under those conditions."
"Yes," whispered Deker wearily. "It was indeed. But I can tell you this. Perl—she was no myth. She lived. ”

“ Frantically, desperately, Deker argued:
"Your introspective life can't last. Change is a natural law. Without it, an organism atrophies and dies. If you can't see that, then you're truly lost. Your generation might survive; maybe even the next, or the next. But humanity is doomed, unless you use the power you have and fight. Fight, Perl! Fight like a beast in the jungle!"
He turned from her, a gasping girl, wild-eyed with shock. He looked out. The hunchback still lolled lazily by the stream, singing, eyes closed. ”

“ The fanatical chanting came back to him, the quivering filthy faces, the sea of leaping, whirling celebrants. This—this was the dazzling future. An Utopian thought it had been, to attempt to escape from an imperfect society into one conceived to fulfill ideal human values. But the word, Utopia, was from an ancient race, the Greeks, and significantly enough meant: "Nowhere."
They had ignored the temper of individuals, variable human nature—which they had thought to control by conditioning—or the inevitable opposition of entrenched groups such as the Anarchs. ”

“ A reality Deker had never before known came in a burst of quickening, pulsing lust for life there in the Unstable Wards, there among his own kind, the maladjusted, the freaks, the men and women who were rebels and who could never fit into the social order. ”

“ These Beasts becoming almost human?"
"Natural evolutionary processes wouldn't account for it," said Deker. "Unless we've been in suspended animation for millions of years instead of merely thousands. And I don't believe we have."
"Abnormal evolutionary development rate," said the hunchback with unexpected profundity.
"Probably," agreed Deker. "The radio-activity from the hundred blasted cities has created a freak world into which we fit no better than in the world we left. No telling what hard radiation has done to the normal processes we once knew. But why haven't the Utopes changed, too? ”

“ Shar undulated nearer Deker.
"Well"—her ripe lips curled with bitter malice—"Brenn's failed us."
Her arms swept round the interior of the vault. There were no openings in it other than the tightly-sealed series of three heavy metal doors. Deker could still hear the steady beat of the metronome.
"We're right back in reality again," she said and, with her eyes on Deker, she added softly, "But reality can be interesting, sometimes."
Deker shook off part of the woman's spell with an uneasy laugh.
"Reality," he said. "Only time gives it meaning. ”

“ Sensing Deker above him, he opened his eyes. They crinkled in a laugh.
"It's time we were leaving, Deker. There's nothing here for us. We're alone here, even more than the other time."
Deker wordlessly turned from Gans the Hunchback.
"You haven't decided yet to use your knowledge of power, and work with us and with the Utopes against the Beasts," he said to Perl. A pause, and he added, "Then you will never decide. It's your burden, your conscience—the death of the human species. It's terribly wrong, because it's possible that man deserves another chance." ”

“ Deker nodded. The scientist continued in a grave tone:
"Created out of desperation because of the sudden mastery of basic energies, the World Federation seeks final standardization, socialization, as the only defense against self-annihilation. That's wrong. It will be solved by individual development or not at all. At any time incurable inherent factors in human nature may spawn a will-to-power fanatic who, with knowledge of basic energy, can destroy all our wonderful Hundred Cities overnight. There are, for example, the Anarchs." ”

“ Never having had the opportunity to understand women, Deker walked to the wall.
"Very well. But somewhere in this twisted, defeated world we'll find humans who are really human, who will fight with us against the Beasts." ”

“ You said yourself that nothing about your culture has changed in thousands of years.
"Listen, Perl! Help me fight the Beasts! Help me organize the Utopes, make them sane again so they can fight to survive. We can begin a new civilization over the old ruins, start the long trail back up. The human race is almost gone. Unless we organize a social group, start soon on the road back—unless we do, we'll die here. The Beasts will rule!"
Perl fell back. A huge black form passed across the window. Deker caught a quick glance of a gigantic beak. It was a bird much larger than the body of a man. ”

“ Then they heard the weird chanting of many voices outside the vault. The gong sounded again, much louder. Then the chanting rose to a fanatical droning dirge.
"Let's go," said Deker. He kept his arm about Shar and led the others toward the exit. But the Cyclops stayed beside Shar, eyes balefully on Deker. The others fell cowering behind, the albino moaning, the two-headed man stumbling with pain. There were fifty feet of metal passageway before they stood in the ruin of the final exit. The chanting stopped.
A single wailing voice intoned:
"The gods have awakened! Hail, all hail god Deker. ”

“ He indicated the hanging capsules. "In that capsule sleeps a two-headed man. There, a hunchback; and there, a Cyclopean monster with three eyes and a ferocious temper. There is an albino, a trembling raw lump of sensitivity. There is one who almost sprouted wings and became a birdman. Like you, some are only mentally distorted. Remember the woman, Shar, who tried to commit suicide? She's here."
Deker couldn't hate Brenn. Even being a twisted freak was preferable to being a mindless child of the Conditioners, happy because of a total lack of free associative thought. ”

“ Jak exuded sympathy from his clear eager eyes.
"For you, yes," he agreed. "That's why it is best for you and the Federation that you accept Nirvana. It's too bad, really, that the Federation cannot use you. Potentially, you have a high-A mental capacity. But you've destroyed any possibility of specialization by the secret studying you did during those years you worked on your lathe. Generalized knowledge is dead."
After an empty, painful silence Deker said: "I'm ready to go, Jak. I've never even been smiled at by a woman and my life's a third gone. ”

“ World City had reached a state of mechanistic cooperative statism that made the Hundred Cities Federation seem like a form of anarchy. The inhabitants couldn't conceive of there ever having been any similar society, especially one that had destroyed itself. For how could socialized perfection reach such an illogical destructive end?
"Yes," Kahl was explaining to Deker a week later as Deker reported for his five hours of reconditioning, his suggestivity shots, his new integration checkup. "World City is probably man's ultimate and perfect system for survival." ”

“ The girl stood looking out of the window of her sanctum.
Deker wondered how these philosophies could endure through eons of wars and even beyond the final war of all. A simple little philosophy that could be traced back, according to Perl, to a time-lost philosopher called Zeno the Stoic, the first Anarch.
Perl turned, eyes shining with fanatical self-conviction, withdrawn into her lonely self-sufficiency. She repeated the code of the Anarchs:
Every man is his own government, his own law, his own church, a system within himself. ”

“ Man cannot live alone. He is a social animal. But Deker was also an off-sized cog, a misfit that would never find a place in the perfectionistic mechanism of the Hundred Cities Utopian Federation.
"You will volunteer for the Experimental Labs of course," the man on his right said. "Scientist Brenn needs volunteers. I can't understand why you haven't accepted Nirvana before this, Deker! Ordinarily, an Abnormal is more than willing to accept it. It's for the good of the Federation, you know!" ”

“ She shook her head. "The Utopes. They cannot admit that their own faulty system destroyed itself, so they blame the Anarchs. But the Federation was undermined by its own weak base, by erratic though very human madness that is inevitable in a social order."
Yes. No one had suspected Brenn of being anything other than a scientist devoted to the Federation. So there had been others.
"The Fascios built an underground scientific hierarchy," Perl explained. "They devised weapons of terrible destructiveness. They had no reason—they were human, victims of socialization. They wanted power. ”

“ Deker swayed toward the dark mass hiding the Cyclops and Shar.
"Easy," cautioned the hunchback. "We'll retreat after them, but take your time. These Beasts aren't so tough. They hate cold steel."
"All right," agreed Deker.
They backed slowly toward the decline leading under the pile of metal. But the Beasts seemed reluctant to follow. Nowhere could Deker see a sign that any Utopes had remained behind near their crude shelters to fight beside their gods. ”

“ The individual is his own god!"
Deker thought of the ironic twist. He had escaped one system of final and static socialism into one of equally static and suicidal individualism.
"How many of you Anarchs survived the Atom War?" he asked.
"Not many. We were far underground where we built our laboratories. We knew that the rest of the socialistic Hundred Cities would be annihilated. And when the—the awful destruction came, we survived. Everything about our individual order has remained exactly the same. We have the dominant intelligence."
"To dominate over what?" asked Deker. ”

“ Civilization as we recognize it now may not survive. But my hope is that you will. This vault is surrounded by tons of protective sheeting. I needed subjects for this experiment in suspended animation, and used the only legal method there was for obtaining them."
"And you?" asked Deker.
"No importance. I will die. Humanity must persist! That's the only thing that matters. The position of humans will at times become so precarious that survival will seem impossible. ”

“ While the Hunchback sat there with his eyes partly closed, Deker told the Cyclops and his mate everything he had discovered about the world of the Anarchs, the accelerated evolutionary development of the Beasts who were overtaking and would surpass man. The sickening death's head skull of the Cyclops nodded.
"I know. I've tried to drive them against the Beasts. But they run until they drop, or hide. I've organized defense methods. We have signals, and stand watches so we can hide before the Beasts can surprise us. ”

“ Deker thought that she wanted to cry, but couldn't.
"The rapidly evolving Beasts are overtaking you rapidly," he went on. "And even in your own isolated Anarch shells, they will eventually find and destroy you!" ”