Ch 05

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Chapter five of Advance Agent by Christopher Anvil. This LibriVox
recording is in the public domain. Advance Agent by Christopher Anvil,
Chapter five. On one side of the stairs as they
climbed was the statue of a man smiling. On the

(00:21):
other side was an urn with a bunch of carved
flowers lying beside it. A big bronze door stood open
at the top. They walked through into a large chamber
with massive seats and triple rows along two walls, and
a single row of yet more massive seats raised along
the farther wall. A bored looking man got up from

(00:44):
a low dusk as the millbun sat down in three
of the massive seats. The man asked, in a dreary voice,
have you, to the best of your knowledge, committed any
wrong or illegal act or acts since your last vacation?
You pick up a whisk broom hand and waited for
their answers. No, said the three mill buns in earnest,

(01:06):
quavering voices. The man looked at each of them, shrugged,
and said, boredly, pass through to your vacations, live law
abiding citizens. He beckoned impatiently at Dan, turned a scar
at him, saw Dan's cape stiffened, look hastily out to
the statue framed by the doorway, relaxed lightly and inquired, respectfully,

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is it time for you to go on vacation devisement?
It seems to be, said Dan, I think you should, Sir,
then you'd still be more helpful if called. Dan nodded
non committally and sat down in one of the massive chairs.
His glance fell on an ornamental carving above the big doorway.

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It was a set of scales held by a giant hand.
In one pan of the scale sat a smiling man,
and the other was a small heap of ashes. Have you, asked,
the boardman, to the best of your knowledge, committed any
wrong or illegal act or act since your last vacation?
He readied the dust pan and whisk broom. The mill

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buns watched anxiously at a door in the back of
the room. Uneasily. Dan thought back and remembered no wrong
or illegal acts he had committed since his last vacation. No,
he said, the functionary stepped back, passed through to your vacation,
live law abiding citizen. Sir Dan got up and walked

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toward the millbuns. Another board functionary came in wheeling a
cart full of urns. He stopped at a massive chair
with a heap of ashes on the seat, a small
pile on either arm, and two small piles at the foot.
The functionary swept the ashes off and dumped them in
the urn. A cold sensation went through Dan. He followed

(03:01):
the millbunds out into a small room. He felt an
out of focus sensation and realized the room was a
matiform transmitter. An instant later they were in a spaceship
crowded with thoughtful looking people. Life on the spaceship seemed
to be given over to silent, morose meditation, with an

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occasional groan that sounded very much like oh give me
just one more chance God. When they left the ship,
it was again by matiform, this time to a building
where they stood in a line of people. The line
wound through a booth where the color of their capes
was marked on their foreheads, thence past a counter where

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they received strong khaki colored capes, blouses and hoes, and
new leather shorts and boots to replace those they were wearing.
They changed in tiny private rooms, handed their own clothing in,
and another counter had a number stamped on their left
shoulders and on their box of clothing. Then they walked

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out onto a strip of brilliant white sand fronting on
an inlet of sparkling blue water. Here and there huddled little,
crowded knots of people, dancing from one foot to another
on the hot sand, and yet apparently afraid to go
in the water. Dan looked to the Millbuns for some
clue and saw them darting intense calculating glances at the

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beach and the water. Then mister Millbun yelled run for it.
A slavering sound reached Dan's ear. He sprinted after the Millbuns,
burst through the crowd in a headlong bolt for the cove,
then swam as fast as he could to keep up
with them. As they raced for the opposite shore. They

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crawled out, strangling and gasping, and dragged themselves up on
the sand. Dan lay, heaving in deep breaths, then rolled
over and sat up. The air around them was split
by screams, laced through with sobs, curses, and groans. On
the shore opposite, a mad dog darted across the crowded

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beach and emptied people into the cove. In the cove,
a glistening black sweep of hide separated the water for
an instant, then sank below. People thrashed, fought, and went under.
Dan looked up on the wooden building beyond the cove
and the beach was a broad sign Horses Planet Rejuvenation Center.

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Dan read the sign three times. If this was rejuvenation,
the portions could have it. Beside Dan Milburn stood up,
still struggling for breath, and pulled his wife and mave
us to their feet. Come on, he said, we've got
to get through the swamp ahead of the gray bows.

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The rest of the day they pushed through slimy muck
up to their knees and sometimes up to their necks.
Behind them, the crowd screamingly thinned out. That night, they
washed in icy spring water, tore chunks of meat from
a huge broiled creature, turning on a spit, and went
to sleep, intents to the buzz and drone of creatures

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that shot their long needled noses through the walls like
drillers hunting for oil. The following day they spent carefully
easing from crevice to narrow toe hold up the sheer
face of a mountain. Food and shelter were at the top.
Jagged rocks and hungry creatures were at the bottom. That night,

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Dan slept right through an urgent buzz from keel guard.
The next night he woke enough to hear it, but
he didn't have the strength to answer. Where he thought
is the rejuvenation in this? Then he had a sudden
glimmering it was the Porson race that was rejuvenated. The

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unfit of the poor persons died violently. It took stamina
just to live from one day to the next. Even
the millbuns were saying that this was the worst vacation ever.
Trails slid out from under them, Trees fell toward them,
Boulders bounded down steep slopes at them. At first, the

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millbuns tried to remember forgotten sins for which all this
might be repayment. But when there was the dull boom
of an explosion and they narrowly escaped a landslide, milbun
looked at the rocks across the trail with sunken red eyes.
He sniffed the air and growled undevised. That afternoon, Dan

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and the millbuns passed three average looking men hanging by
their hands from the limb of a tree beside the trail.
The faces of the hanging men bore a surprised expression.
They hung perfectly still and motionless, except for a slight
swaying caused by the wind. Dan and the millbuns reached
a matiform station late that afternoon. A very hard eyed

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guard in an orange cape barred across the shoulders in
black led them through, and they found themselves in another
spaceship bound for Fumidor, the mining planet. Dan sat back,
exhausted and fell asleep. He was awakened by a determined buzz.

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Dan said Keelguard's voice. Yes, Dan sat up. Go ahead,
trans Space is going to try to take over porses.
There's nothing you can do about that, but they've landed
agents on vacation planet to pick you off. Look Out.
Dan told Keelguard what had happened to the agents on

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vacation planet, such as the undevised explosion and being hung
up by the hands. Heel Guard whistled, maybe the Porsons
can take care of themselves in space. Doesn't think so.
How did you find out? The tiny voice held a
note of grim satisfaction. They ran an agent in on Us,

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and he gave himself away. He went back with an
organo transmitter inside him and a memory bank. The bank
stores up the day's impressions. The transmitter squirts them out
in one multi frequency blast. The agent is poorly placed
for an informant, but we've learned a lot through him.
How are they going to take over Porsus? We don't know.

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They think they found the Porson's weak point, but if so,
we don't know what it is. Listen, Ernestan, maybe we
ought to put a lot of agents on porss. No,
said Keelgard. That's the wrong way to play it. If
we go in now, we'll be too late to do
any good. We're still counting on you. There's not very

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much I can do by myself. Just do your best
all we can ask. Dan spent the next week chipping
out pieces of a radioactive ore. At night, Keelguard would
report the jubulant mood of trans space. On the following days,
Dan would chop at the oar with vicious blows that

(10:16):
jarred him from his wrist to his heels. The steady,
monotonous work, once he was used to it, left his
mind free to think, and he tried furiously to plan
what he would do when he got out, but he
found he didn't really know enough about porses to make
a sensible plan. Then he began trying to organize what

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he had seen and heard during his stay on the planet.
At night, Keelguard helped him, and together they went over
their theories, trying to find those that would fit the
facts of horses at all. Hinges on population pressure, said Keelguard. Finally,
on most planets we know of, over population leads to war, starvation,

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birth control, or emigration. These are the only ways, at
least they were until we discovered porses. All right, agreed
Dan Grant that the portions plainly don't have any of
those things, or not to any great extent. Instead, they
have institutions such as we've never seen before. They have sweepers,

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so called vacations, and a rope from building to building.
All these things cut down population. Don't forget their truth, chairs,
said Keelgarth. Where you either tell the truth or get
converted to ashes. Yes, but how does it all fit in.
Let's take one individual as an example. Start at birth.

(11:45):
He's born, said Dan. Probably they have nurseries, but we
know they stick together as families because we have the
mill buns to go by. He grows up living at
his parents' place. He goes with other children to school
or to see different parts of his city. A lion,
which he calls a dog, protects him, yes, said keel Guard.

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It protects him from sweepers. But most grown ups don't
need protection, only those whose charge is low. Of course,
the boy hasn't been on vacation yet. He's not radioactive.
Apparently you have to be radioactive to open doors at
the apartment house. The boy comes in a small door
to one side. The lions are what resemble lions like

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the children, but don't like the sweepers, and the sweepers
are afraid of them. All right, but what about when
he grows up. Well, for one thing, he has to
use the regular doors now, and they won't open unless
he's been on vacation. And if he hasn't been on
vacation and his charge isn't high enough, the sweepers will
go out and grab him. That must be what that

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sign you saw meant swept was a warning that there
was no escape in that direction. I begin to see it,
said Dan. I was safe on that road because the
birth rate in that section wasn't high, but in the
city the birth rate was high. So to keep the
population down, the standards were raised. Apparently, the sweepers were

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fed less and god more hungry. People had to go
on vacation more often. But what about the rope. I
don't think we really know enough to understand the rope,
said Keelgard. But maybe it's a face saving device. People
who don't think they're in good enough shape to get
through vacation and who don't want to die a slow

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death avoiding sweepers and waiting to go through locked doors
can go across on the rope. Or perhaps it's a penance.
If a man has done something wrong and he's afraid
to deny it in a truth chair, perhaps he's allowed
to confess and go so many times across the rope
as punishment. The people cheered, that must mean it's honorable sense.

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Dan agreed. All right, But why don't they just ship
their surplus population to the other two planets. We've study
that back here, said Keelguard. We think it's because they
wouldn't dare They've got their little mainland allotted and ration
down to the last blade of grass. They can do

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that because it's small enough to keep control of. Now
suppose they try to enforce the same system on a
new planet with one hundred times the land area. What's
going to happen. They'll have unknown, uncontrollable factors to deal with.
Their system will break down. That statue of theirs shows

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they know it too. The man in the blue cape
devises and his strong right hand does nothing but keep
the circle their system from flying apart. What puzzles me
is that they're satisfied with it. There's another point, Dan said,
But I think I s see it now. They've got

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a caste system. But people must be able to move
from one cast to another. There must be a competitive
exam or some system of choice. The vacation advisor said,
mister Milburn was at present a merchant, his wife was
now a housewife, and no one ever asked my name,

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though I told it voluntarily to Millburn, it was always yes, devicement,
or is it time to take your vacation Devisement. There
were no personal titles like Sir Moglan or First Magistrate Moglan,
such as we've encountered on other planets. Keel Guard grunted.
That would explain the differently colored capes too. No one

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would care if a man was a street cleaner ten
years ago. They'd see his cape was blue and give
him immediate automatic respect. Yes, said Dan, that's it, And
no one would dare cheat about the color of the
cape he wore, because regardless of his position, sooner or
later his charge would be gone. Then he would have

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to go on vacation. And to do that he has
to sit in the truth chair and tell the truth
or get incinerated. Dan stopped suddenly and sucked in a
deep breath. What's wrong, said Kilgarth. That's the weak point.
End of chapter five read by Paul Hampton