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Title: The Sword
Author: Frank Quattrocchi
Illustrator: Tom Beecham
Release Date: June 5, 2010 [EBook #32697]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SWORD ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
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THE SWORD
By Frank Quattrocchi
Illustrated by Tom Beecham
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of Science
Fiction March 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
[Sidenote: _There were but three days in which to decipher the most
cryptic message ever delivered to earth._]
George Harrison noticed the flashing red light on the instrument panel
as he turned onto the bridge to Balboa Island. Just over the bridge, he
pulled the car to the curb and flipped the switch with violence.
"Harrison," he muttered.
"How's the water, fella?" asked the voice of Bob Mills, his assistant.
There was a beautiful moon over the island. The surf lapped at the tiers
of the picturesque bridge. Soft music was playing somewhere. There was a
tinkle of young laughter on the light sea breeze.
Harrison was vacationing and he viewed the emergency contact from
Intersolar Spaceport with annoyance.
"What do you want, Bob?"
"Sorry, George," Bob Mills said more seriously. "I guess you got to come
back."
"Listen--" protested Harrison.
"Orders, George--orders from upstairs."
Harrison took a long look at the pleasant island street stretching out
before him. Sea-corroded street lamps lit the short, island
thoroughfare. People in light blue jeans, bronzed youths in skipper
caps, deep-tanned girls in terry-cloth.
"What the hell is it?"
"Don't know, but it's big. Better hurry." He clicked off.
Harrison skidded the car into a squealing turn. Angrily, he raced over
the bridge and onto the roaring highway. Thirty minutes later Intersolar
Spaceport, Los Angeles, blazed ahead of him.
The main gate guards waved him in immediately and two cycle guards ran
interference for him through the scores of video newsmen who lined the
spaceport street.
Bob Mills met him at the entrance to the Administration building.
"Sorry, George, but--"
"Yeah. Oh, sure. Now what the hell is it all about?"
Mills handed him a sheaf of tele-transmittals. They bore heavy secret
stamps. Harrison looked up quizzically.
"You saw the video boys," Mills said. "The wheels think there might be
some hysteria."
"Any reason for it?"
"Not that we know of--not that _I_ know of anyway. The thing is coming
in awfully fast--speed of light times a factor of at least two, maybe
four."
Harrison whistled softly and scanned the reports frowning.
"They contacted us--"
"What?"
"_--in perfect Intersolar Convention code._ Said they were coming in.
That's all. The port boys have done all they could to find out what to
expect and prepare for it. Somebody thought Engineering might be
needed--that's why they sent for you."
"Used Intersolar Convention code, eh," mused Harrison.
"Yes," said Mills. "But there's nothing like this thing known in the
solar system, nothing even close to this fast. Besides that, there was a
sighting several days ago that's being studied.
"One of the radio observatories claims to have received a new signal
from one of the star clusters...."
* * * * *
The huge metal vessel settled to a perfect contact with its assigned
strip. It hovered over the geometric center of the long runway and
touched without raising a speck of dust.
Not a sound, not a puff of smoke issued from any part of it. Immediately
it rose a few feet above the concrete and began to move toward the
parking strip. It moved with the weightless ease of an ancient dirigible
on a still day. It was easily the largest, strangest object ever seen
before at the spaceport.
A team of searchlight men swivelled the large spot atop the tower and
bathed the ship in orange light.
"What's that mean?" asked Mills paging his way through a book.
"'Halt propulsion equipment,' I think," said Harrison.
"It's a good thing the code makers were vague about that," smiled Mills.
"It's a good thing they didn't say jets or rockets--'cause this thing
hasn't got any."
"_Attention!_"
That single word suddenly issued from the alien ship.
"_The Races of Wan greet you._"
It might have been the voice of a frog. It was low, gutteral, entirely
alien, entirely without either enthusiasm or trace of human emotion.
"Jesus!" muttered Mills.
Scores of video teams focused equipment on the gleaming alien.
"_The Races of Wan desire contact with you._"
"In English yet!" amazed Mills.
"The basis of this contact together with its nature are dependent upon
_you_!"
The voice had become ugly. There was nothing human about it save only
the words, which were in flawless English.
"Your system has long been under surveillance by the Races of Wan.
Your--progress has been noted."
There was almost a note of contempt, thought Harrison, in the last
sentence.
"Your system is about to reach others. It therefore becomes a matter of
urgency that the Races of Wan make contact.
"Your cultural grasp is as yet quite small. You reach four of your own
system's planets. You have attempted--with little success--colonization.
You anticipate further penetrations.
"You master the physical conditions of your system with difficulty. You
are a victim of many of the natural laws--natural laws which you dimly
perceive.
"But you master yourselves with greatest difficulty, and you are
infinitely more a victim of forces within your very nature--_forces
which you know almost not at all_."
"What the hell--" began Mills.
"Because of this disparity your maturity as a race is much in doubt.
There are many among the cultures of the stars who would consider your
race deviant and deadly. There are a very few who would welcome you to
the reaches of space.
"But most desire more information. Thus our visit. We have come to
gather data that will determine your--disposition--
"Your race accepts the principle of extermination. You relentlessly seek
and kill for commercial or political advantage. You live in mistrust and
envy and threat. Yet, as earthlings, you have power. It is not great,
but it contains a threat. We wish now to know the extent of that threat.
"Here is the test."
Suddenly an image resolved itself on the gleaming metal of the ship
itself.
_It was a blueprint._
A hundred cameras focused on it.
"_Construct this. It is defective. Correct that which renders it not
useful. We shall return in three days for your solution._"
"Good God!" exclaimed Harrison. "It's a--_sword_!"
"A what?" asked Mills.
"A sword--people used to chop each other's heads off with them."
Almost at once the metal giant was seen to move. Quickly it retraced its
path across the apron, remained poised on the center of the runway, then
disappeared almost instantaneously.
* * * * *
The Intersolar Council weathered the storm. The representative of the
colony on Venus was recalled, his political life temporarily ended. A
vigilante committee did for a time picket the spaceport. But the
tremendous emotional outbursts of the first day gradually gave way to a
semblance of order.
Video speakers, some of them with huge followings, still denounced the
ISC for permitting the alien to land in the first place. Others clamored
for a fleet to pursue the arrogant visitor. And there were many fools
who chose to ignore the implications of the strange speech and its
implied threat. Some even thought it was a gigantic hoax.
But most men soon came to restore their trust in the scientists of the
Intersolar Council.
Harrison cast down the long sheet of morning news that had rolled out of
the machine.
"The fools! They'll play politics right up to the last, won't they?"
"What else?" asked Mills. "Playing politics is as good a way as any of
avoiding what you can't figure out or solve."
"And yet, what the hell are _we_ doing here?" Harrison mused. "Listen to
this."
He picked up a stapled sheaf of papers from his desk.
"'_Analysis of word usage indicates a complete knowledge of the English
language_'--that's brilliant, isn't it? '_The ideational content and
general semantic tone of the alien speech indicates a relatively high
intelligence._
"'_Usage is current, precise...._' Bob, the man who wrote that report is
one of the finest semantics experts in the solar system. He's the brain
that finally broke that ancient Martian ceremonial language they found
on the columns."
"Well, mastermind," said Mills. "What will the _Engineering_ report say
when you get around to writing it?"
"Engineering report? What are you talking about?"
"You didn't read the memo on your desk then? The one that requested a
preliminary report from every department by 2200 today."
"Good God, no," said Harrison snapping up the thin yellow sheet. "What
in hell has a sword got to do with Engineering?"
"What's it got to do with Semantics?" mocked Robert Mills.
* * * * *
_Construct this. It is defective. Correct that which renders it not
useful._
Harrison's eyes burned. He would have to quit pretty soon and dictate
the report. There wasn't any use in trying to go beyond a certain point.
You got so damned tired you couldn't think straight. You might as well
go to bed and rest. Bob Mills had gone long before.
He poured over the blueprint again, striving to concentrate. Why in hell
had he not given up altogether? What possible contribution could an
engineer make toward the solution of such a problem?
_Construct this._
You simply made the thing according to a simple blueprint. You tried out
what you got, found out what it was good for, found out then what was
keeping it from doing that. You fixed it.
Well, the sword had been constructed. Fantastic effort had been directed
into producing a perfect model of the print. Every minute convolution
had been followed to an incredible point of perfection. Harrison was
willing to bet there was less than a ten thousandths error--even in the
handle, where the curves seemed to be more artistic than mechanical.
_It is defective._
What was defective about it? Nobody had actually tried the ancient
weapon, it was true. You didn't go around chopping people's heads off.
But experts on such things had examined the twelve-pound blade and had
pronounced it "well balanced"--whatever that meant. It would crack a
skull, sever arteries, kill or maim.
_Correct...._
What was there to correct? Could you make it maim or kill better? Could
you sharpen it so that it would go through thick clothing or fur? Yes.
Could you make it a bit heavier so that it might slice a metal shield?
Yes, perhaps. All of these things had been half-heartedly suggested. But
nobody had yet proposed any kind of qualitative change or been able to
suggest any kind of change that would meet the next admonition of the
alien:
Correct _that which renders it not useful_.
What actually could be done to a weapon to make it useful? Matter of
fact, what was there about the present weapon that made it _not_ useful.
Apparently it was useful as hell--useful enough to cut a man's throat,
pierce his heart, slice an arm off him....
What were the possible swords; what was the morphology of _concept
sword_?
Harrison picked up a dog-eared report.
There was the _rapier_, a thin, light, extremely flexible kind of sword
(if you considered the word "sword" generic, as the Semantics expert had
pointed out). It was good for duels, man-to-man combat, usually on what
the ancients had called the "field of honor."
There were all kinds of short swords, dirks, shivs, stilettos, daggers.
They were the weapons of stealth men--and sometimes women--used in the
night. The assassin's weapon, the glitter in the darkened alley.
There were the _machetes_. Jungle knives, cane-cutting instruments. The
bayonets....
You could go on and on from there, apparently. But what did you get?
They were all more or less useful, Harrison supposed. There was nothing
more you could do with any kind of sword that was designed for a
specific purpose.
Harrison sighed in despair. He had expected vastly more when he had
first heard the alien mention "test". He had expected some complex
instrument, something new to Terra and her colonies. Something involving
complex and perhaps unknown principles of an alien technology. Something
appropriate to the strange metal craft that traveled so very fast.
Or perhaps a paradox. A thing that could not be constructed without
exploding, like a lattice of U235 of exactly critical size. Or an
instrument that must be assembled in an impossible sequence, like a
clock with a complete, single-pieced outer shell. Or a part of a thing
that could be "corrected" only if the whole thing were visualized,
constructed, and tested.
No, the blueprint he held now involved an awareness that must prove
beyond mere technology, or at least Terran technology. Maybe it involved
an awareness that transcended Terran philosophy as well.
Harrison slapped the pencil down on his desk, rose, put his coat on, and
left the office.
* * * * *
"... we are guilty as the angels of the bible were guilty. Pride! That's
it, folks, pride. False pride...."
Harrison fringed the intent crowd of people cursing when, frequently,
someone carelessly bumped into him in an effort to get nearer the
sidewalk preacher.
"We tried to live with the angels above. We wanted to fly like the
birds. And then we wanted to fly like the angels...."
Someone near Harrison muttered an "Amen". Harrison wove his way through
them wondering where the hundreds of such evangelists had come from so
suddenly.
"Ya know, folks, the angels themselves got uppity once. _They_ wanted to
be like Gawd himself, they did. Now, it's us."
There was a small flutter of laughter among the crowd. It was very
quickly suppressed--so quickly that Harrison gained a new appreciation
of the tenor of the crowd.
"That's right, laugh! Laugh at our folly!" continued the thin-faced,
bright-eyed man. "It was a sword that the angel used to kick Adam and
Eve out of the garden. The sword figures all through the bible, folks.
You ought to read the bible. You ought to get to know it. It's all
there. All there for you to read...."
_By Christ_, thought Harrison. Here was an aspect of the concept, sword,
he had not considered. Morphological thinking required that _all_
aspects of a concept be explored, all plotted against all others for
possible correlation....
No. That was silly. The bible was a beautiful piece of literature and
some people believed it inspired. But the great good men who wrote the
bible had little scientific knowledge of a sword. They would simply
describe the weapon as a modern fiction writer would describe a
blaster--without knowing any more about one than that it existed and was
a weapon.
Surely the ISC's weapons expert could be trusted to know his swords.
* * * * *
"Go on home," Mills pleaded. "You're shot and you know it. You said
yourself this isn't our show."
"You go home, Bob. I'm all right."
"George ... you're acting strange. Strange as hell."
"I'm all right. Leave me alone," snapped Harrison becoming irritable.
Mills watched silently as the haggard man slipped a tablet into his
mouth.
"It's all right, Bob," smiled Harrison weakly. "I know how to use
Benzedrine."
"You damn fool, you'll wreck yourself...."
But the engineer ignored him. He continued paging his way through the
book--the bible, no less. George Harrison and the bible!
* * * * *
Mills was awakened by the telephone. Reaching in the dark for it he
answered almost without reaching consciousness.
It was Harrison.
"Bob, listen to me. If an angel were to look at us right now, what would
he think?"
"For God's sake!" Mills cried into the instrument. "What's up? You still
at the office?"
"Yeah, answer the question."
"Hold on, George. I'll be down and get you. What you been drinking?"
"Bob, would he--she--think much of us? Would the angel figure we
were...."
"How the hell would _I_ know?"
"No, Bob, what you should have asked is 'how the hell would _he_ know.'"
* * * * *
In a daze Mills heard the click as the other hung up.
* * * * *
"Mr. Harrison, your assistant is looking for you."
"Yes, I know, Kirk. But will you do it?"
"Mr. Harrison, we only got one of them. If we screw it up it'll take
time to make another and today's the day, you know."
"I'll take the blame."
"Mr. Harrison, you look kind of funny. Hadn't I better...."
Harrison was sketching a drawing on a piece of waste paper. He was
working in quick rough strokes, copying something from a book.
"They'll blame us both, Mr. Harrison. Anyway, it might hold up somebody
who's got a real idea...."
"_I_ have a real idea, Kirk. I'm going to draw it for you."
The metal worker noticed that the book Harrison was copying from was a
dictionary, a very old and battered one.
"Here, can you follow what I've drawn?"
The metal worker accepted it reluctantly, giving Harrison an odd, almost
patronizing look. "This is crazy."
"Kirk!"
"Look, Mr. Harrison. We worked a long time together. You...."
Harrison suddenly rose from the chair.
"This is our one chance of beating this thing, no matter how crazy it
seems. Will you do the job?"
"You believe you got something, eh," the other said. "You think you
have?"
"I have to have."
* * * * *
"Gentlemen," said the President of the Intersolar Council. "There is
very little to say. There can be no denying the fact that we have
exhausted our efforts at finding a satisfactory solution.
"The contents of this book of reports represents the greatest
concentration of expert reasoning perhaps ever applied to a single
problem.
"But alas, the problem remains--unsolved."
He paused to glance at his wristwatch.
"The aliens return in an hour. As you very well know there is one action
that remains for us. It is one we have held to this hour. It is one that
has always been present and one that we have been constantly urged to
use.
"Force, gentlemen. It is not insignificant. It lies at our command. It
represents the technology of the Intersolar alliance. I will entertain a
motion to use it."
There were no nay votes.
* * * * *
The alien arrived on schedule. The ship grew from a tiny bright speck in
the sky to full size. It settled to a graceful landing as before on the
strip and silently moved into the revetment.
Again it spoke in the voice of the frog, but the tone was, if anything,
less human this time.
"Earthmen, we have come for your solution."
At that instant a hundred gun crews stiffened and waited for a signal
behind their carefully camouflaged blast plates and inside dummy
buildings....
Harrison was running. The Administration building was empty. His
footsteps echoed through the long, silent halls. He headed for an
emergency exit that led directly to the blast tunnel. All doors were
locked.
The only way was over the wall. He paused and tossed the awkward, heavy
object over the ten-foot wall. Then, backing toward the building, he ran
and jumped for a hold onto the wall's edge. He failed by several inches
to reach it.
"Earthmen, we have come for your solution."
He ran at the wall once more. This time he caught a fair hold with one
hand. Digging at the rough concrete with his feet he was able to secure
the hold and begin pulling his body upward.
Quickly he was over the wall and onto the apron, a hundred yards from
the shining metal ship.
"Wait!" he shouted. "Wait, for God's sake!"
Picking up the object he had tossed over the wall, he raised it above
his head and ran toward the alien ship.
"Wait! Here is the solution," he gasped.
Somehow the command to fire was not given. There was a long moment of
complete silence on the field. Nothing moved.
Then the voice of the frog boomed from the alien ship.
"The solution appears to be correct."
* * * * *
The alien left three days later. Regular communications would begin
within the week. Future meetings would work out technical difficulties.
Preliminary trade agreements, adequately safeguarded, were drafted and
transmitted to the ship. The Races of Man and the Races of Wan were in
harmony.
* * * * *
"It was simply too obvious for any of us to notice," explained Harrison.
"It took that street-corner evangelist to jar something loose--even then
it was an accident."
"And the rest of us--" started Mills.
"While _all_ of us worked on the assumption that the test involved a
showing of strength--a flexing of technological muscle."
"I still don't see--"
"Well, the evangelist put the problem on the right basis. He humbled us,
exalted the aliens--that is, he thought the alien was somehow a
messenger from God to put us in our places."
"We were pretty humble ourselves, especially the last day," protested
Mills.
"But humble about our _technology_," put in Harrison. "The aliens must
be plenty far beyond us technologically. But how about their cultural
superiority. Ask yourself how a culture that could produce the ship
we've just seen could survive without--well destroying itself."
"I still don't understand."
"The aliens developed pretty much equally in _all_ directions. They
developed force--plenty of it, enough force to kick that big ship
through space at the speed of light plus. They must also have learned to
control force, to live with it."
"Maybe you better stick to the sword business," said Mills.
"The sword is the crux of the matter. What did the alien say about the
sword? 'It is defective.' It _is_ defective, Bob. Not as an instrument
of death. It will kill a man or injure him well enough.
"But a sword--or any other instrument of force for that matter--is a
terribly ineffectual tool. It was originally designed to act as a tool
of social control. Did it--or any subsequent weapon of force--do a good
job at that?
"As long as man used swords, or gunpowder, or atom bombs, or hydrogen
bombs, he was doomed to a fearful anarchy of unsolved problems and
dreadful immaturity.
"No, the sword is not useful. To fix it--to 'correct that which renders
it not useful'--meant to make it something else. Now what in the hell
did that mean? What can you do with a sword?"
"You mean besides cut a man in two with it," said Mills.
"Yes, what can you do with it besides use it as a weapon? Here our
street-corner friend referred me to the right place: The bible!
"_They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into
pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither
shall they learn war any more._
"The aliens just wanted to know if we meant what we said."
"Do we?"
"We better. It's going to take a hell of a lot more than a silly
ploughshare to convince those babies on that ship. But there's more to
it than that. The ability of a culture finally to pound all of its
swords--its intellectual ones as well as its steel ones--into
ploughshares must be some kind of least common denominator for cultures
that are headed for the stars."
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