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The Victor
By Bryce Walton
Illustrated by Kelly Freas
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of ScienceFiction March 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _Under the new system of the Managerials, the fight was notfor life but for death! And great was the ingenuity of--The Victor._]
Charles Marquis had a fraction of a minute in which to die. He droppedthrough the tubular beams of alloydem steel and hung there, fivethousand feet above the tiers and walkways below. At either end of thewalkway crossing between the two power-hung buildings, he saw theplainclothes security officers running in toward him.
He grinned and started to release his grip. He would think about them onthe way down. His fingers wouldn't work. He kicked and strained and toreat himself with his own weight, but his hands weren't his own any more.He might have anticipated that. Some paralysis beam freezing his handsinto the metal.
He sagged to limpness. His chin dropped. For an instant, then, the firein his heart almost went out, but not quite. It survived that oneterrible moment of defeat, then burned higher. And perhaps something inthat desperate resistance was the factor that kept it burning where itwas thought no flame could burn. He felt the rigidity of paralysisleaving his arms as he was lifted, helped along the walkway to asecurity car.
The car looked like any other car. The officers appeared like all theother people in the clockwork culture of the mechanized New System.Marquis sought the protection of personal darkness behind closed eyelidsas the monorail car moved faster and faster through the high clean air.Well--he'd worked with the Underground against the System for a longtime. He had known that eventually he would be caught. There were rumorsof what happened to men then, and even the vaguest, unsubstantiatedrumors were enough to indicate that death was preferable. That was theUnderground's philosophy--better to die standing up as a man with somedegree of personal integrity and freedom than to go on living as aconditioned slave of the state.
He'd missed--but he wasn't through yet though. In a hollow tooth was acapsule containing a very high-potency poison. A little of that would dothe trick too. But he would have to wait for the right time....
* * * * *
The Manager was thin, his face angular, and he matched up with the harshsteel angles of the desk and the big room somewhere in the SecurityBuilding. His face had a kind of emotion--cold, detached, cynicallysuperior.
"We don't get many of your kind," he said. "Political prisoners arebecoming more scarce all the time. As your number indicates. From nowon, you'll be No. 5274."
He looked at some papers, then up at Marquis. "You evidently found out agreat deal. However, none of it will do you or what remains of yourUnderground fools any good." The Manager studied Marquis with detachedcuriosity. "You learned things concerning the Managerials that have sofar remained secret."
It was partly a question. Marquis' lean and darkly inscrutable facesmiled slightly. "You're good at understatement. Yes--I found out whatwe've suspected for some time. That the Managerial class has found someway to stay young. Either a remarkable longevity, or immortality. Of allthe social evils that's the worst of all. To deny the people knowledgeof such a secret."
The Manager nodded. "Then you did find that out? The Underground knows?Well, it will do no good."
"It will, eventually. They'll go on and someday they'll learn thesecret." Marquis thought of Marden. Marden was as old as the New Systemof statism and inhumanity that had started off disguised associal-democracy. Three-hundred and three years old to be exact.
The Manager said, "No. 5274--you will be sent to the work colony on theMoon. You won't be back. We've tried re-conditioning rebels, but itdoesn't work. A rebel has certain basic deviant characteristics and wecan't overcome them sufficiently to make happy, well-adjusted workersout of you. However on the Moon--you will conform. It's a kind of socialexperiment there in associative reflex culture, you might say. You'llconform all right."
He was taken to a small, naked, gray-steel room. He thought about takingthe capsule from his tooth now, but decided he might be observed. Theywould rush in an antidote and make him live. And he might not get achance to take his life in any other way. He would try of course, buthis knowledge of his future situation was vague--except that in it hewould conform. There would be extreme conditioned-reflex therapeutictechniques. And it would be pretty horrible. That was all he knew.
He didn't see the pellet fall. He heard the slight sound it made andthen saw the almost colorless gas hissing softly, clouding the room. Hetasted nothing, smelled or felt nothing.
He passed out quickly and painlessly.
* * * * *
He was marched into another office, and he knew he was on the Moon. Thefar wall was spherical and was made up of the outer shell of thepressure dome which kept out the frigid cold nights and furnace-hotdays. It was opaque and Marquis could see the harsh black and whiteshadows out there--the metallic edges of the far crater wall.
This Manager was somewhat fat, with a round pink face and cold blueeyes. He sat behind a chrome shelf of odd shape suspended from theceiling with silver wires.
The Manager said, "No. 5274, here there is only work. At first, ofcourse, you will rebel. Later you will work, and finally there will benothing else. Things here are rigidly scheduled, and you will learn theroutines as the conditioning bells acquaint you with them. We arecompletely self-sufficient here. We are developing the perfectscientifically-controlled society. It is a kind of experiment. A closedsystem to test to what extremes we can carry our mastery of associativereflex to bring man security and happiness and freedom fromresponsibility."
Marquis didn't say anything. There was nothing to say. He knew hecouldn't get away with trying to kill this particular Managerialspecimen. But one man, alone, a rebel, with something left in him thatstill burned, could beat the system. _He had to!_
"Our work here is specialized. During the indoctrination period you willdo a very simple routine job in coordination with the cyberneticsmachines. There, the machines and the nervous system of the workersbecome slowly cooperative. Machine and man learn to work very intimatelytogether. Later, after the indoctrination--because of your specializedknowledge of food-concentrate preparation--we will transfer you to thefood-mart. The period of indoctrination varies in length with theindividuals. You will be screened now and taken to the indoctrinationward. We probably won't be seeing one another again. The bells take careof everything here. The bells and the machines. There is never anerror--never any mistakes. Machines do not make mistakes."
He was marched out of there and through a series of rooms. He was takenin by generators, huge oscilloscopes. Spun like a living tube throughcurtains of vacuum tube voltimeters, electronic power panels. Twistedand squeezed through rolls of skeins of hook-up wire. Bent throughshieldings of every color, size and shape. Rolled over panel plates,huge racks of glowing tubes, elaborate transceivers. Tumbled down longsurfaces of gleaming bakelite. Plunged through color-indexed files ofresistors and capacitances....
_... here machine and man learn to work very intimately together._
As he drifted through the machine tooled nightmare, Marquis knew _what_he had been fighting all his life, what he would continue to fight withevery grain of ingenuity. Mechanization--the horror of losing one'sidentity and becoming part of an assembly line.
He could hear a clicking sound as tubes sharpened and faded inintensity. The clicking--rhythm, a hypnotic rhy
thm like the beating ofhis own heart--the throbbing and thrumming, the contracting andexpanding, the pulsing and pounding....
_... the machines and the nervous system of the workers become slowlycooperative._
* * * * *
Beds were spaced ten feet apart down both sides of a long gray metalhall. There were no cells, no privacy, nothing but beds and the graymetalene suits with numbers printed across the chest.
His bed, with his number printed above it, was indicated to him, and theguard disappeared. He was alone. It was absolutely silent. On his righta woman lay on a bed. No. 329. She had been here a long time. Sheappeared dead. Her breasts rose and fell with a peculiarly steadyrhythm, and seemed to be coordinated with the silent, invisiblethrobbing of the metal walls. She might have been attractive once. Hereit didn't make any difference. Her face was gray, like metal. Her hairwas