The asylum world, p.1
The Asylum world, page 1
27-02-2023
SEAN CLOUD DIALED A HEADACHE PILL
THE PILL TUBE FLASHED, “SORRY, OUT OF ORDER.”
Sean had never been on Earth, for which he felt both a vague loyalty and a colonist’s contempt. After all, Earth had made quite a mess of it in the late 1990s. But here he was, on the one in-shuttle Mars owned, going on behalf of the Martian colonies to request arms to defend the planet against the alien fleet sighted off Saturn.
But supposing the cheerful newstapes Earth sent the colonies were retouched? Suppose Westbloc hadn’t any weapons, or needed them for its arms race with Eastbloc? Sean rubbed his aching head. No doubt about it, there’d be further headaches awaiting him in’
THE ASYLUM WORLD
Other Paperback Library Books By
John Jakes
THE HYBRID
BRAK THE BARBARIAN VERSUS THE SORCERESS
BRAK THE BARBARIAN VERSUS
THE MARK OF THE DEMONS
THE ASYLUM WORLD
By John Jakes
PAPERBACK LIBRARY
New York
PAPERBACK LIBRARY EDITION
First Printing: December, 1969
Copyright © 1969 by John Jakes
To MIKE AVALLONE, who still finds time to keep those cards and letters coming.
Paperback Library is a division of Coronet Communications, Inc.
Its trademark, consisting of the words “Paperback Library” accompanied by an open book, is registered in the United States
Patent Office. Coronet Communications, Inc., 315 Park Avenue
South, New York, N.Y. 10010.
I think for my part one-half of
the nation is mad—and the other not very sound.
Tobias Smollett
Three million miles out past Pluto, the old year turned, unmarked. A month of darkness passed, unreckoned. Then another. Sometime in the third, a brilliant moving light appeared.
Abruptly it reduced its velocity so that, even though traveling toward the nearest star at a rapid rate, it appeared to be, relatively speaking, standing still.
With velocity arrested, the light defined itself to a massive cone. Its base measured some fifty kilometers in circumference. It traveled point first, revealing an exterior unbroken and unflawed. A brilliant yellow nimbus surrounded it, seeming to spring from the cone’s surface. By all rights the nimbus should have suggested warmth but suggested instead a chill perfection. Perhaps this was partly because the cone’s unblemished surface radiated the light so uniformly.
No one saw its coming, of course. Nor heard. Not then.
In a complex tongue, voices shuttled meanings between the lonely cone and star-dotted emptiness far, far behind:
—Scan.
—Scanning are. Nine bodies original scan confirm.
—As to operational intelligence evaluate—
—Scanning are. It sounded, within its own contexts, querulous.
—Ninth, draw.
—Eighth, draw.
—Seventh, draw.
—Sixth, draw.
—Fifth, draw.
—Fourth—
—Yes, yes?
—Both fourth and third operational intelligence exhibit. Shuttling, the voices were tinged with excitement. Combined resistance level negligible is.
—Probabilities extrap. Decision recommend—
Within the lonely cone, vast eyes much resembling glass the shade of flame signaled amusement with multifoliate light, and shuttling voices from the scout went traveling triumphantly.
—Proceed. Form. Accelerate, fourth and nearest first taking.
So before the turn of the next dark, unreckoned month, the lonely cone lost itself among some two thousand similar ones which came hurtling in, dropped off in velocity and, together, began the penetration past the poison rock of Pluto. In the bleak ether a hissing that amounted to battle-chanting passed back and forth among the cones.
Neptune rolled astern.
Uranus.
A world girdled with gaseous rings swept out to meet them, hardly noticed. On displays that the vast eyes watched, squiggling darts of light showed the pulse of life on the planet to which all command systems were now locked. A planet fourth out, red-rusty in color.
The cones passed silently on through the silence, accelerating.
ONE
“Father and son,” said Franconius for the sixth or seventh time. “Father and son. Thrilling.” The old bananabrain, thought Sean Cloud.
Generally Sean believed that in any halfway rational society, the people made the right decisions. Often such decisions sprang from ignorance, fear, or emotion, and were right by pure luck or some plan that eluded him. Had he not thought this way he would have quit worrying long ago. But Dr. Harloe Franconius was the kind of warning which even the most guardedly optimistic man needed now and then.
Franconius, that stupid old hack of a pol, had been elected dome-wide as one of the three envoys. Thirty-three percent capacity for error was either pretty fair or pretty awful, depending on how you looked at it. At another time Sean might have considered Franconius a sort of backward validation of his views. Given the current extreme emergency, he regarded it as a near-catastrophe.
He knew the old windbag would keep repeating the catchphrase unless someone disposed of it. There was no one else in the dining salon of the M. S. Giovanni Schiaparelli, it being just before daybreak, body time, so:
“I beg your pardon, Harloe?” Sean had a voice as mellow as his light coffee skin.
“The display’s symbolically thrilling, is it not?” said Franconius. He had a fat belly, numerous chins, and dots of eyes which Sean unkindly persisted in thinking of as two spills of blue oatmeal. “There you have the parent, there the child, the latter rushing to the assistance of the former. Damme, I must finish my synop in the fall and get it into the grammars by spring. We’re so busy, busy all the damme time with roadways and other technological doodads! We fail to render Caesar his due. A course in dome colony history is a must at the grammar levels.”
Having delivered himself of this, Franconius belched and attacked his synthograpefruit, holding it with both hands and sucking it noisily. Sean winced and lit a Safe-C Cig.
The thrilling sight to which Franconius had been referring appeared on the pair of luggage-size screens built into one wail of the otherwise ill-equipped dining salon. The salon had all the spaciousness and charm of a closet. Of course, Sean knew, the crew quarters were worse. And Mars owned but one in-shuttle, the Schiaparelli. All the huge outbounders that had carried the colonists from Earth beginning twenty-seven years earlier in 2004 had been melted apart for the first structures. Not that Mars actually needed more than one shuttle. Every one of the half-million-odd residents, including infants born yesterday, had contracts to stay, signed by themselves or their parents. The only visitors who had returned to Earth since the first outbounder lifted had been Martian govt men on official business. For that, Schiaparelli was adequate.
Slurp-and-snort, Franconius mangled his grapefruit. No wonder the educational system in the domes was not as good as it could be. Franconius, a member of the roughly ten percent of the Martian population not born there, must have had excellent credentials and a semblance of sanity to have been put in charge of all education way back in the early days. Sean admitted that the old clamhead did have a certain bell-like oratorical charm, and a voice of splendid timbre. But the good doctor had long ago collapsed into blubber, varicose-veins, and scrambled maxims.
Well, the educational system was still good, along with most of the other public institutions erected by the govt of the domes. That had to be due to a squad of capable assistant supes quietly working to undo their leader’s damage. The old pol had a mind like Swiss cheese.
To amuse himself, Sean went back over the remarks of a moment ago.
Thinking of himself as Caesar. Bad sign. Worse, however, was Franconius’ bland supposition that he would indeed be able to develop his course plan for institution in the Martian spring of 2032. By next year, Sean believed, there was an even-odds chance no dome colonies would exist. On the long, chuttering flight to Earth he awoke almost every night sweating a foul sweat and thinking about it. To fight boredom and his impatience to reach Earth and begin the tricky and absolutely vital negotiations, he frequently computed the interval since the last time he’d thought of the menace. The intervals grew shorter and shorter. He was less and less able to forget the presence of what appeared to be an alien fleet descending at incredible speed toward the only home he’d ever known. Calculations showed that fleet should arrive off Mars in seven months.
“You—” Pulp-sqwunch. The synthograpefruit popped from the doctor’s fingers. It sailed across the rickety table, narrowly missing Sean’s shoulder. Without thought, Sean put his right hand over the left shoulder of his tunic, covering the simple, colorful patch whose central device was the numeral 4. Old Harloe’s patch had come unsewed long ago. Threads hung. Gravy hid part of the 4.
“You don’t have an opinion on my symbology, Sean my lad?” Franconius asked as he wiped hands on his tunic.
Sean’s eyes, an odd combination of bits of cobalt embedded in two chunks of chocolate, switched to the screens again. On the left, Mars displayed discernible blotches of shadow even at this distance. I made part of that, he thought. / helped build that, dome cities and dome towns and a fairly decent life for a considerable number of human beings. The notion always warmed him.
But the image on the other screen, Earth, cloud-blanketed, cold gray wi th only a faint tinge of green to one side of the terminator, moved him not at all.
He had never been on Earth. Although he felt a vague loyalty, suspicion more than countered it. They’d made a mess in the late 1990s. He tended to agree with Lydia. How could any of the colonists, fed only newstapes by small drone outbounders every other month, be certain that the information in the tapes was valid, undoctored, accurate reportage?
Irritated by the old pol’s insistent stare, Sean butted his safety smoke and waved his coff mug. “Earth the father, Mars the son. I get that all right, Harloe. But look at the screens. Mars, in point of fact, is rushing away from, not toward, big daddy.”
Franconius blinked. “I was speaking allegorically.”
“Oh?” Sean felt mean, needling so. But he refused to look humble. “Oh.”
“I referred also to our positions. We, you, myself, Miss Veblen—”
Aha! thought Sean. He can hardly pronounce her name without growling. She has him platted too—a pol with a few old pol friends in dome society, hacks all. They refuse to give up and once in a while still get placed where they shouldn’t. As here, aboard Schiaparelli on a mission that really needed the greatest skill because it was so urgent.
In the unfriendly silence Sean turned back from the screens. He had an image of his mother: magnificent dancer’s legs, brown eyes momentarily hiding familial warmth. Sean Cloud, you will not be guilty of spreading unkindness. Others are doing the job more than adequately.
“I’m sorry, Harloe,” he said. “Mind wandering.”
“You pay no attention to me, you and that—that concrete bitch.”
Sean laughed, showing good, strong, white teeth, a flash in the tan face. He would have been angry but for the fact that, in other angry moments when Lydia frustrated his attentions with one of her little how-I-love-to-pop-all-the-balloons speeches about never marrying a black even though Martian mores made this the desired behavior, he’d thought of her in similar terms. Yet now his imp of boredom and worry and impatience with stupidity made him say:
“Actually, Harloe, you know very well that our chief transportation engineer doesn’t deal in concrete but in a polymerized slurry which is much more satisfactory for construction of interdome travelways. She—”
“You listen to me and stop laughing!” Franconius leaped up. “Remember who’s senior on this trip!”
Sean nodded, concealing emotion. “Of course, Harloe. You are.”
“And who has veto over any group vote.”
“You do, Harloe.” Blandly said, it concealed Sean’s quick, cold determination: And I’ll lie, cheat, steal, God knows what else, you old helium-head, if you veto the wrong way.
Harloe Franconius picked synthograpefruit pulp off his chin. “You two, you and Miss Veblen, have made it clear by your unfriendly and I might even say snide bevahior that you do not respect me. But don’t you forget that I’m in charge. I will deal with the Westbloc govt. I will secure the shipments of weapons necessary to erect a defense against the armada our scanners detected. And I say to you confidently and without qualification, father Earth will receive the emissaries of its son, and will instantly grant our—ah, it’s—their request.”
Must I sit through this?
Harloe Franconius had one finger raised in the air. With sincerity yet! Sean slumped and listened to the atom engines, chuttering mechanical conversation two rooms away.
“I only wish I shared your confidence about the outcome, Harloe,” he said finally.
“Why don’t you?”
“Because, like Lydia, I wonder whether Westbloc will go for the idea of turning a colony into a new armed power. Also, I’m not absolutely convinced that the newstapes we’re getting are accurate. How many times have govt parties from Mars returned to Earth in the last twenty-seven years? Three times? Four? Sure, everything looked sweet. But that can be staged. They really made a godawful mess before they launched the first outbounders—”
“Too much education,” Franconius cried somberly. “That’s your trouble.”
“That’s a fine remark from the number-one educator in the domes, Harloe. And do sit down. You look silly. This isn’t an election platform.”
Enraged, Franconius fingered his coloring nose. “Attitude, Cloud! That’s your trouble.”
“I thought it was education.”
“Cloud, your attitude is rotten. You refuse to see the bright side—”
“Damme right, sir. And you refuse to admit that anything, ever, could be wrong! Our scanners picked up something like two thousand—two thousand—ships passing Saturn in April. Coming from where? We don’t know! But there are lifeforms aboard, my old friend, and they are heading not for Earth, but for us, farthest out in the system. And they’ll arrive in seven months. And much as I believe that we have a pretty fair world a-building in the domes, I damme well realize too that we have to sink back now and then to the old pol level”—Franconius failed to catch the thrust —“and lay up weapons so we don’t get pulverized if they’re unfriendly aboard those ships. Since we don’t have anything in the domes in the way of firepower except minimal small arms for policing—good thing! I’m not arguing—we must get the arms where we can. From the people who sent us outbound. I’ll do anything I can, repeat anything, to get what we need from Westbloc and make Mars secure.”
Now Franconius almost looked apoplectic. “But where do we disagree?”
“In that you”—stab of a finger—“think all we have to do is ask and Westbloc will roll over and say yes. I say all we know about Westbloc these days is what the newstapes tell us, and those can be doctored, Doctor.”
“But—but—!” Franconius lunged around the table, clutching for Sean as though the younger man had blasphemed. “—the last newstape!—clearly!—the arms race is on again but!—Pres Washbourne assured!—Westbloc is more than holding its own!”
Sean hooked his thumb at the screen displaying Earth. “They tell us. I prefer to see.”
Under his breath, Franconius was garrumphing words like negativistic, unpatriotic, atheist. Sean turned his back.
He drained his coff. He touched his temples where a headache was beginning. He dialed a pill as Franconius vented further spleen incoherently. The pill tube flashed a Sorry Out of Order. Sean cursed. On his feet, he stood well over six feet. He was lean, with pleasantly irregular features and a blocky chin which he tended to thrust out too much. His hair was black, all tight curls. He was twenty-six.
A hand on his shoulder made him spin, think about punching. But he stopped in time. He pushed the hand aside. Franconius, eyes watering, gave him a whiff of bad breath as he exclaimed:
“What’s the truth of it? I know what it is! You’re listening to that young woman, every cynical word she says. It’s she who doesn’t believe we can succeed! She who spreads doubt about the very people who funded our splendid effort!” “I happen to agree with Lydia’s doubts—”
“Because you want to snuggle up to her and she, antisocial slut, wants only a white?”
“You dirty-mouthed old son of a—”
“What is there you dislike about me, Sean? What?” Franconius shouted.
“Everything!” Restraint was lost. “The old pol ways. Influence-peddling. Your universal solution for every problem—a stirring speech. We’ve weeded most of that out of the domes. Most, but not all. A little incompetence still—” “Well,” the doctor said with a wounded malice. “Now we are clear. Now we are perfectly—”
The iris dilated. Captain Phong, sag-shouldered but always cheerful, poked in.
“There is a splendid view of Earth on the viewbridge. I thought perhaps—uh, excuse me.”
“I should, be delighted to see,” said Dr. Franconius, and marched past Sean and out.
Captain Phong stepped over the lower edge of the iris. “What did you do to the old boob?”
Unkindness, thought Sean, head aching. Aloud, he said: “Made a tough situation tougher, in my incomparable style.” He kicked the wall. “Equipment’s no good on this lousy tub.” It was, he realized, but some six minutes since he’d last thought of the fleet striking for Mars.
