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Read Ebook: Electron Eat Electron by Loomis Noel M
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Ebook has 979 lines and 33244 words, and 20 pages
Electron Eat Electron
Supreme General Hoshawk, chief of staff, watched with piercing gray eyes while the President of the United States of the Western Hemisphere, Jeffrey Wadsworth, lay relaxed under a cosmic-ray lamp, with no covering but a towel over his loins.
The surgeon-general of the Hemispheric Armies raised his hand, and the lamp receded.
"Is that enough?" Hoshawk asked dryly.
"It's the maximum, even for him," said the surgeon-general. "His reflexes will be faster than light itself."
Hoshawk grunted, his eyes narrow. As far as he could see, the speed of a man's reflexes, even of a man who was about to champion seven hundred million persons, wasn't as important as the man's loyalty or his sense of personal responsibility. And Hoshawk did not have much use for Wadsworth.
Augusto Iraola of Brazil, deputy president for South America, stepped forward from the group of forty men. He asked the President anxiously, "How do you feel?" Iraola was old and bearded.
"Not bad," said the President, and his voice squeaked a little as it changed pitch.
The Minister of State, with a big portfolio under his arm, said, "Shouldn't we prepare the vice president?"
The voice of the President, slightly amused, came to them. "I'm all right now," he said. "I think I ate too much ice cream last night. Nine dishes."
There were gasps. Hoshawk held back his sarcasm, but he could not refrain from a triumphant glance at the ancient Minister of State, who avoided his eyes.
Iraola was volatile. "Sabotage!" he said.
President Wadsworth licked his lips with the tip of his tongue. "No, the new pineapple-avocado. Very good, gentlemen. I recommend it."
The neuro-analyst whipped a graph from his machine. Hoshawk barely looked at the graph. "Speed of reaction down to zero, point, nine zeros, three, four--three times normal speed. Let's get on with the war."
The President's eyes had been fixed hopefully on Hoshawk's grizzled face, and at Hoshawk's words he relaxed. His muscles rippled an instant, and then he was standing.
It was always a little shock to Hoshawk to see him move. It wasn't right that any man, even a Superior Mutant, should be able to move faster than light-speed. You didn't dare to trust a man like that.
Forty august heads--all but Hoshawk's--inclined as the President stood there, but the President just smiled at them and yawned and stretched luxuriously.
The Mutant College had been established when the Hunyas had overrun Europe and Asia, and now for two centuries there had been no war, but only preparation for war, East against West, through systems of selection and training closely parallel, but with a difference that was forever in Hoshawk's mind--if he was a capable man, the Hunyas kept him for twenty-one years. And obviously you could depend a lot more on a man of thirty-five than you could on a boy of sixteen.
Forgacs, president of the Hunyas, was thirty-three--an old man for a mutant, and smart and clever as only a mutant could be at that age.
Yesterday the Hunyas had challenged.
It was sudden, but not unexpected. There was no reason for delay. At six o'clock tonight the two hemispheres would match force, and by eight o'clock it would be over.
Jeffrey Wadsworth moved. One instant he was before them with a towel around the middle of his bronze body, the next instant he was standing there dressed in light plastic slippers, red trunks and a sleeveless blue shirt. If Hoshawk hadn't been so old, he would have been envious of the President's physique.
"Gentlemen," Jeffrey said, "I am ready to go to the Chamber." He rubbed his bare midriff in the region of his stomach.
"Are you ill?" Hoshawk asked quickly.
"No," Jeffrey watched the forty statesmen file out.
"Sire," said Hoshawk, and his manner was respectful, for this boy of sixteen was his commander-in-chief, "I still wish we had trained a few thousand men in the use of weapons. I don't see how we can fight a war with electronic tubes."
Jeffrey looked at him gravely. "War with men is primitive. Lives can't be replaced."
Hoshawk sputtered. "There's never been any civilized war."
"This time there will be," Jeffrey said confidently.
"But--"
"There'll be trickery from Forgacs," Hoshawk predicted.
"Quite possible," said Wadsworth. "I don't trust him, myself. He challenged on a technicality."
Hoshawk was gratified to hear a worried note in the President's voice. "He claimed we violated the Agreement of 2118," he said, probing, "by keeping scientific discoveries to ourselves."
Wadsworth answered quietly, "Then he challenged because he himself had secrets that he believed more potent."
"Nevertheless," said Hoshawk, "a few hundred men trained in the use of tanks--"
Jeffrey shook his head. "And revert to the primitive," he pointed out. "If the world is ever to get away from that kind of war, this is the time to prove it."
"And if we lose, we do so at the expense of a hemisphere."
They reached the door of the Chamber. The President shook hands with Iraola and with Hoshawk.
"Wish me luck," he said lightly.
They inclined their heads, and when they looked up, the President was seated on a beryllium stool that traveled a three-quarter circle before the great bank of keys like the keyboard of a giant organ. He pulled on a glass helmet and adjusted the sonic amplifiers to his mastoids. He flicked the oxygen valve open and shut, and then looked at it and listened intently.
Hoshawk saw an instant's doubt on the President's face. Hoshawk wondered if the valve was leaking, and frowned. The Chamber had been tested exhaustively, but with hundreds of thousands of circuits, cut-backs, by-passes, and relays, it was possible the oxygen valve had been overlooked.
Jeffrey strapped himself into the chair. The chronometer showed five minutes before the Hour. The President looked at the huge curved map of the Atlantic, now aglow with light above the big keyboard. His eyes swept the thousands of ivory keys and he rubbed his hands together for a final limbering of his fingers.
He spoke, and his intent voice came to them through the amplifier: "HHQ."
"North America is completely evacuated, Sire, to the Polar ice-cap. There is now no human being on the continent. The Hunyas refused our request to declare New York an open city, and it was evacuated thirty minutes ago."
The President called for a chronometer check. The instrument in the Chamber had lost two hundredths of a second, and Hoshawk could see that Jeffrey was making a mental note of that. He was forced to admit that the young mutant was thorough.
There were two minutes left. Jeffrey sat straight before the great keyboard, poised an instant, and then his incredibly facile fingers played the keys, flashing from one bank to the next, shooting the chair to right and to left, while he watched the map above him and the great bank of lights on each side. Then he leaned back, relaxed.
Hoshawk was glad now they were playing it safe. Jeffrey had insisted on the Midwest Chamber in preference to the Pacific or Atlantic station. For this was modern war. There would be only one person killed. This was a war of electronics, deadly and final, but no one would be actually killed but the losing President. That was decreed by the Six-Continent Council.
It was one minute before the hour. The President pressed a key.
The Starter answered: "President Wadsworth, are you ready?"
"Ready," said Jeffrey in a high voice.
Hoshawk heard the Starter's voice: "President Forgacs, are you ready?"
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