Irving E. Cox

“ Lanny answered. "We can never escape it. I'm not sure we ought to try. The individual who lives in a closed world of absolutes—shut in by prison walls of his own mind—is already insane. The sudden development of a new idea simply makes the condition apparent."
"In a sense," Gill added, "there is no such thing as a teacher. There are people who expose us to data and try to demonstrate some techniques we can use, but any learning that goes on must come from within ourselves."
"We will develop the most effective method we can," Lanny said. "Then we will apply it to your world, Tak Laleen. ”

“ Lanny and Gill stopped at each store window, to stare in wonder at the goods still on the shelves. In an automobile agency, a solitary sedan still stood, on deflated and frayed tires, in the center of the showroom floor. Here at last was visible proof that men had once built a machine technology. The automobile was as big and as shiny, beneath its generation of dust, as any of the spheres of the Almost-men. ”

“ Gill said.
"I know that now, because I've made the reorientation myself. I didn't then. The rational mind is the only integrating factor in the chaos of the universe—Juan told me that. It is literally true. Mind creates the universe by interpreting it." She put her hand in Lanny's and looked up at the stars patterning the void of night. "I wish I might say that to my people and have them understand; but the clatter of our machines closes us in. Our world will die in violence and madness, the way the skyport died tonight. ”

“ Then the guard began to scream. He thrust the muzzle of the energy gun against his own chest and pressed the firing stud.
Lanny turned away from the smoldering heap of charred flesh and went back to his father's cell. He disorganized the energy units of the tormented knot of metal bars and knelt beside Pendillo. Lanny was amazed that his father had made no effort to heal his wounds. Juan was bleeding profusely; his eyes were glazed with pain. Lanny lifted Pendillo tenderly in his arms.
"Father! You must begin the healing—"
"I do not know how, Lanny."
"All men control their own body cells!" ”

“ The bars of the cell had been twisted by the blast; Pendillo was badly hurt. His wounds seemed to be extensive, but Lanny was sure his father would heal himself quickly.
Lanny sprang at the guard. The Almost-man had enough courage to hold his ground, still sure of his impregnable machines. He was aiming his energy gun again when Lanny touched the opalescent capsule. That, too, was nothing now; Lanny had found his way into the new world. The field of force was simply energy in another form. Lanny could have reshaped the field, intensified it, or dissolved it as he chose. ”

“ As the eight hunters crept toward the ruins of Santa Barbara, through a narrow canyon, old man Barlow suddenly emerged from the brush and stood grinning at them. It was his privilege to join the hunters; any citizen of the settlement could have done so. But the younger generation hated Barlow. He was the practical man; he called himself a realist. He never allowed them to forget they were defeated, imprisoned and without weapons; he took savage delight in poking holes in their plans for resistance.
"What are you doing here?" Lanny's brother demanded. ”

“ A seething mass of vehicles choked every tier, fighting for space, grinding each other into rubble. Vehicles careened from the upper roads and plunged into the mass beneath.
At first it seemed a panic of machines. The people were trivial incidentals—bits of fluff which had been unfortunate enough to get in the way of the turning wheels. Then Lanny saw the walkaways, as crowded as the roads. A mass of humanity spewed through the doors of the luxury hotels, like run-off streams swelling the floodtide of a swollen river. ”

“ A machine tears your mind apart and puts it together again—differently."
Lanny shivered as he remembered the half-dozen readjustment cases he had seen in the Santa Barbara treaty area—living shells, with all initiative and individuality drained from their souls. He moved to the barred door of his cell. For a split-second of panic he seized the bars and futilely tried to pry them apart. Slowly edging into his consciousness came a vague awareness of the structural pattern of the energy units in the metal. ”

“ The arsenal guards, having seen their weapons fail, had deserted their posts and fled. Men stormed into the building, shattering the metal doors by re-organizing the energy structure. Slowly they wheeled out the great machines—the symbols of enemy power.
"We fought for this," one of the men said. "And now we have no use for them."
Gill called a meeting of the resistance council in the deserted trading square, while the city around them throbbed in the chaos of disintegration. The men were entirely aware of the problem created by their liberation. ”

“ The only people who know the truth will be our prisoners. We can keep them out of sight and ourselves play at being Almost-men to satisfy any tourists who come to the skyport."
"We'll have to do that for a while, until we work out something better; but it's only a stopgap. We have a problem," Lanny said doggedly. "We know it can be solved, because it has been for ourselves and for Tak Laleen. All we have to find is the method."
"Learning begins with a need," the missionary said. "For you, it was twenty years of despair: invasion, humiliation, surrender. ”

“ As the enemy capital on Earth and a tourist attraction, the San Francisco skyport was a miniature replica of an enemy city. Under the dome were tiers of streets and walkways, interwoven in complex patterns, and the battlement spires of luxury hotels, theatres, cabarets, public buildings. The streets overflowed with a flood of jangling traffic, and the air was filled with the well-to-do riding their de-grav cars in the enviable security of their private capsules.
Lanny's overall impression was a place of intolerable noise and glitter. The Almost-men seemed to make a fetish of their machines. ”

“ Pendillo's eyes were suddenly serious. "Adaptation," he repeated. "The possibilities are infinite for a man who is free from convention, free from the inherited ideas of his past. That is the way we shall defeat the Almost-men. The human mind has an unmeasured capacity for solving problems—for pulling itself up by its bootstraps—so long as hope for a solution remains alive." ”

“ Pendillo promised, but his voice was no longer as clear as it had been. "I don't have much time left. The idea for our new breed of men began at the time of the invasion. Lanny, there wasn't much to choose from between our people and the enemy. Our cities were like theirs; we were enslaved by machines—by the technological bric-a-brac of our culture—as they are. Only our science was different. We had exploited the energy of coal and oil and water-power; we were beginning to accumulate a good deal of data about the basic atomic structure of matter. ”

“ Lanny replied, "and this is all you have left."
Lanny and his brother made an easy adjustment to the new community. The social stratification was an uncomplicated division of men into three types: the teachers, the old ones who had survived the invasion, and the children who had grown up since the war—by far the largest group. The classification was logical and unobtrusive; it produced no frustrating social pressures. Since the children had known no other form of society, they assumed that men had always organized their culture with such understandable simplicity. ”

“ Already the cooking fires were being lighted on the small rectangles of earth in front of the houses where the older survivors lived. But Pendillo and Dr. Endhart were still inside, packing away the models which Endhart had used to teach his last class for the day. They usually waited for Lanny or Gill to make their night fire, since Pendillo's sons did the work so effortlessly. Tak Laleen was with the teachers. She sat on the only chair in the room, playing abstractly with one of Endhart's teaching tools—a crude mock-up of the structure of a living energy unit. ”

“ Barlow snorted. "Don't think I ran to the Chapel of the Triangle and told Tak Laleen what you were up to. They don't need that sort of help from us. When are you going to get it through that thick skull of yours? We're outclassed; we're second-raters; we'll never defeat them."
From the night sky they heard the low hum of a force-field car. An opalescent sphere soared above the canyon. Gill's fist smashed into Barlow's jaw. ”

“ Pendillo prompted him.
"It—it's this vote we've taken for war, father." Lanny glanced at Tak Laleen. His father and Endhart smiled disarmingly.
"You can talk quite freely," Endhart said. "Tak Laleen knows the vote has been counted. She knows what it means."
"Unarmed men are going to attack the city," the missionary said without expression. "You are very courageous people. But you are certain you will win—against our machines and our energy guns." ”

“ All men do that; we always have. A rational mind controls the structure and energy of organized matter."
"I've listened to Dr. Endhart teaching that to the small children," she replied. "It—it is difficult to believe." She began to laugh again; waves of hysteria swept her body. "I'm sorry, Lanny. I've thought, sometimes, that I'm losing my mind. We're never really certain of ourselves, are we? ”

“ Gill ground his naked heel into the sand. "The Almost-men took everything from us. But we're not licked. One of these days we'll be strong enough—"
"As strong as their machines?" Lanny asked.
Gill swung toward his brother angrily. "That's Barlow's kind of talk, Lan."
"The weapons and the machines of the Almost-men," Pendillo said, "are more powerful than anything we ever had. Yet we must defeat them; we must make ourselves free again. And we shall; I have no doubt of it. Granted, we have no weapons like theirs, and no chance of building any. We still don't resign ourselves to defeat. ”

“ Pendillo told Lanny when he first became aware of the inconsistency as a child. "But don't condemn the enemy for it, my son. Words have the peculiar habit of becoming anything we want them to be. If we set our minds to it, we can make anything true. The Almost-men are not merely alien invaders; they are like man himself—the most tragic distortion of our worst traits. ”

“ Gill asked doubtfully.
"Yes, I'm sure we could, Gill. We have a clue; we know what has to be done. And we have an experimental laboratory." The missionary nodded toward the mob of cringing Almost-men coming in from the preserve. "We have a city of people, disorganized by panic, with their faith in the machine already shattered. While we teach these people how to make the reorientation, we'll learn the methods that will work most effectively with my world."
They left the city and began to cross the bridge toward the treaty area. Tak Laleen passed her arms through theirs. ”

“ Maybe there was some fuel left, father, and maybe—"
"Why are you afraid of the truth, Gill?"
"People don't run machines by wanting them to go!"
"The thinking mind, my son, is capable of—" Pendillo's voice trailed off, for they all heard the sound outside—the high whine made by the force-field of an enemy sphere. ”

“ Pendillo tapped the curved wall of force. "We're in a tight spot, Lanny. It's up to you to get us out—without a gun and without any of the enemy machines. All you have to work with are your brains and what we've taught you for the past twenty years. I think you can count on some help from Gill later on. He'll have to attack the skyport tonight, without working out all his fine plans for seizing the arsenal. And Gill won't have any guns, either." ”

“ The chief occupation of the community was always the education of the young. That, too, Lanny and Gill assumed to be the normal activity of man. The teachers were the real government of every treaty area. Their control was subtle, engineered through an unofficial—and illegal—representative body, usually called the resistance council.
Since Pendillo had been a teacher in his home settlement, he took up residence with Dr. Endhart. They kept Tak Laleen with them, a prisoner confined to the house. ”

“ As a third blast of energy came from the arsenal, other men slid out of the darkness and faced the guns. Lanny and Gill walked away, ignoring the screaming machines and the stabbing knives of fire.
"Yesterday," Gill said slowly, "if I had known that I could direct a flow of energy just as easily as I integrate with my hunting club, I would have stood here cheerfully and slaughtered the Almost-men, just to watch them die. Now, I'm sorry for them."
"There's no reason why they must all die in panic, Gill. ”

“ For years the Almost-men had tried to encourage trade between the skyport and the treaty area, and the resistance council had turned that to their advantage.
Gradually they had increased the number of young men who went to the city with necklaces of animal teeth and meaningless gee-gaws for the tourist trade. The Almost-men had grown used to seeing a mob of men milling on the bridge and in the lower tiers of the city. The council had regularly altered the trading parties, so that every man in the San Francisco colony had been under the dome half a dozen times. ”

“ A narrow passage tunneled through the ruins to an underground room which had once been the vault of a bank and had, therefore, survived the bombing and the slashing fire of the energy guns.
Gill did not stay with his brother in the rear of the vault. Instead he joined the young hotheads who formed the war party in the local council. At home Gill had dominated the same element. ”

“ They made us—" Lanny's voice choked a little as he used his father's familiar phrase. "—a new breed. Gill, we're acting like fools; we're fighting for something we don't want or need."
"We have to have weapons, Lan."
"We need nothing but what we've been taught. The mind interprets and commands the chaos of the universe. Matter and energy are identical."
Lanny turned and walked, erect and unafraid, toward the arsenal. The energy fire from the guards' guns struck him and exploded. ”

“ It seemed that he had actually touched the force-field of the sphere; he was physically tearing apart the tense, strait-jacket of solidified energy.
The sphere lurched upward and away into the night. As it did, the port broke open and a figure dropped toward the water. It was Tak Laleen. She reached for the tiny box fastened to her breast, trying to activate her protective force-field capsule. Lanny knew he had to stop her, or she might still be able to prevent their escape. ”