The Sword Read online

precise...._' Bob, the man who wrote that report isone of the finest semantics experts in the solar system. He's the brainthat finally broke that ancient Martian ceremonial language they foundon the columns."

  "Well, mastermind," said Mills. "What will the _Engineering_ report saywhen you get around to writing it?"

  "Engineering report? What are you talking about?"

  "You didn't read the memo on your desk then? The one that requested apreliminary report from every department by 2200 today."

  "Good God, no," said Harrison snapping up the thin yellow sheet. "Whatin hell has a sword got to do with Engineering?"

  "What's it got to do with Semantics?" mocked Robert Mills.

  * * * * *

  _Construct this. It is defective. Correct that which renders it notuseful._

  Harrison's eyes burned. He would have to quit pretty soon and dictatethe report. There wasn't any use in trying to go beyond a certain point.You got so damned tired you couldn't think straight. You might as wellgo to bed and rest. Bob Mills had gone long before.

  He poured over the blueprint again, striving to concentrate. Why in hellhad he not given up altogether? What possible contribution could anengineer make toward the solution of such a problem?

  _Construct this._

  You simply made the thing according to a simple blueprint. You tried outwhat you got, found out what it was good for, found out then what waskeeping it from doing that. You fixed it.

  Well, the sword had been constructed. Fantastic effort had been directedinto producing a perfect model of the print. Every minute convolutionhad been followed to an incredible point of perfection. Harrison waswilling to bet there was less than a ten thousandths error--even in thehandle, where the curves seemed to be more artistic than mechanical.

  _It is defective._

  What was defective about it? Nobody had actually tried the ancientweapon, it was true. You didn't go around chopping people's heads off.But experts on such things had examined the twelve-pound blade and hadpronounced it "well balanced"--whatever that meant. It would crack askull, sever arteries, kill or maim.

  _Correct...._

  What was there to correct? Could you make it maim or kill better? Couldyou sharpen it so that it would go through thick clothing or fur? Yes.Could you make it a bit heavier so that it might slice a metal shield?Yes, perhaps. All of these things had been half-heartedly suggested. Butnobody had yet proposed any kind of qualitative change or been able tosuggest any kind of change that would meet the next admonition of thealien:

  Correct _that which renders it not useful_.

  What actually could be done to a weapon to make it useful? Matter offact, what was there about the present weapon that made it _not_ useful.Apparently it was useful as hell--useful enough to cut a man's throat,pierce his heart, slice an arm off him....

  What were the possible swords; what was the morphology of _conceptsword_?

  Harrison picked up a dog-eared report.

  There was the _rapier_, a thin, light, extremely flexible kind of sword(if you considered the word "sword" generic, as the Semantics expert hadpointed out). It was good for duels, man-to-man combat, usually on whatthe ancients had called the "field of honor."

  There were all kinds of short swords, dirks, shivs, stilettos, daggers.They were the weapons of stealth men--and sometimes women--used in thenight. The assassin's weapon, the glitter in the darkened alley.

  There were the _machetes_. Jungle knives, cane-cutting instruments. Thebayonets....

  You could go on and on from there, apparently. But what did you get?They were all more or less useful, Harrison supposed. There was nothingmore you could do with any kind of sword that was designed for aspecific purpose.

  Harrison sighed in despair. He had expected vastly more when he hadfirst heard the alien mention "test". He had expected some complexinstrument, something new to Terra and her colonies. Something involvingcomplex and perhaps unknown principles of an alien technology. Somethingappropriate to the strange metal craft that traveled so very fast.

  Or perhaps a paradox. A thing that could not be constructed withoutexploding, like a lattice of U235 of exactly critical size. Or aninstrument that must be assembled in an impossible sequence, like aclock with a complete, single-pieced outer shell. Or a part of a thingthat could be "corrected" only if the whole thing were visualized,constructed, and tested.

  No, the blueprint he held now involved an awareness that must provebeyond mere technology, or at least Terran technology. Maybe it involvedan awareness that transcended Terran philosophy as well.

  Harrison slapped the pencil down on his desk, rose, put his coat on, andleft the office.

  * * * * *

  "... we are guilty as the angels of the bible were guilty. Pride! That'sit, folks, pride. False pride...."

  Harrison fringed the intent crowd of people cursing when, frequently,someone carelessly bumped into him in an effort to get nearer thesidewalk preacher.

  "We tried to live with the angels above. We wanted to fly like thebirds. And then we wanted to fly like the angels...."

  Someone near Harrison muttered an "Amen". Harrison wove his way throughthem wondering where the hundreds of such evangelists had come from sosuddenly.

  "Ya know, folks, the angels themselves got uppity once. _They_ wanted tobe like Gawd himself, they did. Now, it's us."

  There was a small flutter of laughter among the crowd. It was veryquickly suppressed--so quickly that Harrison gained a new appreciationof the tenor of the crowd.

  "That's right, laugh! Laugh at our folly!" continued the thin-faced,bright-eyed man. "It was a sword that the angel used to kick Adam andEve out of the garden. The sword figures all through the bible, folks.You ought to read the bible. You ought to get to know it. It's allthere. All there for you to read...."

  _By Christ_, thought Harrison. Here was an aspect of the concept, sword,he had not considered. Morphological thinking required that _all_aspects of a concept be explored, all plotted against all others forpossible correlation....

  No. That was silly. The bible was a beautiful piece of literature andsome people believed it inspired. But the great good men who wrote thebible had little scientific knowledge of a sword. They would simplydescribe the weapon as a modern fiction writer would describe ablaster--without knowing any more about one than that it existed and wasa weapon.

  Surely the ISC's weapons expert could be trusted to know his swords.

  * * * * *

  "Go on home," Mills pleaded. "You're shot and you know it. You saidyourself this isn't our show."

  "You go home, Bob. I'm all right."

  "George ... you're acting strange. Strange as hell."

  "I'm all right. Leave me alone," snapped Harrison becoming irritable.

  Mills watched silently as the haggard man slipped a tablet into hismouth.

  "It's all right, Bob," smiled Harrison weakly. "I know how to useBenzedrine."

  "You damn fool, you'll wreck yourself...."

  But the engineer ignored him. He continued paging his way through thebook--the bible, no less. George Harrison and the bible!

  * * * * *

  Mills was awakened by the telephone. Reaching in the dark for it heanswered almost without reaching consciousness.

  It was Harrison.

  "Bob, listen to me. If an angel were to look at us right now, what wouldhe think?"

  "For God's sake!" Mills cried into the instrument. "What's up? You stillat the office?"

  "Yeah, answer the question."

  "Hold on, George. I'll be down and get you. What you been drinking?"

  "Bob, would he--she--think much of us? Would the angel figure wewere...."

  "How the hell would _I_ know?"

  "No, Bob, what you should have asked is 'how the hell would _he_ know.'"

  * * * * *

  In a daze Mills heard the click
as the other hung up.

  * * * * *

  "Mr. Harrison, your assistant is looking for you."

  "Yes, I know, Kirk. But will you do it?"

  "Mr. Harrison, we only got one of them. If we screw it up it'll taketime to make another and today's the day, you know."

  "I'll take the blame."

  "Mr. Harrison, you look kind of funny. Hadn't I better...."

  Harrison was sketching a drawing on a piece of waste paper. He wasworking in quick rough strokes, copying something from a book.

  "They'll blame us both, Mr. Harrison. Anyway, it might hold up somebodywho's got a real idea...."

  "_I_ have a real idea, Kirk. I'm going to draw it for you."

  The metal worker noticed that the book Harrison was copying from was adictionary, a very old and battered one.

  "Here, can you follow what I've drawn?"

  The metal worker accepted it reluctantly, giving Harrison an odd, almostpatronizing look. "This is crazy."

  "Kirk!"

  "Look, Mr. Harrison. We worked a long time together. You...."

  Harrison suddenly rose from the chair.

  "This is our one chance of beating this thing, no matter how crazy itseems. Will you do the job?"

  "You believe you got something, eh," the other said. "You think youhave?"

  "I have to have."

  * * * * *

  "Gentlemen," said the President of the Intersolar Council. "There isvery little to say. There can be no denying the fact that we haveexhausted our efforts at finding a satisfactory solution.

  "The contents of this book of reports represents the greatestconcentration of expert reasoning perhaps ever applied to a singleproblem.

  "But alas, the problem remains--unsolved."

  He paused to glance at his wristwatch.

  "The aliens return in an hour. As you very well know there is one actionthat remains for us. It is one we have held to this hour. It is one thathas always been present and one that we have been constantly urged touse.

  "Force, gentlemen. It is not insignificant. It lies at our command. Itrepresents the technology of the Intersolar alliance. I will entertain amotion to use it."

  There were no nay votes.

  * * * * *

  The alien arrived on schedule. The ship grew from a tiny bright speck inthe sky to full size. It settled to a graceful landing as before on thestrip and silently moved into the revetment.

  Again it spoke in the voice of the frog, but the tone was, if anything,less human this time.

  "Earthmen, we have come for your solution."

  At that instant a hundred gun crews stiffened and waited for a signalbehind their carefully camouflaged blast plates and inside dummybuildings....

  Harrison was running. The Administration building was empty. Hisfootsteps echoed through the long, silent halls. He headed for anemergency exit that led directly to the blast tunnel. All doors werelocked.

  The only way was over the wall. He paused and tossed the awkward, heavyobject over the ten-foot wall. Then, backing toward the building, he ranand jumped for a hold onto the wall's edge. He failed by several inchesto reach it.

  "Earthmen, we have come for your solution."

  He ran at the wall once more. This time he caught a fair hold with onehand. Digging at the rough concrete with his feet he was able to securethe hold and begin pulling his body upward.

  Quickly he was over the wall and onto the apron, a hundred yards fromthe shining metal ship.

  "Wait!" he shouted. "Wait, for God's sake!"

  Picking up the object he had tossed over the wall, he raised it abovehis head and ran toward the alien ship.

  "Wait! Here is the solution," he gasped.

  Somehow the command to fire was not given. There was a long moment ofcomplete silence on the field. Nothing moved.

  Then the voice of the frog boomed from the alien ship.

  "The solution appears to be correct."

  * * * * *

  The alien left three days later. Regular communications would beginwithin the week. Future meetings would work out technical difficulties.Preliminary trade agreements, adequately safeguarded, were drafted andtransmitted to the ship. The Races of Man and the Races of Wan were inharmony.

  * * * * *

  "It was simply too obvious for any of us to notice," explained Harrison."It took that street-corner evangelist to jar something loose--even thenit was an accident."

  "And the rest of us--" started Mills.

  "While _all_ of us worked on the assumption that the test involved ashowing of strength--a flexing of technological muscle."

  "I still don't see--"

  "Well, the evangelist put the problem on the right basis. He humbled us,exalted the aliens--that is, he thought the alien was somehow amessenger from God to put us in our places."

  "We were pretty humble ourselves, especially the last day," protestedMills.

  "But humble about our _technology_," put in Harrison. "The aliens mustbe plenty far beyond us technologically. But how about their culturalsuperiority. Ask yourself how a culture that could produce the shipwe've just seen could survive without--well destroying itself."

  "I still don't understand."

  "The aliens developed pretty much equally in _all_ directions. Theydeveloped force--plenty of it, enough force to kick that big shipthrough space at the speed of light plus. They must also have learned tocontrol force, to live with it."

  "Maybe you better stick to the sword business," said Mills.

  "The sword is the crux of the matter. What did the alien say about thesword? 'It is defective.' It _is_ defective, Bob. Not as an instrumentof death. It will kill a man or injure him well enough.

  "But a sword--or any other instrument of force for that matter--is aterribly ineffectual tool. It was originally designed to act as a toolof social control. Did it--or any subsequent weapon of force--do a goodjob at that?

  "As long as man used swords, or gunpowder, or atom bombs, or hydrogenbombs, he was doomed to a fearful anarchy of unsolved problems anddreadful immaturity.

  "No, the sword is not useful. To fix it--to 'correct that which rendersit not useful'--meant to make it something else. Now what in the helldid that mean? What can you do with a sword?"

  "You mean besides cut a man in two with it," said Mills.

  "Yes, what can you do with it besides use it as a weapon? Here ourstreet-corner friend referred me to the right place: The bible!

  "_They shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears intopruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neithershall they learn war any more._

  "The aliens just wanted to know if we meant what we said."

  "Do we?"

  "We better. It's going to take a hell of a lot more than a sillyploughshare to convince those babies on that ship. But there's more toit than that. The ability of a culture finally to pound all of itsswords--its intellectual ones as well as its steel ones--intoploughshares must be some kind of least common denominator for culturesthat are headed for the stars."

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