There was a collective sigh of minds as the Council of Oomus perceived the blast of plasma from the adjacent aperture. The shipment had come: ten thousand viable entities in this subsection alone, each living body over a foot in diameter with a flexing tail forty feet long, driving heedlessly forward as it encountered the living water.
Tall Troy's on fire! the Thoughtsman reflected for no sensible reason. What was fire? What was Troy?
And the giant, tired egg-matrices of Oomus were waiting for the amalgamation, for the vigor of new life, new notions, new chromosomes. All over the world, surrounding five thousand apertures, they were ready. Semisentient masses capable of adapting if only granted a fresh blueprint in place of the senescent retreads of the past billion years. Now that rejuvenating strain had come—from a source whose monstrosity defied the imagination.
An hour later the second bolus arrived, as brisk and massive as the first. And an hour after that, the third.
The council remained for the full twelve hours the complete shipment took, perceiving every aspect raptly, though the last two surges were but gentle swells with little content. In all, five hundred million swimming sperm cells came, enough for every available egg. It meant salvation for Oomus. Not life as it had been, for these were alien chromosomes; but their uniformity guaranteed that every developing egg would be compatible with those of its generation. A new animation had replaced and improved the old.
And what of the emissary? the chairman inquired of the Thoughtsman as they basked in the ambient grandeur of the alien gift.
Contact has been broken, the Thoughtsman replied. We could not maintain it longer; our mechanisms were out of power. She will have to remain there.
Can she exist alone?
Oh yes—she is of otherworld substance but based on our own cellular design. She cannot imbibe nourishment in the alien manner but any future shipments she is able to procure will be conserved in Stage I and routed back to animate her own flesh. That segment of the equipment draws its power from the alien world and will function indefinitely. She can endure, theoretically, for a long time—many thousands of our years—if she is only able to obtain chromosome rejuvenation regularly.
I fear that is impossible, the chairman thought. What alien would donate a cargo sufficient to reanimate an entire world just to oblige a creature like that? I deeply regret that, in our urgency to save our form of existence, we were forced to create such an ungainly multicelled monster doomed to a brief and miserable existence.
It is hardly fair, the Thoughtsman agreed morosely. She does have a good mind and strong feelings, since these were part of the necessary specifications for success. Had I not been preoccupied with our own concerns I would have remembered her situation and in mercy terminated her life as the mission ended. Even a monster does not deserve to suffer unnecessarily.
But it was a minor sadness, in the face of their new joy.
ON THE USES OF TORTURE
After "Bridge" you may be wondering what could be more provocative. The answer is the following story, "Torture." But this one is not sweet and sexy. I like to try my talent in new ways, and this time I set out to write the most brutal fiction the market could sustain. It turned out that I was again ahead of my time. Ejler Jakobsson bought "Torture," but suggested revision. No, not to censor it; to make it more effective. He was really doing his job; you don't often see that. I agreed with his points, and made the suggested revision, and the story did indeed stand improved. It was scheduled for publication in the same issue of WOT as "Bridge"; because magazines don't like to run two stories in an issue by the same author, this one was to appear under my alternate pen name, Tony Pedro. That is, a form of Anthony and a form of Piers. Piers is part of a huge family of names that includes Peter (English language), Pedro (Spanish), Pierre (French), Pietro (Italian), Peder (Danish), Pieter (Dutch), Petron (Greek) and perhaps others I wot not; it means "rock." Yes, it is the rock on which the Christian Church was built.
But when the issue was published, "Torture" was absent. The editor had, it seemed, lost his nerve. Three years later, fellow novelist Sterling Lanier asked me if I would contribute a story to a private magazine, Armadillo, so I showed them "Torture" and they bought it from Galaxy publications. But that issue of Dillo was never published either. Finally, after ten years or so, John Silbersack took it for The Berkley Showcase: Volume 3—and this time it actually did make it into print. It seemed the genre had finally loosened up enough for the hard stuff. My main frustration about the matter is the fact that Harlan Ellison wrote a story about the same time I wrote "Torture," but his was much milder. Thus his "A Boy and His Dog" was able to make it into print, and I believe it won an award and was made into a motion picture. People thought that was the most brutal fiction the genre had to offer; they never got to see mine. Once again I missed the cut and remained unfamous. Today I have made my name instead as a writer of funny fantasy; I can't even break in to the horror market despite having some truly horrible works in mind, because I have no credits in horror. But I can write it, and one day I will.
Gentle reader, be warned again: this story is brutal.
My fingers caress the dial. The boots stir uneasily. "You don't know me," I tell them. "But you do know this box—and that is sufficient. I expect you to work well and keep your opinions to yourselves. That is all."
They watch me, expressionless. There are twenty of them, all nonwhite humans. Some are half-caste Negroes, some Latins, a few Mongoloid, the rest mixed. The refuse of the Space Service—busted back to boot status and sentenced to hard labor here at Stockade Planetoid. Scrubbing out tankers, packing barges—that sort of thing, where human labor is cheaper than the shipping charges on heavy machinery. This barracks is listed as "inclement," and I am expected to whip it into line.
"Roll call," I announce. I depress a button on the box and set the dial to twenty-five. One of the boots stiffens, his breath sucking inward noisily. He is dark brown with frizzy hair and broad nostrils. I let him twitch a moment while I study him. Then, I turn and dial to zero and he subsides.
"You don't need to do that," a Latin objects. "We're wearing our numbers."
So they are. This loudmouth is #6. I depress stud number six and turn the dial to forty. He goes rigid with a cry of agony. Slowly I advance the setting to fifty, noting how his muscles strain and the sweat pops out all over his body. He is trying to scream again, but can't catch his breath. Then I drop it down to ten, so that he is only nominally in pain. "Remember what I said about opinions?" I asked him gently.
He nods, the moisture shaking off his cropped skull. I turn to zero, and he breathes again.
After I have verified that the discipline box is properly attuned to each member of my crew, I return to #6. "Since you evidently like to talk, suppose you tell me why you're here."
He hesitates. I know why: there is a kind of Geneva Convention about this prison, and technically the boots don't have to say anything to anybody about their pasts. Which is why I am inquiring. I raise my hand to the box.
"Tell him!" #20 exclaims. I give him a token nudge at five tenths, just a reminder about talking out of turn even though he has done exactly what I want. My finger hovers over stud #6.