The Weapon Shops of Isher Read online

  He managed, nevertheless, to give an account of the criminal act of the bank in first giving Cayle the money, then turning over the note to his chief competitor, apparently within minutes of his signing it. He finished with, "I'm sure, sir, the empress would not approve of such goings-on against honest citizens."

  "How dare you," said the cold-voiced person on the bench, "use the name of her holy majesty in support of your own gross self-interest?"

  Fara shivered. The sense of being intimately a member of the empress' great human family yielded to a sudden chill and a vast mind-picture of the ten million icy courts like this, and the myriad malevolent and heartless men-like this-who stood between the empress and her loyal subject, Fara. He thought passionately: If the empress knew what was happening here, how unjustly he was being treated, she would-

  Or would she?

  He pushed the terrible doubt out of his mind-came out of his reverie with a start, to hear the Cadi saying: "Plaintiff's appeal dismissed, with costs assessed at seven hundred credits, to be divided between the court and the defense solicitor in the ratio of five to two. See to it that the appellant does not leave until the costs are paid. Next case."

  Fara went alone the next day to see Creel's mother. He called first at "Farmer's Restaurant" on the outskirts of the village. The place was, he noted with satisfaction in the thought of the steady stream of money flowing in, half full, though it was only mid-morning. But madame wasn't there. Try the feed store.

  He found her in the back of the feed store, overseeing the weighing out of grain into cloth measures. The hard-faced old woman heard his story without a word. She said finally, curtly:

  "Nothing doing. Fara. I'm one who has to make loans often from the bank to swing deals. If I tried to set you up in business, I'd find the Automatic Atomic Repair people getting after me. Besides, I'd be a fool to turn money over to a man who lets a bad son squeeze a fortune out of him. Such a man has no sense about worldly things. And I won't give you a job because I don't hire relatives in my business." She finished. "Tell Creel to come and live at my house. I won't support a man, though. That's all."

  He watched her disconsolately for a while, as she went on calmly superintending the clerks who were manipulating the old, no longer accurate measuring machines. Twice her voice echoed through the dust-filled interior, each time with a sharp: "That's overweight, a gram at least. Watch your machine."

  Though her back was turned, Fara knew by her posture that she was still aware of his presence. She turned at last with an abrupt movement, and said, "Why don't you go to the weapon shop? You haven't anything to lose, and you can't go on like this."

  Fara went out then, a little blindly. At first the suggestion that he buy a gun and commit suicide had no real personal application. But he felt immeasurably hurt that his mother-in-law should have made it. Kill himself? It was ridiculous. He was still a young man, just going on fifty. Given the proper chance, with bis skilled hands, he would wrest a good living even in the world where automatic machines were encroaching everywhere. There was always room for a man who did a good job. His whole life had been based on that credo.

  He went home to find Creel packing. "It's the common sense thing to do," she said. "We'll rent the house and move into rooms."

  He told her about her mother's offer to take her in, watching her face as he spoke. Creel shrugged. "I told her 'No' yesterday," she said thoughtfully. "I wonder why she mentioned it to you."

  Fara walked swiftly over to the great front window overlooking the garden with its flowers, its pool, its rookery. He tried to think of Creel away from this garden of hers, this home of two thirds a lifetime, Creel living in rooms. And knew what her mother had meant. There was one more hope. He waited until Creel went upstairs, then called Mel Dale on the telestat. The mayor's plump face took on an uneasy expression as he saw who it was. But he listened pontifically, said finally, "Sorry, the council does not loan money; and I might as well tell you, Fara- I have nothing to do with this, mind you-but you can't get a license for a shop any more."

  "W-what?"

  "I'm sorry!" The mayor lowered his voice. "Listen, Fara, take my advice and go to the weapon shop. These places have their uses."

  There was a click, and Fara sat staring at the blank face of the viewing screen.

  So it was to be death!

  Chapter XVI

  IT TOOK two months of living in one room to make up his mind. He waited until the street was deserted, then slipped across the boulevard, past a design of flower gardens, and so to the door of the weapon shop. The brief fear came that the door wouldn't open, but it did, effortlessly. As he emerged from the dimness of the alcove into the shop proper, he saw the silver-haired old man sitting in a corner chair, reading under a softly bright light. The old man looked up, put aside his book, then rose to his feet.

  "It's Mr. Clark," he said quietly. "What can we do for you?"

  A faint flush crept into Fara's cheeks. He had hoped that he would not suffer the humiliation of being recognized. But now that his fear was realized, he stood his ground stubbornly. The important thing about killing himself was that there be nobody for Creel to bury at great expense. Neither knife nor poison would satisfy that basic requirement. "I want a gun," said Fara, "that can be adjusted to disintegrate a body six feet in diameter in a single shot. Have you that kind?"

  The old man turned to a showcase and brought forth a sturdy revolver that glinted with all the soft colors of the inimitable Ordine plastic. The man said in a precise voice, "Notice the flanges on this barrel are little more than bulges. This makes the model ideal for carrying in a shoulder holster under the coat. It can be drawn very swiftly because, when properly attuned, it will leap toward the reaching hand of its owner. At the moment it is attuned to me. Watch while I replace it in its holster and-"

  The speed of the draw was amazing. The old man's fingers moved; and the gun, four feet away, was in them. There was no blur of movement. It was like the door the night that it had slipped from Fara's grasp, and slammed noiselessly in Constable Jor's face. Instantaneous!

  Fara, who had parted his lips, as the old man was explaining, to protest the needlessness of illustrating any quality of the weapon except what he had asked for, closed them again. He stared in fascination. And something of the wonder that was here held his mind and his body. He had seen and handled the guns of soldiers, and they were simply ordinary metal or plastic things that one used clumsily like any other material substance, not like this at all, not possessed of a dazzling life of their own, leaping with an intimate eagerness to assist with all their superb power the will of their master.

  With a start, Fara remembered his purpose. He smiled wryly, and said, "All this is very interesting. But what about the beam that can fan out?"

  The old man said calmly, "At pencil thickness, this beam will pierce any body except certain alloys of lead up to four hundred yards. With proper adjustment of the firing nozzle, you can disintegrate a six-foot object at fifty yards or less. This screw is the adjuster."

  He indicated a tiny device in the muzzle itself. 'Turn it to the left to spread the beam, to the right to close it."

  Fara said, "I'll take the gun. How much is it?"

  He saw that the old man was looking at him thoughtfully. The oldster said finally, slowly, "I have previously explained our regulations to you, Mr. Clark. You recall them, of course?"

  "Eh!" said Fara, and stopped, wide-eyed. "You mean," he gasped, "those things actually apply. They're not-" Tense and cold, he finished. "All I want is a gun that will shoot in self-defense, but which I can turn on myself if I have to-or want to."

  "Oh, suicide!" said the old man. He looked as if a great understanding had dawned on him. "My dear sir, we have no objection to you killing yourself at any time. That is your personal privilege in a world where privileges grow scantier every year. As for the price of this revolver, it's four credits."

  "Four .. . only four credits!" said Fara.

  He stoo
d astounded, his mind snatched from its dark purpose. Why, the plastic alone was-and the whole gun with its fine, intricate workmanship-twenty-five credits would have been cheap. He felt a thrill of interest. The mystery of the weapon shops suddenly loomed as vast and important as his own black destiny. But the old man was speaking again:

  "And now, if you will remove your coat, we can put on the holster."

  Automatically, Fara complied. It was vaguely startling to realize that, in a few seconds, he would be walking out of here, equipped for self-murder, and that there was now not a single obstacle to his death. Curiously, he was disappointed. He couldn't explain it, but somehow there had been in the back of his mind a hope that these shops might, just might-what?

  What indeed? Fara sighed. And grew aware again of the old man's voice:

  "Perhaps you would prefer to step out of our side door. It is less conspicuous than the front."

  There was no resistance in Fara. He was conscious of the man's fingers on his arm, half guiding him; and then the old man pressed one of several buttons on the wall-so that's how it was done-and there was the door. He could see flowers beyond the opening. Without a word he walked toward them. He was outside almost before he realized it.

  Chapter XVII

  FARA STOOD for a moment in the neat little pathway, striving to grasp the finality of his situation. But nothing would come except awareness of many men around him. His mind was like a log drifting along a stream at night. Through that darkness grew a consciousness of something wrong. The wrongness was there in the back of his mind as he turned leftward to go to the front of the weapon shop. Vagueness transformed to a startled sense of shock. For he was not in Glay, and the weapon shop was not where it had been.

  A dozen men brushed past Fara to join a long line of men farther along. But Fara was immune to their presence, their strangeness. His mind, his vision, his very being was concentrating on the section of machine that stood where the weapon shop had been. His brain lifted up, up in his effort to grasp the tremendousness of the dull-metaled immensity of what was spread here under a summer sun beneath a sky as blue as a remote southern sea.

  The machine towered into the heavens, five great tiers of metal, each a hundred feet high; and the superbly streamlined five hundred feet ended in a peak of light, a spire that tilted straight up a sheer two hundred feet farther, and matched the sun for brightness.

  And it was a machine, not a building, because the whole lower tier was alive with shimmering lights, mostly green, but sprinkled colorfully with red and occasionally blue and yellow. Twice, as Fara watched, green lights directly in front of him flashed unscintillatingly into red.

  The second tier glowed with white and red lights, although there were only a fraction as many lights as on the lowest tier. The third section had on its dull-metal surface lights of blue and yellow; they twinkled softly here and there over the vast area.

  The fourth tier was a series of signs, that brought the beginning of comprehension. The whole sign was:

  WHITE-BIRTHS

  RED-DEATHS

  GBEEN-LIVING

  BLUE-IMMIGRATION TO EAHTH

  YELLOW-EMIGRATION

  The fifth tier was all sign, finally explaining:

  SOLAR SYSTEM 11,474,463,747

  EARTH 11,193,247,361

  MARS 97,298,604

  VENUS 141,053,811

  MOONS 42,863,971

  The numbers changed, even as he looked at them, leaping up and down, shifting below and above what they had first been. People were dying, being born, moving to Mars, to Venus, to the moons of Jupiter, to Earth's moon, and others coming back again, landing minute by minute in the scores of spaceports. Life went on in its gigantic fashion-and here was the record.

  "Better get in line," said a friendly voice beside Fara. "It takes quite a while to put through an individual case, I understand."

  Fara stared at the man. He had the impression of having had senseless words flung at him. "In line?" he started, then stopped himself with a jerk that hurt his throat.

  He was moving forward, blindly, ahead of the younger man, thinking a jumble about this having been the way that Constable Jor was transported to Mars, when another of the man's words penetrated.

  "Case?" said Fara violently. "Individual case!"

  The man, a heavy-faced, blue-eyed young chap of around thirty-five, looked at him curiously: "You must know why you're here," he said. "Surely, you wouldn't have been sent through here unless you had a problem of some kind that the weapon shop courts will solve for you: there's no other reason for coming to Information Center."

  Fara walked on because he was in the line now, a fast-moving line that curved him inexorably around the machine; and seemed to be heading him toward a door that led into the interior of the great metal structure.

  So it was a building as well as a machine.

  A problem, he was thinking, why of course, he had a problem. A hopeless, insoluble, completely tangled problem so deeply rooted in the basic structure of Imperial civilization that the whole world would have to be overturned to make it right.

  With a start, he saw that he was at the entrance. He thought with awe: In seconds he could be committed irrevocably-to what?

  Chapter XVIII

  INSIDE the weapon shop Information Center, Fara moved along a wide, shining corridor. Behind him, the young man said:

  "There's a side corridor, practically empty. Let's go."

  Fara turned into it, trembling. He noticed that at the end of the hallway were a dozen young women sitting at desks interviewing men. He stopped in front of one of the girls. She was older than she had looked from a distance, over thirty, but goodlooking, alert. She smiled pleasantly but impersonally, and said:

  "Your name, please?"

  He gave it, and added a mumble about being from the village of Glay. The woman said:

  "Thank you. It will take a few minutes to get your file. Won't you sit down?"

  He hadn't noticed the chair. He sank into it, and his heart was beating so wildly that he felt choked. There was scarcely a thought in his head, nor a real hope; only an intense, almost mind-wrecking exictement. He realized, suddenly, that the girl was speaking to him, but only snatches of what she said came through that screen of tension in his mind:

  "-Information Center is ... in effect ... a bureau of statistics. Every person born . . . registered here . . . their education, change of address . . . occupation . . . and the highlights of their life. The whole is maintained by ... combination of ... unauthorized and unsuspected liaison with . . . Imperial Chamber of Statistics and . . . through medium of agents . . . every community-"

  It seemed to Fara that he was missing vital information, and that if he could only force his attention and hear more - He strained, but it was of no use. His nerves were jumping too madly for him to focus his mind on what she was saying. He tried to speak, but before he could force words out of his trembling lips, there was a click, and a thin, dark plate slid onto the woman's desk. She took it up and examined it. After a moment, she said something into a mouthpiece, and in a short time two more plates precipitated out of the empty air onto her desk. She studied them impassively, looked up finally.

  "You will be interested to know," she said, "that your son, Cayle, is on Mars."

  "Eh?" said Fara. He half rose from his chair, but before he could say anything the young woman was speaking again, firmly:

  "I must inform you that the weapon shops take no action against individuals. We are not concerned with moral correction. That must come naturally from the individual, and from the people as a whole-and now if you will give me a brief account of your problem for the record and the court."

  Sweating, Fara sank back into his seat; most desperately, he wanted more information about Cayle. He began: "But . . . but what . . . how-" He caught himself; and in a low voice described what had happened. When he finished, the girl said:

  "You will proceed now to the Name Room; watch for your name, and when it
appears go straight to Room 474. Remember, 474-and now, the line is waiting, if you please-"

  She smiled politely, and Fara was moving off almost before he realized it. He half turned to ask another question, but an old man was sinking into his chair. Fara hurried on, along a great corridor, conscious of curious blasts of sound coming from ahead.

  Eagerly, he opened the door; and the sound crashed at him with all the impact of a sledge-hammer blow. It was such a colossal, incredible sound that he stopped just inside the door, shrinking back. He stood then, trying to blink sense into a visual confusion that rivaled in magnitude the tornado of noise.

  Men, men, men everywhere; men by the thousands in a long, broad auditorium, packed into rows of seats, pacing with an abandon of restlessness up and down the aisles, and all of them staring with frantic interest a a long board marked off into squares, each square lettered from the alphabet. The tremendous board with its lists of names ran the full length of the immense room. The Name Room, Fara thought shakily as he sank into a seat. And his name would come up in the C's.