The Mightiest Man

  Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Tamise Totterdell and theOnline Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  This e-text was produced from "Worlds of If" November 1961. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  He had betrayed mankind, but he was not afraid of theconsequences--ever!

  THEMIGHTIESTMAN

  By PATRICK FAHY

  They caught up with him in Belgrade.

  The aliens had gone by then, only a few shining metal huts in theSiberian tundra giving mute evidence that they had been anything otherthan a nightmare.

  It had seemed exactly like that. A nightmare in which all of Earth stoodhelpless, unable to resist or flee, while the obscene shapes slitheredand flopped over all her green fields and fair cities. And the awakeninghad not brought the reassurance that it had all been a bad dream. Thatif it had happened in reality, the people of Earth would have beencapable of dealing with the terrible menace. It had been real. And theyhad been no more capable of resisting the giant intelligences than achild of killing the ogre in his favorite fairy story.

  It was an ironic parallel, because that was what finally saved Earth forits own people. A fairy story.

  The old fable of the lion and the mouse. When the lion had exhausted hisatomic armor and proud science against the invincible and immortalinvaders of Earth--for they could not be killed by any means--the mouseattacked and vanquished them.

  The mouse, the lowest form of life: the fungoids, the air of Earthswarming with millions of their spores, attacked the monstrous bodies,grew and entwined within the gray convolutions that were their braincenters. And as the tiny thread-roots probed and tightened, the aliensscreamed soundlessly. The intelligences toppled and fell, and at lastthat few among them who retained sanity gathered their lunatic brethrenand fled as they had come.

  If he had known the effect the fungoids would have on them, he wouldhave told them that too. He had told them everything else, when he hadbeen snatched from a busy city street, a random specimen of humanity tobe probed and investigated.

  They had chosen well. For the payment they offered him he was willing tobarter the whole human race. As far as it lay in his power he did justthat.

  He was not an educated man, though he was intelligent. It was child'splay to them to strip his mind bare; but they had to know theintangibles too, the determined will of humanity to survive, theprobabilities of the pattern of human behavior in a situation whichhumanity had never before faced. He told them all he could, gladly andwillingly. He would have descended to any treachery for the vastglittering reward they tempted him with.

  It wasn't easy for the Yugoslavs to guard him and, anyway, their heartsweren't in the task. His treachery, the ultimate treason, the betrayalof the whole human race, was commonly known.

  Inevitably the mob got him and killed three policemen in the process.When they had sated their anger a little and the traitor had lost mostof his clothes and the thumb of his right hand, they dragged him to thejunction where the Danube meets the Sava and held him under the graywaters with long poles, as if he was some poisonous reptile.

  He lay supinely on the bed of the river and smiled evilly while ahundred thousand people writhed in neural agony.

  * * * * *

  Twenty-four hours later the neural plague had spread to Zagreb and intoAlbania as far as Tirana. When it crossed to Leghorn in Italy theBalkans held twenty million lunatics and the Danube was an artificiallake a hundred miles wide.

  They had used a "clean" bomb. So they were able to bring a loudspeakervan to its edge and boom at him to come out. He allowed them to do thatfor some inscrutable reason; perhaps to demonstrate that his powers wereselective. Then it seemed he got tired of the farce, and cruel fingerstwined themselves into the nerve centers of the President of Italy andthe Prime Minister of the government of United Europe. He made themdance a horribly twisted _pas de deux_ on the banks of the Danube forhis perverted amusement.

  Then he released them, and released the millions of gibbering, twitchingidiots that inhabited Southern Europe, and he came out of the river bedin which he had lain for forty-eight hours.

  He walked alone through the deserted streets of Belgrade until he cameto the United Nations building. There he told a very brave lieutenantthat he was willing to stand trial any place in the world they wished.

  For three days nobody came to arrest him. He sat alone with thelieutenant in the peopleless city of Belgrade and waited for hiscaptors. They came then, timidly reassured by his non-violence. While hetalked to them pleasantly the citizens of London and Paris suddenlybegan to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of theircities. In the same moment the Chief Justice of the Court of theNations, at a cocktail party in Washington, writhed in the exquisitepain of total muscle cramp, his august features twisted into a mask ofabject fear.

  The trial itself was a legal farce. The prisoner promptly pleaded guiltyto the charge of betraying mankind to an alien race, but he didn't allowthem to question him. When one lawyer persisted in face of his pleasantrefusals, he died suddenly in a cramped ball of screaming agony.

  The gray-faced Chief Justice inquired whether he wished to be sentencedand he answered yes, but not to death. They couldn't kill him, heexplained. That was part of the reward the aliens had given him. Theother part was that _he_ could kill or immobilize anybody in theworld--or everybody--from any distance. He sat back and smiled at thestricken courtroom. Then he lost his composure and his mouth twitched.He laughed uproariously and slapped his knees in ecstasy.

  It was plain that he was fond of a joke.

  An anonymous lawyer stood up and waited patiently for his merriment tosubside.

  If this was true, he asked, why had not the aliens used this power? Whyhad they not simply killed off the inhabitants and taken over the vacantplanet? The traitor gazed kindly at him; and a court stenographer whohad cautiously picked up a pencil returned agonizingly to her foetalposition and, that way, died.

  The traitor looked at his fingers and shrugged. The thumb that had beensnapped off in the mob's frenzy was more than half grown again.

  "They needed slaves," he said simply.

  "And at the end, while some of them were still sane?"

  The traitor raised his eyebrows, giving him his full courteousattention. The lawyer sat down abruptly, his question unfinished. Thecreature who had betrayed his own race smiled at him and permitted himto live.

  He even completed his question for him, and answered it. "Why did theynot kill then? They had something else on their minds--fungoids!" Helaughed uproariously at his macabre joke. "And in their minds too!"

  The lawyer's blue eyes gazed at him steadily and he stopped laughing. Inthe bated hush of the courtroom he said softly, "What a pity I'm not analien too. You could have the fungoids destroy me!"

  He laughed again helplessly, the tears running down his cheeks.

  * * * * *

  The Chief Justice adjourned the Court then and the prisoner sauntered tohis comfortable quarters in front of his frightened guards.

  That night, in his own living room, the Chief Justice danced an agonizedfandango in front of his horror-stricken wife and the anonymous lawyersat in his apartment, staring at the blank wall. He was glad the alienshad not made the traitor telepathic too.

  He had found the chink in his armor.

  The neural paralysis, the murders by remote control, were acts of aconscious will. He had himself admitted that if his mind was destroyedhis powers would be destroyed with it. The aliens had not sought revengebecause their minds were totally occupied with saving themselves. Thestricken ones had simply lost the power.

/>   The knowledge was useless to him. There was no way they could attack hismind without his knowing it.

  Possibly they could steal away his consciousness by drugging orbludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the splitmoment of realization he would kill every human being on Earth. Therewould be nobody left to operate on his brain, to make him a mindless,powerless idiot for the rest of time. For any period of time, hecorrected himself. His brain would heal again.

  It was useless to think about it. There was nothing they could useagainst his invincibility. The only hope was to attack him unawares ...and if that hope was a fraction less than a certainty it could only meanfinal and absolute catastrophe.

  The lawyer looked at his watch. It was four in the morning.

  He went into the kitchenette and then shrugged himself into his coat. Hewalked through the silent streets, past the city hospital where theChief Justice lay in agony while the motor impulses from his nervecenters wrenched and twisted his body. He entered the foyer of theluxury hotel where the race betrayer was held prisoner and took theelevator to the sixth floor.

  Two sleepy guards jerked erect outside the unlocked door. He put hisfinger to his lips, enjoining them to silence. Then he entered the roomand stood for a moment over the man who was invincible and immortal--andhuman. Human, and subject to the involuntary unconsciousness whichnature demands from all men. He slept.

  The eyelids fluttered. The lawyer took the steel meat skewer from hispocket. He thrust it through a half-opened eye and rotated it,methodically reducing the soft brain to formless mush.

  After that the trial proceeded normally.

  The prisoner stared vacantly in front of him and all his movements hadto be directed. But he was alive and his thumb was full grown again.

  It was the lawyer that noticed this and pointed out the implications.The thumb had grown to full size in less than six weeks. They mustregard that as their maximum period of immunity.

  They ruminated over it for another four days. The question was a trickyone, for malignant immortality was beyond human solution. It was notjust a matter of dealing out punishment. The problem now was theprotection of the race from sudden annihilation. An insolvable problem,but one that must be solved. They could only do their best.

  He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a special feature.

  It was decided he should be guillotined once a month as long as helived.

  END