Campbell, John W Jr - Rebellion

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Rebellion

BAB-73-R32 looked up slowly from the report he had been reading. His keen gray eyes narrowed

slowly in thought. "So that was the reason for the discontinuance of the type r-si. An excess of initia-tive on

the part of Hol-57." Bar-73-R32 considered the thing care-fully. "Exactly the same type scheme I had in

mind—nearly fifty years ago—before my type was started."

For nearly an hour Bar sat still, looking unseeingly at the silver-gray metal wall of his laboratory office,

or staring sightlessly at the towering Eugenists Bureau, the Tharoo control offices across the garden court.

And at the end of that hour, Bar invented a thing as wonderful as any idea any human ever conceived;

he thought of something ut-terly foreign to the humans the Tharoo masters had bred and selected for nearly

one hundred generations. Bar-73-B.32 invented-secrecy.

Three thousand years before, the Tharoo had landed on Earth, to find only a semisavage race of

humans, indolent, peace-loving, all their wants supplied effortlessly by the growing things about them, a race

decadent since the Machine had left Earth a paradise, free of danger, free of disease, three and a half

millennia before their coming.

The Tharoo Eugenists had seen before them a great problem, the rebuilding of a once-great race to

intelligence once again. With high ideals, the first generation of Tharoo sought to aid mankind back to

intelligence by intelligent control of matings.

With deep interest in the problem, the second generation of Tharoo carried it on.

The tenth generation of Tharoo—the twentieth of men—brought a

world vastly different than the Landing Colonists had intended. In-evitably the Tharoo had bred a type of humans

useful to them.

The Tharoo did not desire any higher intelligence in men. They were very useful as it was. They had, with scientific

accuracy, bred out rebellion, thoughts of secrecy, plotting, disobedience.

Still, they had required certain human investigators and research students, because it saved them work, and

because they needed them and these tasks required a degree of intelligence, a degree of initiative—

Bar-73 was *ne greatest inventor the human race had produced in twice three thousand years. He was Maun

Superintendent of Eugenics, the human director, under the Tharoo Head, of the great homes where humans had been

bred with scientific accuracy for three thousand years, far beyond human memory, because even Tharoo records ran

no farther back, and initiative had not been a desirable characteristic of Mauns, beyond any different conception

possible to the humans of that time.

The idea startled Bar-73. Only the complete soundness of nerve bred into man for three thousand years permitted

him to maintain his calm unaltered. Immediately the consequences appeared to him, and immediately he realized a

second thing would be needed. Not merely secrecy—but untruthl

Invention. Every word must be an invention. Every act would be a lie, a thing unheard of by humans. But that, he

suddenly realized, would aid him. The Tharoo would not doubt him.

Bar was the absolute head of the Eugenics Buildings, in effect. His orders were obeyed, unquestioned; his reports

alone reached the Tharoo Head. No discrepancy would be discovered. To a human of an earlier day the thing was

inconceivably simple. To Bar —every word, every gesture, every thought must be labored, consid-ered. And—it must

go on for years! He paled at the thought.

Slowly he rose and went to the great genealogical charts, where each type and characteristic of every line of the

human race was shown.

"Hol-57 saw it—fifty years ago. But four inventions of any impor-tance have been produced this year. The Tharoo

work less on sci-ence," he muttered softly.

Already man had outstripped his Tharoo master. Bar-73 had made two great inventions that day. "Type R-i and

type 8-14— crossed they should produce a research type—a scientist—with the initiative, the ambition and greater

intelligence Hol-57 wanted and the Tharoo Head did not think was needed."

Bar paused in astonishment. "If the thing works—as it must—a Maun type more intelligent than the Tharool"

For an instant it hung in balance as Bar considered it. Then the subtle stiffness of determination came to him.

Slowly he turned away from the charts and examined his card index, made some cal-culations, and at last wrote

laboriously—two order blanks, then two more. Slowly, determinedly, he pushed an annunciator button. A musical hum

outside awoke an echo of softly thudding feet.

Gar-247-G-i2 came in. G-12 was a type bred for intelligent labor, for difficult manual labor, but yet work requiring

intelligence of some degree. His eyes were deep-set and far apart, his head mas-sive, well formed. And he stood seven

feet six in height. He weighed close to three hundred and fifty pounds. Powerful as a Hercules, yet respectfully

attending the six-foot Bar.

"Gar, here are four orders, four mating orders. See that they are carried out."

Gar saluted and took the orders. Slowly, Bar-73 sat down, his face somewhat pale.

Elsewhere in the building a young girl, of the type known as R-i, surveyed in nervous doubt the slip Gar-247 gave

her with a kindly smile.

"It seems your mate has been found at last, Wan," he said gently. "May you be happy with him. Life is a long time,

but there will be no more uncertainty. He will be yours, and you his." Gar-247 passed on to deliver the three other notes, his next

call being a young man of the designation Jan-g4-S-i4. And then a girl, Tos-63-S-i4 and a man Bar-i2-R-i.

These four slips had duplicates somewhere in the files of the Maun Superintendent, but somehow Bar-73 contrived

to see that they were lost—for none watched to prevent that—and that certain others appeared, and none would

question that, for what Maun would think of falsifying records?

It was nearly a month before Bar called the couple Wan and Jan into his office and talked to them for several hours.

They were two of the highest types the Tharoo had permitted, both keen minded, intelligent, understanding. They

listened, and because they were young, scarcely twenty, they were ready to accept the words of the Maun

Superintendent, to see perhaps a bit of the vast adventure. Never could they appreciate the full, titanic power of the

thing they represented. Bar-73 did not see that. Still he. saw the possi-

bility of giving to the Tharoo-the masters-the inventive type he felt was needed.

The two left, were followed by the other couple, and they left, smiling, somewhat bewildered, but happy

in each other. There was something evidently strange about their mating, but they really knew nothing of

the records, nor the full processes, only that they were content and that they must do as Bar-73 had told

them.

Bar-73 contrived to be present when he was born. On the records, he was Rod-4-R-4. On Barb's

records, he was Rod-4, without type designation. But on the bed he was very small, and very red, and quite

noisy. Wan-i4 smiled up at Bar nervously, and Jan grinned down at Rod-4 broadly.

"He's got a powerful-looking chest," said Jan, happily. As a mat-ter of fact, what chest there was was

almost hidden behind waving arms and legs, and a jaw let down for greater volume of sound.

"He has," agreed Bar-73, nodding. "His head is broad-unusually broad."

Shortly later, it was not so unusual. A child very like him was born to another couple, likewise officially

one thing, and very secretly something quite different in type.

Bar-73 hesitated before he made out four more orders like those first, for he had begun to realize more

closely, more fully, that dis-aster meant not only death to himself, which he did not greatly mind, but a

strange and terrible misery to eight innocent humans. For the first time Bar-73 saw there was more in his

great work than mere shifting of-nature's forces. They were forces, greater forces than he ever would

know, but he had met Jan and Bar-12 and Wan and Tos more intimately than he had ever before met the

couples his little slips of paper brought together.

But now he had seen that a second generation must follow. So he made out the other orders and

conferred with four more young, happy, hopeful people. And watched as Rod-4 and Keet-3 grew. Later he

began to teach them, and later there were four to teach. Bar-73 was an old man when he died, and at his

recom-mendation, the Tharoo Head appointed Rod-4-R-4 his successor, an unusually keen-minded young

man. How keen-minded, the Tharoo Head had no idea.

Rod-4 started off with a tremendous advantage. Deception was not his invention, nor secrecy. He knew

those already. And Bar-73 had done well in his choosing. Rod-4 was not merely far more intelli-

gent than any human who had lived for the last six thousand years, He was infinitely more inventive.

Bar-73 had been old when Rod-4 was a young man. By the time Rod began to form his own thoughts, Bar

was very old, so Rod did not tell him all those new ideas of his. Bar had not been careful to avoid breeding

rebellion back into the human strain. When that Tharoo Head vetoed Hold's plan fifty years before, he did

not tell Hoi all his objections. There was rebellion in those strains, a thing neither Hoi nor Bar had been able

to understand.

Rod did. Rod invented rebellious thoughts, an invention as great as Bar's invention of secrecy. Bar had

wished to produce an inven-tive type that the civilization he knew, the civilization of Tharoo masters and

human slaves, might not cease to progress. Rod saw a far better use for inventive talents, and so, because

he was a Eugenist as, of course, Bar had been, he realized his training confined him and his inventive ability.

But—not too much. He could invent a great many sociological ideas.

Rod-4 mated with Keet-3, and he saw to it that those others of his unique type mated among

themselves, and he saw, too, that they were housed in a section of the city devoted to research stu-dents

and technicians. He became very friendly with a group of physicists and atomic-engine technicians.

The others of his group, finding their nearest neighbors were chemists, or electronic technicians, became

friendly with them and, as children were born, Rod-4 suggested that they, being more than usually

intelligent, learn a bit more than the work of their own parents—perhaps some of the learning of their

neighbors——

Kahm-i stood six feet two in height, muscled with the smooth cords of a Hercules, his eyes the color of

etched iron set deep and wide in his ruggedly molded head. His head looked large, even on his pow-erful

frame. And there was a peculiar intensity in his gaze that an-noyed many and troubled almost all. There

were, perhaps, a dozen who enjoyed his company and noticed nothing in his gaze. But that may well have

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Campbell, John W Jr - Rebellion

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