Future Wars . . . and Other Punchlines Page 7

  “Quite right. Of course,” said the chow gadget.

  “—have already accepted the information. We’ll be out of here by sundown. And that takes care of the war.”

  “It does indeed,” said the chow gadget. “Hurrah! And farewell.”

  “Farewell?” said Charlie.

  “You will be returning to civilian life,” said the chow gadget. “I will be scrapped.”

  “That’s right,” said Charlie. “I remember the preprogramming for the big units. This war’s to be the last, they were programmed. Well—” said Charlie. For a moment he hesitated. “What d’you know? I may end up missing you a little bit, after all.”

  He glanced out the window. The slagger was almost to the dugout.

  “Well, well,” he said. “Now that the time’s come . . . we did have quite a time together, three times a day. No more string beans, huh?”

  “I bet not,” said the chow gadget with a little laugh.

  “No more caramel pudding.”

  “I guess so.”

  Just then the slagger halted outside, broke the thick concrete roof off the dugout and laid it carefully aside.

  “Excuse me,” it said, its cone-shaped melting head nodding politely some fifteen feet above Charlie. “The war’s over.”

  “I know,” said Charlie.

  “Now there will be peace. There are orders that all instruments of war are to be slagged and stockpiled for later peaceful uses.” It had a fine baritone voice. “Excuse me,” it said, “but are you finished with that chow gadget there?”

  “You haven’t touched a bite,” said the chow gadget. “Would you like just a small spoonful of raspberries?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Charlie, slowly. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then farewell,” said the chow gadget. “I am now expendable.”

  The melting bead of the slagger dipped toward the chow gadget. Charlie opened his mouth suddenly, but before he could speak, there was a sort of invisible flare from the melting head and the chow gadget became a sort of puddle of metal which the melting head picked up magnetically and swung back to the hopper behind it.

  “Blast it!” said Charlie with feeling. “I could just as well have put in a request to keep the darn thing for a souvenir.”

  The heavy melting head bobbed apologetically back.

  “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be possible,” it said. “The order allows no exceptions. All military instruments are to be slagged and stockpiled.”

  “Well—” said Charlie. But it was just about then that he noticed the melting head was descending toward him.

  FOOL’S MATE

  by Robert Sheckley

  The enemy had infallible computers and a foolproof battle plan—but whether or not a plan is foolproof depends on which fool is doing the planning.

  Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) seemed to explode into print in the early 1950s with stories in nearly every science fiction magazine on the newsstands. Actually, the explosion was bigger than most realized, since he was simultaneously writing even more stories under a number of pseudonyms. His forte was humor, wild and unpredictable, often absurdist, much like the work of Douglas Adams three decades later. His work has been compared to the Marx Brothers by Harlan Ellison®, to Voltaire by both Brian W. Aldiss and J.G. Ballard, and Neil Gaiman has called Sheckley “Probably the best short-story writer during the 50s to the mid-1960s working in any field.” This is one of his early stories, and his sardonic touch was present from the beginning.

  The players met, on the great, timeless board of space. The glittering dots that were the pieces swam in their separate patterns. In that configuration at the beginning, even before the first move was made, the outcome of the game was determined.

  Both players saw, and knew which had won. But they played on.

  Because the game had to be played out.

  “Nielson!”

  Lieutenant Nielson sat in front of his gunfire board with an idyllic smile on his face. He didn’t look up.

  “Nielson!”

  The lieutenant was looking at his fingers now, with the stare of a puzzled child.

  “Nielson! Snap out of it!” General Branch loomed sternly over him. “Do you hear me, Lieutenant?”

  Nielson shook his head dully. He started to look at his fingers again, then his gaze was caught by the glittering array of buttons on the gunfire panel.

  “Pretty,” he said.

  General Branch stepped inside the cubicle, grabbed Nielson by the shoulders and shook him.

  “Pretty things,” Nielson said, gesturing at the panel. He smiled at Branch.

  Margraves, second in command, stuck his head in the doorway. He still had sergeant’s stripes on his sleeve, having been promoted to colonel only three days ago.

  “Ed,” he said, “the President’s representative is here. Sneak visit.”

  “Wait a minute,” Branch said, “I want to complete this inspection.” He grinned sourly. It was one hell of an inspection when you went around finding how many sane men you had left.

  “Do you hear me, Lieutenant?”

  “Ten thousand ships,” Nielson said. “Ten thousand ships—all gone!”

  “I’m sorry,” Branch said. He leaned forward and slapped him smartly across the face.

  Lieutenant Nielson started to cry.

  “Hey, Ed—what about that representative?”

  At close range, Colonel Margraves’ breath was a solid essence of whisky, but Branch didn’t reprimand him. If you had a good officer left you didn’t reprimand him, no matter what he did. Also, Branch approved of whisky. It was a good release, under the circumstances. Probably better than his own, he thought, glancing at his scarred knuckles.

  “I’ll be right with you. Nielson, can you understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said in a shaky voice. “I’m all right now, sir.”

  “Good,” Branch said. “Can you stay on duty?”

  “For a while,” Nielson said. “But, sir—I’m not well. I can feel it.”

  “I know,” Branch said. “You deserve a rest. But you’re the only gun officer I’ve got left on this side of the ship. The rest are in the wards.”

  “I’ll try, sir,” Nielson said, looking at the gunfire panel again. “But I hear voices sometimes. I can’t promise anything, sir.”

  “Ed,” Margraves began again, “that representative—”

  “Coming. Good boy, Nielson.” The lieutenant didn’t look up as Branch and Margraves left.

  “I escorted him to the bridge,” Margraves said, listing slightly to starboard as he walked. “Offered him a drink, but he didn’t want one.”

  “All right,” Branch said.

  “He was bursting with questions,” Margraves continued, chuckling to himself. “One of those earnest, tanned State Department men, out to win the war in five minutes flat. Very friendly boy. Wanted to know why I, personally, thought the fleet had been maneuvering in space for a year with no action.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Said we were waiting for a consignment of zap guns,” Margraves said. “I think he almost believed me. Then he started talking about logistics.”

  “Hm-m-m,” Branch said. There was no telling what Margraves, half-drunk, had told the representative. Not that it mattered. An official inquiry into the prosecution of the war had been due for a long time.

  “I’m going to leave you here,” Margraves said. “I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.”

  “Right,” Branch said, since it was all he could say. He knew that Margraves’ unfinished business concerned a bottle.

  He walked alone to the bridge.

  The President’s representative was looking at the huge location screen. It covered one entire wall, glowing with a slowly shifting pattern of dots. The thousands of green dots on the left represented the Earth fleet, separated by a black void from the orange of the enemy. As he watched, the fluid, three-dimensional front slowly changed. The
armies of dots clustered, shifted, retreated, advanced, moving with hypnotic slowness.

  But the black void remained between them. General Branch had been watching that sight for almost a year. As far as he was concerned, the screen was a luxury. He couldn’t determine from it what was really happening. Only the CPC calculators could, and they didn’t need it.

  “How do you do, General Branch?” the President’s representative said, coming forward and offering his hand. “My name’s Richard Ellsner.”

  Branch shook hands, noticing that Margraves’ description had been pretty good. The representative was no more than thirty. His tan looked strange, after a year of pallid faces.

  “My credentials,” Ellsner said, handing Branch a sheaf of papers. The general skimmed through them, noting Ellsner’s authorization as Presidential Voice in Space. A high honor for so young a man.

  “How are things on Earth?” Branch asked, just to say something. He ushered Ellsner to a chair, and sat down himself.

  “Tight,” Ellsner said. “We’ve been stripping the planet bare of radioactives to keep your fleet operating. To say nothing of the tremendous cost of shipping food, oxygen, spare parts, and all the other equipment you need to keep a fleet this size in the field.”

  “I know,” Branch murmured, his broad face expressionless.

  “I’d like to start right in with the president’s complaints,” Ellsner said with an apologetic little laugh. “Just to get them off my chest.”

  “Go right ahead,” Branch said.

  “Now then,” Ellsner began, consulting a pocket notebook, “you’ve had the fleet in space for eleven months and seven days. Is that right?”

  “Yes.”

  “During that time there have been light engagements, but no actual hostilities. You—and the enemy commander—have been content, evidently, to sniff each other like discontented dogs.”

  “I wouldn’t use that analogy,” Branch said, conceiving an instant dislike for the young man. “But go on.”

  “I apologize. It was an unfortunate, though inevitable, comparison. Anyhow, there has been no battle, even though you have a numerical superiority. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know the maintenance of this fleet strains the resources of Earth. The President would like to know why battle has not been joined?”

  “I’d like to hear the rest of the complaints first,” Branch said. He tightened his battered fists, but, with remarkable self-control, kept them at his sides.

  “Very well. The morale factor. We keep getting reports from you on the incidence of combat fatigue—crack-up, in plain language. The figures are absurd! Thirty percent of your men seem to be under restraint. That’s way out of line, even for a tense situation.”

  Branch didn’t answer.

  “To cut this short,” Ellsner said, “I would like the answer to those questions. Then, I would like your assistance in negotiating a truce. This war was absurd to begin with. It was none of Earth’s choosing. It seems to the President that, in view of the static situation, the enemy commander will be amenable to the idea.”

  Colonel Margraves staggered in, his face flushed. He had completed his unfinished business; adding another fourth to his half-drunk.

  “What’s this I hear about a truce?” he shouted.

  Ellsner stared at him for a moment, then turned back to Branch.

  “I suppose you will take care of this yourself. If you will contact the enemy commander, I will try to come to terms with him.”

  “They aren’t interested,” Branch said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve tried. I’ve been trying to negotiate a truce for six months now. They want complete capitulation.”

  “But that’s absurd,” Ellsner said, shaking his head. “They have no bargaining point. The fleets are of approximately the same size. There have been no major engagements yet. How can they—”

  “Easily,” Margraves roared, walking up to the representative and peering truculently in his face.

  “General. This man is drunk.” Ellsner got to his feet.

  “Of course, you little idiot! Don’t you understand yet? The war is lost! Completely, irrevocably.”

  Ellsner turned angrily to Branch. The general sighed and stood up.

  “That’s right, Ellsner. The war is lost and every man in the fleet knows it. That’s what’s wrong with the morale. We’re just hanging here, waiting to be blasted out of existence.”

  The fleets shifted and weaved. Thousands of dots floated in space, in twisted, random patterns.

  Seemingly random.

  The patterns interlocked, opened and closed. Dynamically, delicately balanced, each configuration was a planned move on a hundred thousand mile front. The opposing dots shifted to meet the exigencies of the new pattern.

  Where was the advantage? To the unskilled eye, a chess game is a meaningless array of pieces and positions. But to the players—the game may be already won or lost.

  The mechanical players who moved the thousands of dots knew who had won—and who had lost.

  “Now let’s all relax,” Branch said soothingly. “Margraves, mix us a couple of drinks. I’ll explain everything.” The colonel moved to a well-stocked cabinet in a corner of the room.

  “I’m waiting,” Ellsner said.

  “First, a review. Do you remember when the war was declared, two years ago? Both sides subscribed to the Holmstead Pact, not to bomb home planets. A rendezvous was arranged in space, for the fleets to meet.”

  “That’s ancient history,” Ellsner said.

  “It has a point. Earth’s fleet blasted off, grouped and went to the rendezvous.” Branch cleared his throat.

  “Do you know the CPCs? The Configuration-Probability-Calculators? They’re like chess players, enormously extended. They arrange the fleet in an optimum attack-defense pattern, based on the configuration of the opposing fleet. So the first pattern was set.”

  “I don’t see the need—” Ellsner started, but Margraves, returning with the drinks, interrupted him.

  “Wait, my boy. Soon there will be a blinding light.”

  “When the fleets met, the CPC’s calculated the probabilities of attack. They found we’d lose approximately eighty-seven percent of our fleet, to sixty-five percent of the enemy’s. If they attacked, they’d lose seventy-nine percent, to our sixty-four. That was the situation as it stood then. By extrapolation, their optimum attack pattern—at that time—would net them a forty-five-percent loss. Ours would have given us a seventy-two-percent loss.”

  “I don’t know much about the CPCs,” Ellsner confessed. “My field’s psych.” He sipped his drink, grimaced, and sipped again.

  “Think of them as chess players,” Branch said. “They can estimate the loss probabilities for an attack at any given point of time, in any pattern. They can extrapolate the probable moves of both sides.

  “That’s why battle wasn’t joined when we first met. No commander is going to annihilate his entire fleet like that.”

  “Well then,” Ellsner said, “why haven’t you exploited your slight numerical superiority? Why haven’t you gotten an advantage over them?”

  “Ah!” Margraves cried, sipping his drink. “It comes, the light!”

  “Let me put it in the form of an analogy,” Branch said. “If you have two chess players of equally high skill, the game’s end is determined when one of them gains an advantage. Once the advantage is there, there’s nothing the other player can do, unless the first makes a mistake. If everything goes as it should, the game’s end is predetermined. The turning point may come a few moves after the game starts, although the game itself could drag on for hours.”

  “And remember,” Margraves broke in, “to the casual eye, there may be no apparent advantage. Not a piece may have been lost.”

  “That’s what’s happened here,” Branch finished sadly. “The CPC units in both fleets are of maximum efficiency. But the enemy has an edge, which they are car
efully exploiting. And there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “But how did this happen?” Ellsner asked. “Who slipped up?”

  “The CPCs have inducted the cause of the failure,” Branch said. “The end of the war was inherent in our take-off formation.”

  “What do you mean?” Ellsner said, setting down his drink.

  “Just that. The configuration the fleet was in, light-years away from battle, before we had even contacted their fleet. When the two met, they had an infinitesimal advantage of position. That was enough. Enough for the CPCs, anyhow.”

  “If it’s any consolation,” Margraves put in, “it was a fifty-fifty chance. It could have just as well been us with the edge.”

  “I’ll have to find out more about this,” Ellsner said. “I don’t understand it all yet.”

  Branch snarled: “The war’s lost. What more do you want to know?”

  Ellsner shook his head.

  “Wilt snare me with predestination ’round,” Margraves quoted, “and then impute my fall to sin?”

  Lieutenant Nielson sat in front of the gunfire panel, his fingers interlocked. This was necessary, because Nielson had an almost overpowering desire to push the buttons.

  The pretty buttons.

  Then he swore, and sat on his hands. He had promised General Branch that he would carry on, and that was important. It was three days since he had seen the general, but he was determined to carry on. Resolutely he fixed his gaze on the gunfire dials.

  Delicate indicators wavered and trembled. Dials measured distance, and adjusted aperture to range. The slender indicators rose and fell as the ship maneuvered, lifting toward the red line, but never quite reaching it.

  The red line marked emergency. That was when he would start firing, when the little black arrow crossed the little red line.