Hunter Patrol, Page 3

children be allowedto grow to maturity."

  The film was mercifully brief. Even in spite of the drums and gongs, andthe chanting of the crowd, Benson found out how loudly a newborn infantcan scream in a fire. The others looked as though they were going to besick; he doubted if he looked much better.

  "Of course, we are a more practical and mechanical-minded people, hereand in Europe," Paula added, holding down her gorge by main strength."We have lethal-gas chambers that even Hitler would have envied."

  "I am a musician," Anthony said. "A composer. If Gregory thinks that thesciences are controlled, he should try to write even the simplest pieceof music. The extent of censorship and control over all the arts, andespecially music, is incredible." He coughed slightly. "And I haveanother motive, a more selfish one. I am approaching the compulsoryretirement age; I will soon be invited to go to one of the Havens. Eventhough these Havens are located in the most barren places, they arebeauty-spots, verdant beyond belief. It is of only passing interestthat, while large numbers of the aged go there yearly, their populationsremain constant, and, to judge from the quantities of supplies shippedto them, extremely small."

  * * * * *

  "They call me Samuel, in this organization," the man in the long blackcoat said. "Whoever gave me that alias must have chosen it because I amhere in an effort to live up to it. Although I am ordained by no church,I fight for all of them. The plain fact is that this man we call TheGuide is really the Antichrist!"

  "Well, I haven't quite so lofty a motive, but it's good enough to makeme willing to finance this project," Walter said. "It's very simple. TheGuide won't let people make money, and if they do, he taxes it away fromthem. And he has laws to prohibit inheritance; what little you canaccumulate, you can't pass on to your children."

  "I put up a lot of the money, too, don't forget," Carl told him. "Or theUnion did; I'm a poor man, myself." He was smoking an excellent cigar,for a poor man, and his clothes could have come from the same tailor asWalter's. "Look, we got a real Union--the Union of all unions. Everyworking man in North America, Europe, Australia and South Africa belongsto it. And The Guide has us all hog-tied."

  "He won't let you strike," Benson chuckled.

  "That's right. And what can we do? Why, we can't even make ourclosed-shop contracts stick. And as far as getting anything like apay-raise...."

  "Good thing. Another pay-raise in some of my companies would bankruptthem, the way The Guide has us under his thumb...." Walter began, but hewas cut off.

  "Well! It seems as though this Guide has done some good, if he's madeyou two realize that you're both on the same side, and that what hurtsone hurts both," Benson said. "When I shipped out for Turkey in '77,neither Labor nor Management had learned that." He looked from one toanother of them. "The Guide must have a really good bodyguard, with allthe enemies he's made."

  Gregory shook his head. "He lives virtually alone, in a very small houseon the UN Capitol grounds. In fact, except for a small police-force,armed only with non-lethal stun-guns, your profession of arms isnon-existent."

  * * * * *

  "I've been guessing what you want me to do," Benson said. "You want thisGuide bumped off. But why can't any of you do it? Or, if it's too risky,at least somebody from your own time? Why me?"

  "We can't. Everybody in the world today is conditioned against violence,especially the taking of human life," Anthony told him.

  "Now, wait a moment!" This time, he was using the voice he would haveemployed in chiding a couple of Anatolian peasant partisans who werefield-stripping a machine gun the wrong way. "Those babies in that filmyou showed me weren't dying of old age...."

  "That is not violence," Paula said bitterly. "That is humanebeneficence. Ugly people would be unhappy, and would make othersunhappy, in a world where everybody else is beautiful."

  "And all these oppressive and tyrannical laws," Benson continued. "Howdoes he enforce them, without violence, actual or threatened?"

  Samuel started to say something about the Power of the Evil One; Paula,ignoring him, said:

  "I really don't know; he just does it. Mass hypnotism of some sort. Iknow music has something to do with it, because there is always music,everywhere. This laboratory, for instance, was secretly soundproofed; wecouldn't have worked here, otherwise."

  "All right. I can see that you'd need somebody from the past, preferablya soldier, whose conditioning has been in favor rather than againstviolence. I'm not the only one you snatched, I take it?"

  "No. We've been using that machine to pick up men from battlefields allover the world and all over history," Gregory said. "Until now, none ofthem could adjust.... Uggh!" He shuddered, looking even sicker than whenthe film was being shown.

  "He's thinking," Walter said, "about a French officer from Waterloo whoblew out his brains with a pocket-pistol on that table, and an Englisharcher from Agincourt who ran amok with a dagger in here, and a trooperof the Seventh Cavalry from the Custer Massacre."

  Gregory managed to overcome his revulsion. "You see, we were forced totake our subjects largely at random with regard to individualcharacteristics, mental attitudes, adaptability, et cetera." As long ashe stuck to high order abstractions, he could control himself. "Asidefrom their professional lack of repugnance for violence, we tooksoldiers from battlefields because we could select men facing immediatedeath, whose removal from the past would not have any effect upon thecasual chain of events affecting the present."

  A warning buzzer rasped in Benson's brain. He nodded, poker-faced.

  "I can see that," he agreed. "You wouldn't dare do anything to changethe past. That was always one of the favorite paradoxes in time-travelfiction.... Well, I think I have the general picture. You have adictator who is tyrannizing you; you want to get rid of him; you can'tkill him yourselves. I'm opposed to dictators, myself; that--and theSelective Service law, of course--was why I was a soldier. I have nomoral or psychological taboos against killing dictators, or anybodyelse. Suppose I cooperate with you; what's in it for me?"

  There was a long silence. Walter and Carl looked at one anotherinquiringly; the others dithered helplessly. It was Carl who answered.

  "Your return to your own time and place."

  "And if I don't cooperate with you?"

  "Guess when and where else we could send you," Walter said.

  Benson dropped his cigarette and tramped it.

  "Exactly the same time and place?" he asked.

  "Well, the structure of space-time demands...." Paula began.

  "The spatio-temporal displacement field is capable of identifying thatspot--" Gregory pointed to a ten-foot circle in front of a bank ofsleek-cabineted, dial-studded machines "--with any set of space-timecoordinates in the universe. However, to avoid disruption of thestructure of space-time, we must return you to approximately the samepoint in space-time."

  Benson nodded again, this time at the confirmation of his earliersuspicion. Well, while he was alive, he still had a chance.

  "All right; tell me exactly what you want me to do."

  * * * * *

  A third outbreak of bedlam, this time of relief and frantic explanation.

  "Shut up, all of you!" For so thin a man, Carl had an astonishing voice."I worked this out, so let me tell it." He turned to Benson. "Maybe I'mtougher than the rest of them, or maybe I'm not as deeply conditioned.For one thing, I'm tone-deaf. Well, here's the way it is. Gregory canset the machine to function automatically. You stand where he shows you,press the button he shows you, and fifteen seconds later it'll take youforward in time five seconds and about a kilometer in space, to TheGuide's office. He'll be at his desk now. You'll have forty-five secondsto do the job, from the time the field collapses around you till itrebuilds. Then you'll be taken back to your own time again. The wholething's automatic."

  "Can do," Benson agreed. "How do I kill him?"

  "I'm getting sick!" Paula murmured weakly. Her face was whit
er than hergown.

  "Take care of her, Samuel. Both of you'd better get out of here,"Gregory said.

  "The Lord of Hosts is my strength, He will.... Uggggh!" Samuel gasped.

  "Conditioning's getting him, too; we gotta be quick," Carl said. "Here.This is what you'll use." He handed Benson a two-inch globe of blackplastic. "Take the damn thing, quick! Little button on the side; pressit, and get it out of your hand