The Crackpots
by Harlan Ellison
Fictionwise Publications
This ebook is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright ©1956 Harlan Ellison. All rights reserved.
He was standing on a street corner, wearing a long orange nightgown and a red slumber-cap with a tassel. He was studiously picking his nose.
“Watch him!” cried Furth. “Watch what he does! Get the technique accurately!”
For this I studied four years to become an expert? thought Themus.
Furth looked at the younger man for the first time in several minutes. “Are you watching him?” The elder Watcher nudged his companion, causing Themus’s dictobox to bump unceremoniously against his chest.
“Yes, yes, I’m watching,” answered Themus, “but what possible reason could there be to watch a lunatic picking his nose on a public street corner?” Annoyance rang in his voice.
Furth swung on him, his eyes cold steel. “You watch them, that’s your job. And don’t ever forget that! And dictate it into that box strapped to your stupid shoulders. If I ever catch you failing to notice and dictate what they’re doing, I’ll have you shipped back to Central and then into the Mines. You understand what I’m saying?”
Themus nodded dumbly, the attack having shocked and surprised him, so sudden and intensive was it.
He watched the Crackpot.
His stomach felt uneasy. His voice quavered as he described in minute detail, as he had been taught, the procedure. It made his nose itch. He ignored it. Soon the Crackpot gave a little laugh, did a small dance step, and skipped out of sight across the street and around the corner.
Themus spoke into the Communicator Attachment on his box: “Watcher, sector seventy, here. Male, orange nightgown, red slumber-cap, coming your way. Pick him up, sixty-nine. He’s all yours. Over.”
An acknowledging buzz came from the Attachment, Themus said, “Out here,” and turned the Attachment off.
Furth, who had been dictating the detailed tying of a can on the tail of a four-legged Kyben dog by a tall, bald Crackpot, concluded his report as the dog ran off barking wildly, muttered, “Off,” into the dictobox and turned once more to Themus. The younger Watcher tightened inside.
Here it comes.
Unexpectedly, the senior Watcher’s voice was quiet, almost gentle. “Come with me, Themus, I want to talk with you.”
They strode through the street of Valasah, capital of Kyba, watching the other branch of Kyben. The native Kyben, those who put light-tubes in their mouths and twisted their ears in expectation of fluorescence, those who pulled their teeth with adjusto-wrenches, those who sat and scribbled odd messages on the sidewalks, called the armor-dressed Kyben “Stuffed-Shirts.” The governing Kyben, those with the armor and high-crested metal helmets bearing the proud emblem of the eye-and-eagle, called their charges “Crackpots.”
They were both Kyben.
There was a vast difference.
Furth was about to delineate the difference to his new aide. The senior Watcher’s great-cape swirled in a rain of black as he turned into the Pub-crawler.
At a table near the front, Furth pulled his cape about his thighs and sat down, motioning Themus to the other chair.
The waiter walked slowly over to them, yawning behind his hand. Furth dictated the fact briefly. The waiter gave a high-pitched maniacal laugh. Themus felt his blood chill. These people were all mad, absolutely mad.
“Two glasses of greth,” Furth said.
The waiter left. Furth recorded the fact. The waiter had kicked him before he had gone behind the bar.
When the drinks arrived, Furth took a long pull from the helix-shaped glass, slumped back, folded his hands on the table and said, “What did you learn at Academy-Central?”
The question took Themus by surprise. “Wh-what do you mean? I learned a great many things.”
“Such as? Tell me.”
“Well, there was primary snooping, both conscious and subconscious evaluation, reportage—four full years of it—shorthand, applied dictology, history, manners, customs, authority evaluation, mechanics, fact assemblage…”
He found the subjects leaping to the front of his mind, tumbling from his lips. He had been second in his class of twelve hundred, and it had all stuck.
Furth cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Let’s take that history. Capsule it for me.”
Furth was a big man, eyes oddly set far back in hollows above deep yellow cheeks, hair white about the temples, a lean and electric man, the type who radiates energy even when asleep. Themus suspected this was his superior’s way of testing him. He recited:
“The Corps is dedicated to gathering data. It will Watch and detect, assimilate and file. Nothing will escape the gaze of the Watcher. As the eagle soars, so the eye of the Watcher will fly to all things.”
“God, no, man, I mean the History! The History.” The elder Watcher precision-tapped his fingers one after another in irritation. “What is the story of the Kyben. Of Kyba itself. Of your job here. What is our relation to these?”
He waved his hand, taking in the bar, the people in the streets, the entire planet and its twin suns blazing yellow in the afternoon sky.
Themus licked his thin lips, “The Kyben rule the Galaxy—is that what you want?” He breathed easier as the older man nodded. He continued, by rote: “The Kyben rule the Galaxy. They are the organizers. All other races realize the superior reasoning and administrative powers of the Kyben, and thus allow the Kyben to rule the Galaxy.”
He stopped, biting his lower lip. “With your permission, Superior, can I do this some other way? Back at Academy-Central memorization was required, even on Penares it seemed apropos, but somehow—here—it sounds foolish to me. No disrespect intended, you understand, I’d just like to ramble it off quickly. I gather all you want are the basics.”
The older man nodded his head for Themus to continue in any fashion he chose.
“We are a power, and all the others are too scared of us to try usurping because we run it all better than any ten of them could, and the only trouble is with the Earthmen and the Mawson Confederation, with whom we are negotiating right now. The only thing we have against us is this planet of black sheep relatives. They happen to be our people, but we left them some eleven hundred years ago because they were a pain in the neck and the Kyben realized they had a universe to conquer, and we wish we could get rid of them, because they’re all quite mad, and if anyone finds out about them, we’ll lose prestige, and besides they’re a nuisance.”
He found himself out of breath after the long string of phrases, and he stopped for a second. “There isn’t a sane person on this planet, which isn’t strange because all the 4-Fs were left when our ancestors took to space. In the eleven hundred years we’ve been running the Galaxy, these Crackpots have created a culture of imbecility for themselves. The Watcher garrison is maintained to make sure the lunatics don’t escape and damage our position with the other worlds around us.
“If you have a black sheep relative, either you put him away under surveillance so he can’t bother you, or you have him exterminated. Since we aren’t barbarians like the Earthmen, we keep the madmen here, and watch them full time.”
He stopped, realizing he had covered the subject quite well, and because he saw the sour expression on Furth’s face.
“That’s what they taught you at Academy-Central?” asked the senior Watcher.
“That’s about it, except that Watcher units are all over the Galaxy, from Penares to Kyba, from the home planet to our farthest holding, doing a job for which they were trained and which no other order could do. Performing an invaluable service to all Kyben, from Kyben-Central outward to the edges of our exploration.”