The Second Science Fiction MEGAPACK®. Robert Silverberg

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СКАЧАТЬ and one-half billion operations is a lot of operations. Because they breed continuously, the job would never be done.”

      “I see. Like the marching Chinese!”

      “Who the devil are they?”

      “It was a—uh—paradox of my time. Somebody figured out that if all the Chinese in the world were to line up four abreast, I think it was, and start marching past a given point, they’d never stop because of the babies that would be born and grow up before they passed the point.”

      “That’s right. Only instead of ‘a given point,’ make it ‘the largest conceivable number of operating rooms that we could build and staff.’ There could never be enough.”

      “Say!” said Barlow. “Those movies about babies—was that your propaganda?”

      “It was. It doesn’t seem to mean a thing to them. We have abandoned the idea of attempting propaganda contrary to a biological drive.”

      “So if you work with a biological drive—?”

      “I know of none which is consistent with inhibition of fertility.”

      Barlow’s face went poker blank, the result of years of careful discipline. “You don’t, huh? You’re the great brains and you can’t think of any?”

      “Why, no,” said the psychist innocently. “Can you?”

      “That depends. I sold ten thousand acres of Siberian tundra—through a dummy firm, of course—after the partition of Russia. The buyers thought they were getting improved building lots on the outskirts of Kiev. I’d say that was a lot tougher than this job.”

      “How so?” asked the hawk-faced man.

      “Those were normal, suspicious customers and these are morons, born suckers. You just figure out a con they’ll fall for; they won’t know enough to do any smart checking.”

      The psychist and the hawk-faced man had also had training; they kept themselves from looking with sudden hope at each other. “You seem to have something in mind,” said the psychist.

      Barlow’s poker face went blanker still. “Maybe I have. I haven’t heard any offer yet.”

      “There’s the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve prevented Earth’s resources from being so plundered,” the hawk-faced man pointed out, “that the race will soon become extinct.”

      “I don’t know that,” Barlow said bluntly. “All I have is your word.”

      “If you really have a method, I don’t think any price would be too great,” the psychist offered.

      “Money,” said Barlow.

      “All you want.”

      “More than you want,” the hawk-faced man corrected.

      “Prestige,” added Barlow. “Plenty of publicity. My picture and my name in the papers and over TV every day, statues to me, parks and cities and streets and other things named after me. A whole chapter in the history books.”

      The psychist made a facial sign to the hawk-faced man that meant, “Oh, brother!”

      The hawk-faced man signaled back, “Steady, boy!”

      “It’s not too much to ask,” the psychist agreed. Barlow, sensing a seller’s market, said, “Power!”

      “Power?” the hawk-faced man repeated puzzledly. “Your own hydro station or nuclear pile?”

      “I mean a world dictatorship with me as dictator!”

      “Well, now—” said the psychist, but the hawk-faced man interrupted, “It would take a special emergency act of Congress but the situation warrants it. I think that can be guaranteed.”

      “Could you give us some indication of your plan?” the psychist asked.

      “Ever hear of lemmings?”

      “No.”

      “They are—were, I guess, since you haven’t heard of them—little animals in Norway, and every few years they’d swarm to the coast and swim out to sea until they drowned. I figure on putting some lemming urge into the population.”

      “How?”

      “I’ll save that till I get the right signatures on the deal.”

      The hawk-faced man said, “I’d like to work with you on it, Barlow. My name’s Ryan-Ngana.”

      He put out his hand. Barlow looked closely at the hand, then at the man’s face.

      “Ryan what?”

      “Ngana.”

      “That sounds like an African name.”

      “It is. My mother’s father was a Watusi.”

      Barlow didn’t take the hand.

      “I thought you looked pretty dark. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I don’t think I’d be at my best working with you. There must be somebody else just as well qualified, I’m sure.”

      The psychist made a facial sign to Ryan-Ngana that meant, “Steady yourself, boy!”

      “Very well,” Ryan-Ngana told Barlow. “We’ll see what arrangement can be made.”

      “It’s not that I’m prejudiced, you understand. Some of my best friends—”

      “Mr. Barlow, don’t give it another thought. Anybody who could pick on the lemming analogy is going to be useful to us.”

      And so he would, thought Ryan-Ngana, alone in the office after Tinny-Peete had taken Barlow up to the helicopter stage. So he would. Poprob had exhausted every rational attempt and the new Poprobattacklines would have to be irrational or subrational. This creature from the past with his lemming legends and his improved building lots would be a fountain of precious vicious self-interest. Ryan-Ngana sighed and stretched. He had to go and run the San Francisco subway. Summoned early from the Pole to study Barlow, he’d left unfinished a nice little theorem. Between interruptions, he was slowly constructing an n-dimensional geometry whose foundations and superstructure owed no debt whatsoever to intuition.

      Upstairs, waiting for a helicopter, Barlow was explaining to Tinny-Peete that he had nothing against Negroes, and Tinny-Peete wished he had some of Ryan-Ngana’s imperturbability and humor for the ordeal. The helicopter took them to International Airport where, Tinny-Peete explained, Barlow would leave for the Pole. The man from the past wasn’t sure he’d like a dreary waste of ice and cold.

      “It’s all right,” said the psychist. “A civilized layout. Warm, pleasant. You’ll be able to work more efficiently there. All the facts at your fingertips, a good secretary—”

      “I’ll need a pretty big staff,” said Barlow, who had learned from thousands of deals never to take the first offer.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ