The Stork Factor Read online

  The Stork Factor

  Zach Hughes

  Scanned by Highroller. Proofed by the best elf proofer. Made prettier by use of EBook Design Group Stylesheet. The Stork Factor by Zach Hughes CHAPTER ONE Just four years previously Richard Skeerzy had taken the Funland, Ltd., tour around the moon. The tour ship didn't land on the moon, of course. No one went to the moon any more, just around it. The moon was a dead globe of space debris from which the last iota of scientific value had been extracted during the decades before and after the turn of the twenty-first century. Viewed from the tinted ports of a ship such as the Nebulous, the moon was a cold, empty wasteland. However, Skeerzy considered his trip into space to be the apogee of an otherwise ordinary life. Not that Richard Skeerzy wasn't satisfied with his lot. As he had told LaVerne many times, the glory of being one of His creatures in His magnificent universe was reward enough. If, to the pleasure of mere existence, he added the smug knowledge that he, as a relatively young member of the ruling Christian Party, was a Brother on the way up, then that made life only slightly more satisfying. The tourist ship Nebulous started final deceleration thirty minutes out of the Funland Gate, North America. There was no warning. LaVerne, not prepared for the gentle force of it, emitted a surprised squeak as she drifted slowly from her couch. Richard, laughing with the air of an experienced space traveler, engaged his wife and retrieved her as if she were a helium balloon. He placed her on the couch and helped her strap in, smiling on her with a great and doting pride. She was a particularly lovable child and she had learned a lesson. Richard had been engaged in a lecture on the wonders of His creation and how one should endeavor to see at least a small portion of that creation. It was Richard's way of rationalizing away the extravagance of a honeymoon which impoverished his new marriage. Space travel, that is, the quick trip up to the North American Gate, the transfer to the Nebulous, the single orbit of the moon, was a frightfully expensive way to spend a week. Space travel was so expensive and so relatively unrewarding in material worth that it had almost bankrupted the First Republic before the long-suffering silent majority rose up and, under the leadership of the Brothers, returned the country to the area of sanity. The Nebulous had been built with private funds and the North American Station, the one great achievement of the governmental space effort, was leased to Funland, Ltd., which lost money on the operation, but maintained it for prestige purposes and, perhaps, as a tax dodge. «Now we are returning, slowly but surely, to the good green Earth,» Richard preached. «It is an experience of a lifetime.» For a moment he would not remind LaVerne that he had experienced the great moment once before. In his love and kindness, Richard did not want to make his wife feel inferior. «We must see and learn and never forget that He created this with a sweep of His hand.» «Yes, Richard,» LaVerne said, as a huge globe went swimming slowly across the viewport. LaVerne was numb. Space was big. The ship was small and crowded. The compartments closed in on her. Even the main lounge with the viewports was a tiny, metal and stale-air cubbyhole which gave her claustrophobia.

  «If you like, dear,» Richard said, «I'll explain the technique of landing at the Gate.» «Yes, dear,» LaVerne said, killing a guilty urge to tell him she was fed up with his eternal explanations. «The captain of the ship on which I took my first cruise was kind enough to tell me all about it,» Skeerzy said. La Verne sighed. A short while ago he had seemed to be such a wonderful catch. He was handsome. He was of medium height with dark, curly hair which ducked out at the nape of his neck. He had nice features, a solid chin, good nose, brown, serious eyes. He was a member of the Brothers, and thus eligible for advancement. His position as spiritual adviser to the famous Colonel Ed Baxley at University One, The Brothers, provided a more than adequate income, at least in the eyes of a girl from East City who, before her lucky meeting with one of the all-powerful Brothers, could only look forward to twenty working years in an office and retirement to a community building in the depths of the continent. He had wooed her and she had let herself be won without love, true, but she could have loved him easily if only he would have let her. «Do you understand, dear?» he was asking in that preaching voice of his. «I'm beginning to,» LaVerne sighed. The Nebulous glided slowly through the locks into the artificial atmosphere of the Gate. Below, there was a flurry of activity. The ground crew shuffled forward on magnetic shoes to guide the big ship into her berth. Cameramen, in an attempt to pry more dollars loose from the tourists, ground out rolls of instantly processed video-sound to be offered as positive evidence to the folks back home that one had actually been aboard the Nebulous coming into the North American Gate from the moon. The walkways were lined by vendors offering bits of space debris and scale models of the Nebulous. Stern retainers were snapped into place. The ship's forward movement was halted with a slight jerk. Floating sixty feet above the ramp, the

  Nebulous was a fantastic sight, all angles, a ship built for space, every inch of available room utilized. Machinery hummed. Lines snaked up, were attached, began to pull the ship slowly down. «Why, there's Ronnie,» Skeerzy said, with mixed interest and disapproval in his voice. «The colonel must be here.» Richard pointed. A small figure floated at the end of a retaining line

  directly in front of the viewport. In relation to the surface of the ramp, the boy was hanging upside down. Skeerzy watched with a sort of fond interest as the boy, his six-year-old frame distorted by baggy overalls, fumbled inside his clothing. «Isn't that cute,» La Verne said, as the boy's hand became filled with a realistic toy weapon. «He's playing space pirate or something.» Skeerzy snorted. «If his father sees fit to let him play with martial toys when the world had been a peace for thirty years there's nothing I can do, although God knows I've tried.» Skeerzy was prepared to say much more. He started to say it but the small boy, whose blond locks pointed downward to the surface, stopped him. The boy aimed his toy pistol at the nose plates of the Nebulous and, with a studied scowl right out of an old adventure film, squeezed the trigger. The Nebulous burned slowly. The chemical fire, once started, was inexorable. Skeerzy saw death creeping slowly toward the viewport along the surface of the ship. There was screaming. With a start, Skeerzy realized that the sound was, shamefully, coming from LaVerne. He put a protective arm around her and watched the fire crawl closer. There was a calmness in his mind. He was about to pass on to a better place. There was no need to mourn. If he deemed it fitting that His servant die in a spaceship drifting loosely above the metal surface of the North American Gate, then who was going to question Him? But just before the drive went, taking most of the North American Gate with it, Skeerzy heard more screaming and knew that it was coming from his throat. Fuel stores inside the Gate went in a drastic, secondary explosion. The last foothold in space tore, ripped, twisted, turned, went deeper into space, fell, burned in atmosphere. An SST en route London to Bangkok reported sighting falling debris. A Siberian farm worker watched in awed silence as a forest burned, ignited by a blazing, thunderous object falling from the sky. Propelled by the explosions, scraps of the nuclear pile were thrown out of Earth orbit and started falling into the sun. So vast was the spew of wreckage that one antique rocket, in eternal orbit around the Earth, lonely, forgotten, was knocked into a new path with atmospheric terminus. It burned, but other pieces of space debris wheeled around the

  Earth, close in, far, far below the daring flights of the past century, flights which put men on the moon, men around Venus, men on Mars. Now, with the foothold gone, the old rockets wheeled around and around, useless, jettisoned scrap. The moon was, once again, alone, unreachable. And out beyond Pluto, where man had never gone, a melon-sized instrument was activated by the activity just outside the Earth's atmosphere. Powered by an isotope with a half life far beyond any known particle, the instrument ha
d recorded activity on the Third Planet in the past, activity such as the eruption of Krakatoa in what was, to the instrument, recent time,

  explosions of natural origin prior to that, the release of primitive nuclear power in the atmosphere only moments ago, all activity which was recorded, but ignored, since it represented no danger. But now there was a new radiation in space with its origin on or near the Third Planet. The instrument turned, made inner current, measured. A tiny computer sent electronic impulses over a simple circuit. And the beacon flashed into light, activated by the single discharge of a chemical fire gun, the weapon which Richard Skeerzy and La Verne, in the last moments of their life, had thought was cute. A signal flashed, faster than light, at a speed which could not even be compared with the slowness of light, a signal transmitted on a new plane cutting across galactic distance to be received by more instruments operating in endless vigil. The response was automatic, instantaneous, and was set in motion without the immediate knowledge of anything living. CHAPTER TWO It was getting harder to get a permit to hold a simple healing service in the park. The amount of red tape and graft was unbelievable. By the time he got through paying off the good Brothers in charge of permits in East City, Old Town, a man didn't have enough left over for a good bottle of Soul Lifter. And the marks were getting more and more difficult to impress. A man cures cancer and heart trouble and the common cold and they want more. They want him to regenerate an amputated leg. Hell, he wasn't Jesus Christ, after all. «I am poor Brother Luke Parker, by your leave,» he said, standing on the base of what must have once been a statue or something equally as

  sinful. «I will cure your lameness, heal your sickness, provide balm for your soul in His name. Gather around me, brothers, sisters. Listen to the Word. Have faith and ye shall be free.» Actually, he was only an Apprentice Brother, Third Class, but he didn't see any Brotherfuzz in the park and sometimes the marks responded better when they thought they were being touched by a full Brother. Full Brothers didn't go around laying hands on people, but the marks didn't have to know that. All they had to know was that Luke Parker had a God-given gift of healing. He didn't know how it worked, didn't question it. He just knew he had it and he used it to best advantage. He used it to raise a dollar to pay for his pad and for a bottle of Soul Lifter now and

  then. If he actually did make life a little less miserable for some poor mark,

  that was fine, too, but making life less miserable didn't put a dollar in his pocket unless he found a way to bleed it out of the marks. «In the beginning was the Word,» he preached, standing on the old, cement base in the tiny park with a few marks stopping and listening and

  looking up. He was a striking figure, not tall, but straight at five-ten. He had to hold in his stomach. He wore the common costume, tight slacks, long, baggy cotton over-shirt, slip-on shoes. Put him in a crowd of Lays and he would be indistinguishable from the Techs and Fares and Tireds. It was the voice that made Luke Parker different. The voice and the gift. «If ye believe,» Luke called. «If you do but believe—» And they looked up, wanting to believe. East City with its millions spread to all sides, lights, grayness, mold, age, towering walls. Old Town. Off there was the water, river and sea, and there was the continent, spreading in one vast sprawl of wall, roof and milling millions to the Chesapeake, to the mountains, to the small, heavily populated agribelt which was preserved before Middle City built walls and towering anthills to the great western deserts. God, they wanted to believe, for believing made them men, made them more than digits standing in line before the Medcenters waiting for a ration of Newasper. «You must be born again,» Luke preached, watching the little square

  fill. The big, preaching Brothers with electronic aids could fill a stadium. Luke Parker, with only his voice, deep, strong, mellow, could fill an

  antique little park with its few square yards of true earth, its three trees, could fill it with Lays and Tireds and Techs, although the Techs tended to be a cynical bunch, usually too smartalecky to listen to the true words of faith, putting their trust in Newasper and shakeshock. And dying of cancer and nuflu and heart and black lungs and being mutilated in crash and fall and machine malfunction. «Let him who has not faith approach the mysteries with an open mind,» Luke preached, looking down on a small group of Techs in white uniform. They grinned back, making derisive sounds, talking, passing a bottle of Soul Lifter. They could, Luke knew, spoil the pitch. He had a promising crowd, heavy in Tireds, the older ones leaning on canes and white-haired and hopeless, looking up at

  him without life in their eyes but willing to look, to listen, to drink in the promise of Luke's words. «He said, go forth and heal the sick,» Luke said, trying to ignore the

  Tech. «He said, this is your gift, mortal man, go and use it wisely. And, my loving friends, I come to you, in faith, in humility, knowing that my poor gift is not enough, but knowing that my gift, combined with your faith, can work miracles. Are there those among you who suffer, who ache, who know pain? Let them step forward.» «I got the clap,» one of the Techs yelled. «Cure me.» «The wages of sin,» Luke said. «First you must cure your conscience, friend.» Out near one of the sick trees, an old Tired man moved forward, looking around nervously. «Come, friend,» Luke encourage. «It only takes faith.» «Make the old schmuck young again, preacher,» yelled the loudmouthed Tech. Luke looked down angrily. «Can we not coexist in peace, friend?» «Lay your hand on this, preacher,» said the Tech, making an obscene gesture toward a private portion of his anatomy. «Let the man preach,» said a voice. A big, ragged Fare man pushed forward. «Just shut up and let him preach.» «Peace, friends,» Luke begged. «Let us have peace.» «Look who's talking,» said the loudmouthed Tech. «Man never did a lick of work in his life. Sits on his ass drawing Fare money, our money. Look who's talking.» «Heal me, brother,» the old Tired man said, standing near the base of Luke's perch. «Yeah, heal those gray hairs,» said the Tech. Two more men joined the big Fare to glare at the Techs. «I said let the man preach,» said the big Fare. « You gonna shut up and let him preach?» The Tech, equally as big as the Fare, looked at his companions. «I think not,» he said. Unnoticed, a group of Fares, reinforced by one or two elderly Tireds had encircled the Techs. Luke watched the action unfold in silence. Below him, the crowd moved away, left the two groups of men confronting each other. A slim, gleaming knife appeared in the hand of the big Fare. From the rear, another Fare felled a Tech with a piece of crumbling brick. The violence was expressed in thudding, flashing blades, groans, curses. The crowd gave it room, looked on with impassive faces. Limp bodies fell, were trampled. The Techs, outnumbered, retreated. The sounds of combat dwindled into the ever-present roar of traffic from old Third Avenue, one block away. «I believe,» said the old, white-haired Tired standing below Luke. Luke

  lifted his face. Above him the night was hidden by the reflected glow of the old lights of Old Town on the eternal blanket of choking smog. Luke closed his eyes, saw, in his mind, beyond the smog, the stars, the heavens. He mouthed a silent, sincere prayer. He leaped down, took the old Tired's hand. «My lungs,» said the old Tired. «My lungs.» His voice was raspy. He coughed. Blood flecked his lips. Luke knew the man should have been in

  MedCenter. He felt a hint of despair, but he controlled it. It was not, after all, his fault that the old Tired had the lung failure. It came to most, sooner or later. «Yea, friend,» Luke said. «How old are you?» «I've done my twenty,» the Tired said, not without pride. «I went to work for the City when I was twelve. Got my Watch last year.» Luke added. «Then you're thirty-three.» «Yes, Brother.» «I'll pray,» Luke said. He put his hand on the old Tired's head. He lifted his head and his voice. «Lord, look down on this, your lamb. Here he

  stands in the fullness of his years with faith in his heart and the death in his lungs. Here he stands, Lord, asking this, your humble servant, for healing help. I ask you, Lord, giver of gifts, healer of ills, sender of happiness, is it right that his poor servant, this man who has done his duty to his fellow men,
this servant who has toiled in the canyons for twenty long years to cough up his life's blood from his poor, charred lungs? I beg you. Lord, Jesus, redeemer, heal this poor servant of God. Help him, Lord.» Luke lowered his head. «Pray, friend,» he said quietly. Around him, the crowd was silent. The fighting men had moved away, chasing the fleeing Techs. The roar of ground traffic was loud. Onto the bared heads of the crowd rained the waste of the vastness of the East City, soot, carbon, particles carrying sickness and death, the efflorescence of their civilization. «Heal,» Luke said, giving the Tired's head a shake. «Heal!» He pressed down hard. The old man's knees buckled, but he fought back to stand upright under the shaking, pressing pressure of Luke's strong hand. «Heal!» Luke roared. «Heal! Heal! HEAL!» Then, with one final shake which rattled the old Tired's eyeballs, he released the quaking head. «Feel

  it friend,» Luke shouted joyfully. «Feel the power of God slowly flowing into

  your pain. Feel it heal.» But he knew it wasn't working. He cursed silently. He hated the lung cases. There was no helping them. Oh, now and then one of them got carried away and said he felt better and that helped with the other marks, because if a man can be cured of the lung sickness, there is no limit to the power of the healer. So Luke used his most persuasive voice. «You feel better, friend,» he said. «You feel the soothing power of God soaking into your lungs.» «Amen,» said the Tired, a mesmerized glaze to his eyes. «Praise God!» «You are healed!» Luke exhaulted. «Healed! Do you hear?» he shouted to the awed crowd. «God, in his mercy, has healed this dying Tired.» «Amen,» they shouted. And they crowded around him, wanting to touch him. The Tired was pushed aside. A buxom Negro Fare with a short, kicky shirt, pressed soft breasts against Luke's shoulder and screamed at him. He singled her out. «Yes, sister?» he asked. «Do you have faith?» «I got this pain in my side,» the Fare said, putting Luke's hand onto her waist. « 'Bout here.» «Heal!» Luke shouted. He was beginning to feel it now. The power. The gift. He knew he hadn't healed the old Fare with bloody lungs, but he could