The Stork Factor - Zach Hughes, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 2
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Scanned by Highroller.
Proofed by the best elf proofer.
Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet.
The Stork Factor by Zach
Hughes
CHAPTER ONE
Just four years previously Richard Skeerzy had taken the Funland, Ltd.,
tour around the moon. The tour ship didn't land on the moon, of course.
No one went to the moon any more, just around it. The moon was a dead
globe of space debris from which the last iota of scientific value had been
extracted during the decades before and after the turn of the twenty-first
century. Viewed from the tinted ports of a ship such as the
Nebulous
, the
moon was a cold, empty wasteland. However, Skeerzy considered his trip
into space to be the apogee of an otherwise ordinary life.
Not that Richard Skeerzy wasn't satisfied with his lot. As he had told
LaVerne many times, the glory of being one of His creatures in His
magnificent universe was reward enough. If, to the pleasure of mere
existence, he added the smug knowledge that he, as a relatively young
member of the ruling Christian Party, was a Brother on the way up, then
that made life only slightly more satisfying.
The tourist ship
Nebulous
started final deceleration thirty minutes out
of the Funland Gate, North America. There was no warning. LaVerne, not
prepared for the gentle force of it, emitted a surprised squeak as she
drifted slowly from her couch. Richard, laughing with the air of an
experienced space traveler, engaged his wife and retrieved her as if she
were a helium balloon. He placed her on the couch and helped her strap
in, smiling on her with a great and doting pride. She was a particularly
lovable child and she had learned a lesson.
 Richard had been engaged in a lecture on the wonders of His creation
and how one should endeavor to see at least a small portion of that
creation. It was Richard's way of rationalizing away the extravagance of a
honeymoon which impoverished his new marriage. Space travel, that is,
the quick trip up to the North American Gate, the transfer to the
Nebulous
, the single orbit of the moon, was a frightfully expensive way to
spend a week. Space travel was so expensive and so relatively unrewarding
in material worth that it had almost bankrupted the First Republic before
the long-suffering silent majority rose up and, under the leadership of the
Brothers, returned the country to the area of sanity. The
Nebulous
had
been built with private funds and the North American Station, the one
great achievement of the governmental space effort, was leased to
Funland, Ltd., which lost money on the operation, but maintained it for
prestige purposes and, perhaps, as a tax dodge.
"Now we are returning, slowly but surely, to the good green Earth,"
Richard preached. "It is an experience of a lifetime." For a moment he
would not remind LaVerne that he had experienced the great moment
once before. In his love and kindness, Richard did not want to make his
wife feel inferior. "We must see and learn and never forget that He created
this with a sweep of His hand."
"Yes, Richard," LaVerne said, as a huge globe went swimming slowly
across the viewport. LaVerne was numb. Space was big. The ship was
small and crowded. The compartments closed in on her. Even the main
lounge with the viewports was a tiny, metal and stale-air cubbyhole which
gave her claustrophobia.
"If you like, dear," Richard said, "I'll explain the technique of landing at
the Gate."
"Yes, dear," LaVerne said, killing a guilty urge to tell him she was fed
up with his eternal explanations.
"The captain of the ship on which I took my
first
cruise was kind
enough to tell me all about it," Skeerzy said.
La Verne sighed. A short while ago he had seemed to be such a
wonderful catch. He was handsome. He was of medium height with dark,
curly hair which ducked out at the nape of his neck. He had nice features,
a solid chin, good nose, brown, serious eyes. He was a member of the
Brothers, and thus eligible for advancement. His position as spiritual
 adviser to the famous Colonel Ed Baxley at University One, The Brothers,
provided a more than adequate income, at least in the eyes of a girl from
East City who, before her lucky meeting with one of the all-powerful
Brothers, could only look forward to twenty working years in an office and
retirement to a community building in the depths of the continent. He
had wooed her and she had let herself be won without love, true, but she
could have loved him easily if only he would have let her.
"Do you understand, dear?" he was asking in that preaching voice of
his.
"I'm beginning to," LaVerne sighed.
The
Nebulous
glided slowly through the locks into the artificial
atmosphere of the Gate. Below, there was a flurry of activity. The ground
crew shuffled forward on magnetic shoes to guide the big ship into her
berth. Cameramen, in an attempt to pry more dollars loose from the
tourists, ground out rolls of instantly processed video-sound to be offered
as positive evidence to the folks back home that one had actually been
aboard the
Nebulous
coming into the North American Gate from the
moon. The walkways were lined by vendors offering bits of space debris
and scale models of the
Nebulous
.
Stern retainers were snapped into place. The ship's forward movement
was halted with a slight jerk. Floating sixty feet above the ramp, the
Nebulous
was a fantastic sight, all angles, a ship built for space, every inch
of available room utilized. Machinery hummed. Lines snaked up, were
attached, began to pull the ship slowly down.
"Why, there's Ronnie," Skeerzy said, with mixed interest and
disapproval in his voice. "The colonel must be here."
Richard pointed. A small figure floated at the end of a retaining line
directly in front of the viewport. In relation to the surface of the ramp, the
boy was hanging upside down. Skeerzy watched with a sort of fond
interest as the boy, his six-year-old frame distorted by baggy overalls,
fumbled inside his clothing.
"Isn't that cute," La Verne said, as the boy's hand became filled with a
realistic toy weapon. "He's playing space pirate or something."
Skeerzy snorted. "If his father sees fit to let him play with martial toys
 when the world had been a peace for thirty years there's nothing I can do,
although God knows I've tried." Skeerzy was prepared to say much more.
He started to say it but the small boy, whose blond locks pointed
downward to the surface, stopped him. The boy aimed his toy pistol at the
nose plates of the
Nebulous
and, with a studied scowl right out of an old
adventure film, squeezed the trigger.
The
Nebulous
burned slowly. The chemical fire, once started, was
inexorable. Skeerzy saw death creeping slowly toward the viewport along
the surface of the ship. There was screaming. With a start, Skeerzy
realized that the sound was, shamefully, coming from LaVerne. He put a
protective arm around her and watched the fire crawl closer. There was a
calmness in his mind. He was about to pass on to a better place. There
was no need to mourn. If he deemed it fitting that His servant die in a
spaceship drifting loosely above the metal surface of the North American
Gate, then who was going to question Him? But just before the drive went,
taking most of the North American Gate with it, Skeerzy heard more
screaming and knew that it was coming from his throat.
Fuel stores inside the Gate went in a drastic, secondary explosion. The
last foothold in space tore, ripped, twisted, turned, went deeper into
space, fell, burned in atmosphere. An SST en route London to Bangkok
reported sighting falling debris. A Siberian farm worker watched in awed
silence as a forest burned, ignited by a blazing, thunderous object falling
from the sky. Propelled by the explosions, scraps of the nuclear pile were
thrown out of Earth orbit and started falling into the sun. So vast was the
spew of wreckage that one antique rocket, in eternal orbit around the
Earth, lonely, forgotten, was knocked into a new path with atmospheric
terminus. It burned, but other pieces of space debris wheeled around the
Earth, close in, far, far below the daring flights of the past century, flights
which put men on the moon, men around Venus, men on Mars. Now, with
the foothold gone, the old rockets wheeled around and around, useless,
jettisoned scrap. The moon was, once again, alone, unreachable. And out
beyond Pluto, where man had never gone, a melon-sized instrument was
activated by the activity just outside the Earth's atmosphere. Powered by
an isotope with a half life far beyond any known particle, the instrument
had recorded activity on the Third Planet in the past, activity such as the
eruption of Krakatoa in what was, to the instrument, recent time,
explosions of natural origin prior to that, the release of primitive nuclear
power in the atmosphere only moments ago, all activity which was
recorded, but ignored, since it represented no danger. But now there was a
 new radiation in space with its origin on or near the Third Planet. The
instrument turned, made inner current, measured. A tiny computer sent
electronic impulses over a simple circuit. And the beacon flashed into
light, activated by the single discharge of a chemical fire gun, the weapon
which Richard Skeerzy and La Verne, in the last moments of their life, had
thought was cute. A signal flashed, faster than light, at a speed which
could not even be compared with the slowness of light, a signal
transmitted on a new plane cutting across galactic distance to be received
by more instruments operating in endless vigil. The response was
automatic, instantaneous, and was set in motion without the immediate
knowledge of anything living.
CHAPTER TWO
It was getting harder to get a permit to hold a simple healing service in
the park. The amount of red tape and graft was unbelievable. By the time
he got through paying off the good Brothers in charge of permits in East
City, Old Town, a man didn't have enough left over for a good bottle of
Soul Lifter. And the marks were getting more and more difficult to
impress. A man cures cancer and heart trouble and the common cold and
they want more. They want him to regenerate an amputated leg. Hell, he
wasn't Jesus Christ, after all.
"I am poor Brother Luke Parker, by your leave," he said, standing on
the base of what must have once been a statue or something equally as
sinful. "I will cure your lameness, heal your sickness, provide balm for your
soul in His name. Gather around me, brothers, sisters. Listen to the Word.
Have faith and ye shall be free."
Actually, he was only an Apprentice Brother, Third Class, but he didn't
see any Brotherfuzz in the park and sometimes the marks responded
better when they thought they were being touched by a full Brother. Full
Brothers didn't go around laying hands on people, but the marks didn't
have to know that. All they had to know was that Luke Parker had a
God-given gift of healing. He didn't know how it worked, didn't question
it. He just knew he had it and he used it to best advantage. He used it to
raise a dollar to pay for his pad and for a bottle of Soul Lifter now and
then. If he actually did make life a little less miserable for some poor mark,
that was fine, too, but making life less miserable didn't put a dollar in his
Â
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]