Element 79 Read online

  The object was about one third of a kilometer in diameter. Some of it evaporated away at the surface as it came in through the terrestrial atmosphere, but only a little. The total mass was of order 3×1014 grams. With each gram possessing a kinetic energy near 5×1011 ergs, the total energy released on impact was more than 1026 ergs. The effect was much like a great earthquake, not at all the sort of thing that security services could keep secret.

  When you consider the boom generated by an airplane, say of mass 109 grams, moving at a speed of less than 1 kilometer per second, particularly when you consider that the boom increases as a high power of the speed, the sonic effect of the object can hardly be imagined. It came in over the British Isles from the Atlantic like the clappers of hell.

  In the track of the object the temperature was lifted to 30,000°C. Most of the energy communicated to the atmospheric gases was dissipated as radiation. The radiative flash was as bright as the Sun and it lasted for several minutes, long after the actual impact.

  The point of impact lay in a big area of desolate country, in the Monadhliath Mountains to the north of Newtonmore and Kingussie. Devastation spread out in all directions, reaching even to the south of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The first impression was of a national disaster. Then, more accurately, of a Scottish disaster. Damage was estimated to exceed five thousand million pounds.

  It was some days before the first survey party got into the area. The members were astonished to find an incredible profusion of nuggets of a warm, yellowish metal. In size the debris ranged from little droplets a few millimeters in diameter up to great chunks the size of your fist. They were found scattered everywhere over an area of a hundred square miles. Within a few hours, a simple chemical analysis revealed element 79, worth, at the current stabilized world price, about one and one-half dollars per gram.

  The government acted instantly. A sequence of barriers operated by the military were set up. The outer cordon prevented the average citizen to the south from entering the Highlands at all. Inner barriers stopped you from getting close to the critical area. Since all the roads were dreadfully damaged, ordinary transportation was in any case impossible. Only vehicles with a caterpillar drive could move about with any freedom.

  The cleaning-up operation took a long time. It was the best part of a year before all the metal was safely under lock and key, in enormous vaults newly constructed at a dozen different locations throughout the south of England. The government would very much have liked to keep the whole operation secret. But this was quite impossible. Enough of the metal had got itself into private hands for the chemical nature of the object to have become known throughout the world. What nobody knew, however, outside the government, was the quantity of metal. Rumor said there was a tremendous lot of it, but even rumor grossly underestimated the situation. There was 3×1014 grams of it, worth five hundred thousand billion dollars, if the price of gold could be kept stable.

  The international monetary system was quite plainly in a somewhat delicate position. For one thing, the French President had insisted on converting the whole of France’s dollar reserves into gold. Worse, he had persuaded the Germans to do the same. Essentially all of the reserves of the European Economic Community were in gold. Frankly, if the bottom were to drop out of the price of gold, Europe was in the soup. No good European then—least of all the French President—could contemplate a fall in the price of element 79. Nor were the Americans anxious to think of Fort Knox as an esoteric junk yard. Russia too had mining interests, as had a dozen other articulate nations.

  The British were smart enough not to put very much gold onto the market. Just enough was released to balance the chronically adverse trade balance. So the price was kept stable through restriction, as the price of diamonds had been kept stable for a generation or more. The Chancellor on Budget Day was now able to hold up his battered old box[1] with a real smile, not the ghastly gray smirk of former years.

  Yet the government was not without conscience. The story of the buried “talent” in the Bible came repeatedly to their collective mind. It was felt that the enormous golden windfall should somehow be put to progressive use. Modernization, automation, this was the obvious direction in which Britain should go. Plainly, the gold should be used to finance such a development. Snag, the trade unions, the lotus-eaters.

  Automation, it had to be admitted, would put a lot of people out of work. But wasn’t this just what the unions themselves had really been seeking, these many years past, to have their members working as little as possible? What the unions obviously wanted for their members was to be out of work but not out of a job. The solution to this apparent paradox came in a brilliant flash to an administrative genius in the Civil Service. Unions should be paid for not working. Whenever automation made work unnecessary, payment would be made to the appropriate union, exactly as if its members were still doing the work. So it came about that the concept of “automation money” became of decisive importance in the evolution of British society.

  “Automation money” was thought of as a perk in the beginning. Soon it became a right. Everybody wanted it. An insistent clamor arose for more and more automation. Unions became overwhelmingly powerful. Since automation money was paid through unions to members, there was no hope at all for you unless you had a ticket. Without a ticket you had to work, just the opposite from the way it used to be. Union membership soon increased to the point where union-sponsored parliamentary candidates were always elected, and where it was really mere hairsplitting to attempt to distinguish between the unions and the government.

  The system works smoothly, the economy purrs along. Britain has become the most automatized nation on Earth. New technology is now bought from poorer nations, nations like the United States, where the unfortunate people are still obliged to work. Nowadays, the British take things easily, in well-bred style. Nothing reflects the national temperament quite so much as cricket. No game of cricket ever finishes nowadays. Gone utterly are the ferocious drives and swings of former years, gone are the chops and hooks. Perhaps twice in an hour a batsman will permit himself a gentle tickle to fine leg. The huge crowd wakens up for a brief moment to give a round of restrained applause, for here at last is the nirvana foreseen so percipiently by the philosophers of the East.

  The Judgment of Aphrodite

  Hermes gave the contenders a quick, experienced glance. A weird lot, a distinctly unpleasant lot, was his instant analysis. He was damned glad he wasn’t going to find himself frolicking with any of ’em. He doubted whether Aphrodite quite realized just what it was she was letting herself in for this time.

  On the far left was a fellow in a yellow cape, a king of some sort. Every fifteen seconds or so he spat a stream of bright red liquid into a huge spittoon. He squirted it out, blood, presumably, from the side of his mouth in what he evidently thought to be a stylish fashion. Thus relieved, he looked around the room with a satisfied smirk. Then he would chew for a few seconds and out would come the next jet.

  The one at left-center needed close watching. For a moment it would be a handsome young man, not much different from Hermes himself. Then, in a flash, it would be a long, drawn-out old man banging away at the floor with a heavy cloven hoof. Another flash, and it would be a toothless hag in a battered hat who sat there leering up into the face of the blood-spitting king. A trick cyclist, if Hermes ever saw one.

  At right-center sat a patriarch with a huge white beard, fully a yard wide. He sat motionless and quite without expression.

  At extreme right, equally motionless and equally expressionless, was a thing. Essentially all body, broad with a thick chest, it had a face of a sort, the features apparently of gilt. Hermes had the fancy the features consisted merely of gilt lettering, but this seemed absurd.

  Aphrodite floated in to the sound of exquisitely delicate music. Simply but superbly dressed, she took her accustomed chair on the raised dais. Hermes caught a glimpse of the fabulous legs and sighed.

  The king in the yellow
cape was the first one up. “I am Tamerlenk, conqueror of nations, conqueror of mankind.” A veritable torrent of blood swished into the spittoon.

  “I see a beautiful country before me, a land golden with ripening corn.” The fellow threw out his cloak, as if to suggest yellowing fields. Then he pointed straight ahead. “I will have that country. I will have every last thing in it, every woman, every man, every child. With subtle potions I instruct my soldiery to intense greed and cruelty. I inflame them to intense lust. I drive them like the whirlwind into the land of the ripening corn. Women are raped before the eyes of lovers and husbands, men are flogged until not a piece of flesh will cling to the bare bones. Terror reigns supreme, terror untempered by pity. Then I hold up my hand—so!—and peace descends instantly on the land. All is now silent and still, and with silence comes abject obedience from every man, every woman, every child. The land is now mine, every last thing in it.

  “This is no vainglorious boasting. The pages of history stand open to attest to my conquests. I waste no more words. Power lies in strength, not in words, and the true servants of power are the whip, the chain, and the branding iron.”

  Tamerlenk gave a last decisive ping into the spittoon and sat himself down, plainly satisfied with his performance. Well he might be, thought Hermes. Aphrodite was making notes in her special little book, the way she always did when she was impressed. This monster had hit Aphrodite’s weakness—the exercise of brute physical force—slap-bang on the nose, just as Ares, the war god, always seemed able to do. Hermes had a sudden suspicion of this Tamerlenk fellow. This might be a trick by Ares himself, a trick to maneuver himself into bed with Aphrodite. Once there, once home again, as it were, it wouldn’t be hard for him to make her forget their last quarrel.

  Why must it always be the screwballs who were attractive to women, the plausible rascals and the pathological idiots? Hermes shook his handsome young head, and sighed again.

  The trick cyclist was the next one up. In the guise of the old crone in the hat, the creature began in a high falsetto. “I frighten the maidens of the villagery. Sometimes I skim milk, sometimes I labor in the quern, and bootless make the breathless housewife churn. Sometimes I make the drink to bear no barm. Sometimes I mislead night wanderers. Hee-hee! Laugh I at their harm.”

  In a flash the old crone was gone, replaced by a skull inside which a brisk fire was burning. The skull itself seemed to be inlaid with turquoise mosaics. Before Hermes could make quite sure of this, a creature with lank, black hair parted down the middle, a creature with a vast mouth—the teeth even and flat at the bottom like a pair of scissors—was standing there. This apparition immediately gave way to an oddity with the horns of a cow, the teeth filed into sharp needles this time. The gyrations went faster and faster until Hermes became quite dizzy. Aphrodite turned on him with a quizzical shrug.

  “I haven’t the slightest idea how the idiot got himself in here,” he muttered apologetically.

  Aphrodite had seen enough. “Stop it!” she snapped. The command was not to be ignored. The gyrations halted dead. It was the thin creature standing there, the one with the cloven hoof. Hermes noticed it had a big black tail, a tail which twitched continuously. The thing seemed incapable of being still, even from one second to the next.

  “I am the Devil,” it began.

  “Never mind who you are. What’s all this twinkling in aid of?”

  “Those are the many guises of my assistant devils. I have many assistant devils, at my orgies.”

  “What orgies are these? Will you be good enough to stop twitching.”

  The Devil swiveled uncomfortably on his cloven hoof. His case wasn’t going any too well. The thrashing tail was stilled for a moment. He must think up something to show off his power. “I have an enormous orgy starting promptly at midnight on Walpurgis night.”

  Apart from the merest whistle through the teeth, Aphrodite took this absurdity with complete composure. “Will you be good enough to define the word ‘orgy?’ Exactly what goes on in an orgy?”

  “Well, devilry, of course, generalized devilry. I get ’em all going round and round in a wild dance, faster and faster I force ’em to go. Until the first cockcrow.”

  The Devil started up quite a realistic drum roll with his hoof. Aphrodite and Hermes exchanged glances. Neither could remotely conceive of why the first cockcrow should have anything to do with it.

  “I instructed you a moment ago to be more explicit. Who are ’em?”

  “Damned souls, of course, out of graves gaping wide. I open up the graves of all damned souls on the nights of my special orgies.”

  “What is the purpose of this ridiculous nonsense?”

  “Everlasting torment, my dear lady. Hell is my kingdom. In hell everlasting tortures are inflicted on the hosts of the damned. Following this little session, it is my intention to enjoy an extended interview with the damned soul who immediately preceded me. I’ll soon have him spitting out of the other side of his face, I promise you.”

  The Devil beat out a veritable tattoo with his tail. Hermes had the feeling the creature could give you a really nasty thwack with that big black tail. He also had the feeling Aphrodite wasn’t going to put up with this nonsense for very much longer. Her voice was already dangerously silky. “How would I go about it, becoming a damned soul?”

  “Nothing easier,” said the creature cheerfully, “particularly for a woman. Just get yourself seduced.”

  “Really, as easy as that?”

  “Nothing more needed, one of my oldest tricks. Just get yourself solidly seduced.”

  Too late, the Devil realized his foolish mistake, talking nonsense about seduction to the very goddess of love. He started his twinkling tricks again, hoping, no doubt, to confuse the issue. Hermes could see the skull with the turquoise inlay, then the scissor teeth, then the cow horns, round and round in a whirling kaleidoscopic display. Aphrodite gave the big thumbs-down, and like a flash Hermes stabbed the button. In the merest fraction of a nanosecond, the ground opened up at left-center.

  The Devil was gone now, but the noise he was still able to kick up with his drumming hoof rumbled up from the depths below, more than loud enough to be a nuisance.

  “Better clear him altogether,” muttered Aphrodite.

  Nothing loath, Hermes pressed the clear-store button. Instantly the noise stopped, but in its place a vast sulfurous cloud of smoke belched up out of the floor like some enormous geyser. Hermes just managed to punch the air-conditioner before the smoke entirely blotted out the console keyboard.

  The incident did not improve Aphrodite’s already shortening temper. The acrid smoke left her with red-rimmed eyes, not at all becoming to any girl. Hermes could see things were going to be a bit tough on the two remaining contenders. Yet neither showed any sign of apprehension or even of inconvenience. Up came the fellow with the enormous beard. Hermes would have predicted the fellow would be equipped with a massive voice, it just had to be so. Sure enough, the Voice boomed out, “I am that I am.” Nothing more.

  “I am that I am,” repeated Aphrodite. “What d’you make of that one?”

  “Shortest possible logical closed loop,” answered Hermes. “Just two interlinked transfer instructions.”

  The fellow continued, “I am the god of Abraham, the god of Isaac, and the god of Jacob.”

  Aphrodite’s rippling laugh echoed through the hall. “Who are Jacob, Isaac, and Abraham?” Answer there was none. The bearded patriarch stared dead ahead, his eyes focused on infinity. Hermes pressed the query button. It took a second or two for the search to be made. Out came the information on the high-speed printer.

  “Nomads. Complex sexual situation. Small-time stuff,” he said.

  “Rather what I expected. This fellow has delusions of grandeur.”

  Aphrodite was on the very point of a thumbs-down when the Voice intoned, “I live on a throne, high and uplifted. Above it stand the seraphim.”

  Hermes watched as Aphrodite’s wonderful mouth o
pened wider and wider. In astonishment, she asked, “What are seraphim?”

  “Each seraph hath six wings. With twain they cover my face, with twain my feet, with twain they do fly.”

  Once more the laugh with all sunlight in it rippled through the hall. This time the patriarch heard it. With an expansive smile and a guffaw he boomed, “One day I called Samuel, and Samuel rose up and said, ‘Lord thou callest me, I am here.’ So I said unto him, ‘No, Samuel, I called thee not, lie thyself down again,’ whereupon he laid himself down again.”

  Aphrodite smiled in her silkiest style. “Let me remind you, I am here to make judgment on a reasoned case, not to listen to drab anecdotes or feverish pronouncements. Suppose you apply yourself to a little coherent thought.”

  The fellow stood blinking for quite a while. At last some recollection crossed his mind. “I visited Sarah as I had spoken, and did unto her as I had spoken.”