Gordon R. Dickson (10 page)

"Oh,
sorry," said Kil. "Kil Bruner."
                                     
^v

"Kil—Bruner."
Bolievsky nodded thoughtfuly. I'll remember that."

Kil looked at him curiously.

"You're
a member of the Thieves Guild?" he asked. "Kil," said the other.
"I'm everything. Doctor, lawyer, Indian Chief; you've met our friend Toy,
of course?" "Yes." Kil nodded.

"Well, there you have it. Toy represents
the emotional failure of our age. I represent the intellectual failure. Master
of all trades and a good, honest jack at none of them." He cocked his head
at Kil. "You don't believe me?"

"Well,
I—" Kil found himself feeling a sudden curious attraction to this man. The
directness of him raised a sympathetic vibration in the metal of Kil's own
direct self. "What do you mean, he represents emotional failure?"

Bolievsky smiled in his
beard.

"He's
one of the mythological characters of our modern fairy-tale.
The
giant Apathy, ruler of the kingdom of I Give Up.
Toy has gone hunting
for dragons without finding any. And since he can't be St. George, he won't
play. We've got other failures in that line, but Toy's far and away the most
spectacular of them."

"I
suppose he can't help it," said Kil, thoughtfully, "being born twice
as big as anyone else and so forth."

"Don't
you ever think it," Bolievsky shook his head. "That's just his
excuse.
He
doens't
want
to help it—and that's a major sin in any man, not wanting something
enough.
Our most common fault nowadays.
We want this,
we want that, but not hard enough to go out and get it. We want a world without
Files prodding us from spot to spot, but not enough to really get down to work
and do something about it. And meanwhile the people who want something or other
selfishly, for themselves, and want it hard enough, go out and get it just
because of the type of attitude that Toy personifies."

Kil
found himself smiling for the first time since Ellen had disappeared.

"And you're an exception?" he said.

"Oh—"
Bolievsky smiled wryly. "I'm much more deeply damned. As I say, I'm an
intellectual failure.
In-te-lec-tu-al fail-ure."
He rolled the words out. "I don't know what I want. I have yet to decide
on a career, which is somewhat startling when you stop to consider that I'm now
sixty-three years old. I have an excellent mind and a great deal of energy. My
health is good and I eat like a horse. I have a doctorate in philosophy and
degrees in history, economics, chemistry, physics, psychology and biology. I
have read widely in other fields, and speak and read—or at least read—twelve
dead languages. I have dabbled in mysticism, ancient religions, politics,
yoga
; in short, in everything animal, vegetable and mineral,
I am the very model of a modern intellectual. Will you believe me," said
Bolievsky, earnestly, reaching out and laying a long, thin hand on Kil's knee,
"when I tell you that I sometimes wonder about the purpose for which I was
put into this world?"

"No," said Kil.
"But why tell me all this?"

"Because you have a strange air about you.
As if you might possibly be one of those
rare human animals who
does
know what he wants. Do
you?"

Kil laughed.

"And what if I
did?"

"Why
then," said Bolievsky, letting his hand drop from Kil's knee and drawing
himself up stiffly, "you're the most likely candidate for Superman. Laugh
if you like. Listen!" He held up one finger. "Once upon a time when
Man was galloping about in a bearskin, hitting small animals over the head with
a club and climbing trees to get away from the big ones; drying in the sun,
soaking in the rain, and freezing in the snow and wind, and all the time
wondering where his next meal was coming from, he sat down and made a list of
his wants: Here—" Bolievsky reached back around and inside the doorway,
and came out with a pen and sheet of paper. "Like this."

He wrote rapidly. When he was finished, he
handed the sheet to Kil. Kil looked at it. On it was a list, with the title:

LIST OF NEEDS AND WANTS by Ima Caveman
Something to kill large animals Something to kill bad enemies A bearskin that
doesn't wear out A cave that is (a) warm when it cold out
  
*

(b)
cool
when its
hot out Something to take care of evil spirits Something to fix me when I'm
hurt or sick All the food and drink I'll ever need

Something to make people good
Something
just in case they are bad anyway

Kil laughed again, and handed the sheet back.
"What about it?" he asked.

"Just
this," said Bolievsky, and wrote again, on the same page. So that now' it
read:

LIST OF NEEDS AND WANTS
                          
by Ima Caveman

Something to kill large
animals
                         
weapons

Something to kill bad
enemies
                          
nuclear weapons

A bearskin that doesn't wear out
                      
plastic clothing

A cave that is (a) warm when
its
cold out heating and air

(b)
cool
when its hot out conditioning
Something to take care of evil spirits
               
education

Something
to fix me when I'm hurt or sick modern medicine
All
the food and drink I'll ever need
    
modern production

methods

Something to make people good
                     
religion

Something just in case they are bad anyway

organized
society

He handed it back to Kil. Kil read it.

"You see," said Bolievsky. "We present-day, dressed-up
cavemen have answered our full list of wants.
Now
we have answered it. The day of the caveman's millenium is at hand.
Or should be.
What do you think?"

"I think," said Kil, dryly, "that maybe we aren't cavemen
any longer."

"Exactly!" cried Bolievsky.
"By satisfying the caveman, we have destroyed him. He was nothing more
than a bundle of wants to start off with. Enter the Superman—the successor to
the caveman, who has discovered a new want. Now," he said, peering at Kil,
"perhaps a superman like
yourself
would
condescend to tell an old destroyed caveman like
myself
what that want might be?"

Kil smiled, shook his head and handed the
sheet back. He got up from the stump.

"I haven't got the slightest idea,"
he said. "But if I think of something, I'll let you know."

"Yes—" said Bolievsky, in a
disappointed tone, gnawing at his beard and staring at the paper in his hand.

Kil
turned and walked off. After he had gone a few steps back toward his own cabin,
a thought struck him. He turned and came back.

"There's one thing you might think
over," he said. "Doesn't that list of yours strike you as being
pretty selfish in all departments?"

Bolievsky threw a startled
glance at the sheet in his hand.

"By God," he said. "You're
right. It does!"

Kil
left him staring at his list and went back to the cabin he shared with Dekko,
doing a little thinking himself as he went.

Several hours later, Dekko showed up. He came
in quietly, shut the cabin door behind him, and from his pocket produced a
small instrument not much larger than the Key on his wrist. With this he made a
tour of all three rooms without speaking. When he was finished he came back to
Kil, who had been watching him from the couch where he had been sitting and
reading.

"All right," said
Dekko, sitting down. "This is it."

Kil laid his scanner aside.

"This is what?"
he asked.

"This place.
The O.T.L.
It's all O.T.L.: a semi-permanent
set-up. They rotate people like Stick headquarters. Everybody here is a
representative from some Society, or Group, or Organization. And by the way, I
think your girl friend knows we're up to something."

"My
girl friend?"

"Melee."

"What
the hell do you mean?" snapped Kil. "You were the one that thought up
the idea of getting acquainted with her in the first place."

Dekko took time out to
grin.

"Sure.
Her,
then.
Anyway, I could be wrong about her
suspecting, too. Well, it doesn't matter. I still think we can make out all
right. There'll be something doing at the Lodge tonight, and we're going to
listen in on it. Then we'll figure out where to go from there. It'll mean
taking a few chances, though." He looked questioningly at Kil.

"Whatever's
necessary," said Kil, grimly.

"Good,
then. We've got to wait until dark. Catch a nap if you can."

Dekko
walked into his own bedroom and dropped on the bed there. Two minutes later,
when Kil passed the doorway on the way to his own room, the smaller man was
already heavily and silently asleep.

Kil
awoke to find Dekko shaking him. He sat up, muzzily. The window of his room was
a square of darkness and Dekko himself was a dim, indistinct figure bending
over him.

"No lights," said
Dekko. "Come on."

Kil
sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat there, scrubbing some
life back into his sleepy face. Partially recovered after a moment, he pushed
himself to his feet and lurched out of his room, down the short hall and into
the cabin's living room, dusky in deep shadow from the thin fringe of dying
daylight in the western sky.

Dekko
was sitting at a low table, working with small things in the darkness, either
by virtue of cat-like eyesight or just plain feel; it was not clear to Kil
which. After a while he finished, gathered them up and stood up himself.

"All right," he
said. "We're set. Come on."

He
led the way out of the door into the night that had now fallen. Slowly, in the
darkness, they moved uphill and shortly they came up close under a set of
large, one-way windows, now opaqued, in the west wing of the lodge.

"Wait
here," said Dekko. He moved up about five feet to a corner of one of the
windows. There was a soft, almost inaudible sighing sound, and a pin-prick of
light appeared in the darkness of the opaqued window. Dekko backed off towards
Kil, knelt down and drove a short, thin, black rod into the earth, in line with
the window.

"Now," he said.

Dekko
leading, they moved back into the cover of a small clump of pine.

"Down," said Dekko.

They went down on their stomachs on the hard
turf and Dekko set up before them a small box on tripod legs. He plugged two
cords into the box, cords which terminated in hooded spectacles, each with a
small button attached to the right temple.

"Button
in your ear," whispered Dekko, slipping his pair of the spectacles on. Kil
followed suit and found himself suddenly plunged into the most absolute
darkness. Fiddling with the frame of the spectacles, he discovered a small
lever; and this, when he shifted it, unopaqued the lenses before him so that
normal vision of the night came back to him.

"Now
here," whispered Dekko, "is the doby prize. Four hundred alone, this
little looper cost you."