The girls laughed brightly.
That night, sitting around a bonfire, they learned the actual way of the world. The Zone was the real world, and the island nation where they had gone through childhood and most of their early schooling was actually a prison without walls. Or a zoo without bars, where the zookeepers mingled unnoticed with the specimens.
The Enemy did not exist; there was no war. It was only a ruse to explain why people couldn’t leave, unless they left in uniform. Children like Eric stayed on the island, constantly monitored by observers from the real world, until they trained themselves out of aggressiveness and were allowed to leave. Or they grew up, lived, and died there, their options restricted for everyone’s sake. Their world was a couple of centuries out of date, necessarily, since in the real world everyone had access to technologies that could be perverted into weapons of mass destruction.
It had been a truism since the simple atomic age, that the social sciences hadn’t been able to keep up with the physical ones; that our ability to control the material world had accelerated without our moral strength increasing to accommodate our powers.
There was a war that had to be the last one, and the few survivors put together this odd construct to protect themselves and their descendents from themselves and their descendents.
They still couldn’t change human nature, but they could measure aspects of it with extraordinary reliability. And they could lie about the measurements, denying to a large minority of the population a freedom that they did not know existed.
For some years Duncan went down to the beach on Invasion Day, looking for his brother Eric in the dumbfounded battalions that slogged through the surf into the real world. Then one year he was too busy, and the rest of the years just had the office computer automatically check the immigration lists.
In the other real world, Eric sometimes wondered if his brother was still alive.
Author’s note:
Twenty years ago, my wife had her first real full-time job, teaching Spanish in a rural Florida high school that had recently, reluctantly, become integrated. The students had taken language aptitude tests.and only those with high potential were allowed into her classroom.
Predictably, the elite students—most of whom, surprisingly, had gone through the “inferior” black primary school system—threw themselves into the work with enthusiasm, learning fast, doing extra work, having a good time at it. They were a joy to teach.
About a year later, my wife found out that the office had made a fundamental error. Everyone who took the test, pass or fail, had been allowed into the class. Some of them had language aptitudes far below average.
They were told they were special, though, and would succeed. So of course it turned out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
There Will Be No War After This One
Robert Sheckley
Earth is now well known for her peaceful ways. She is a model of good behavior, though she is an extremely impoverished civilization. She has eschewed war forever.
But some people do not realize that it was not always so. There was a time, and not too long ago, when Earth was dominated by some of the worst military bad-asses to be found anywhere. The armed forces, which held power in the last days before The Great Awakening, were almost unbelievably inept in their policies.
It was at this time that Earth, achieving single rule at last under General Gatt and his marshalls, entered interstellar civilization, and, a few short years later, went through the famous incident with the Galactic Effectuator that led them to put war behind them forever. Here is the true story of that encounter.
At dawn on September 18, 2331, General Vargas’s Second Route Army came out of the mists around Redlands, California, and pinned down Wiedermayer’s loyalist troops on the San Francisco peninsula. Wiedermayer, last of the old democratic regime generals, the appointee of the discredited Congress of the United States, had been hoping to get his troops to safety by ship, perhaps to Hawaii. He did not know at that time that die Islands had fallen to military rule. Not that it mattered; the expected transports never arrived. Realizing that further resistance was futile, Wiedermayer surrendered. With him fell the last military force on the planet which had supported civilian rule. For the first time in its history, Earth was utterly and entirely in the hands of the warlords.
Vargas accepted Wiedermayer’s surrender and sent a messenger to the Supreme Commander, General Gatt, at his North Texas headquarters. Outside his tent, the men of Vargas’s army were camped in pup tents across two grassy fields. The quartermasters were already getting ready the feasts with which Vargas marked his victories.
Vargas was a man somewhat shorter than medium height, thickset, with black curly hair on a big round skull. He had a well-trimmed black moustache, and heavy black eyebrows that met in a bar above his nose. He sat on a campstool. A stubby black cigar smouldered on a corner of the field table beside him. Following long-established practice, Vargas was calming himself by polishing his boots. They were genuine ostrich, priceless now that the last of those great birds had died.
Sitting on the cot across the tent from him was his common-law wife, Lupe. She was redheaded, loudmouthed, with strong features, a strident voice, and an indomitable spirit. They had been fighting these wars together for most of their adult lives. Vargas had risen from the lowly rank of Camp Follower’s Assistant to General in command of Supreme General Gatt’s Western Forces.
He and Lupe had campaigned in many parts of the world. The Second Route Army was highly mobile, able to pack up its weapons one day in Italy and appear the next day in California or Cambodia or wherever needed.
Now at last Vargas and his lady had a chance to relax. The troops were spread out on the big plain near Los Gatos. Their campfires sent thin wavering streamers of gray smoke into the blue sky. Many of Wiedermayer’s surrendered troops had joined the victors. The campaign was over. Maybe all the battles were won; for as far as Vargas could remember, they seemed to have run out of opponents.
It was a good moment. Vargas and Lupe toasted each other with California champagne, and then pushed their gear off the folding double bed in preparation for more earnest celebrating. It was just then that the messenger arrived, tired and dusty from many hours in the helicopter, with a telegram from General Gatt.
Gatt’s telegram read,
The last opposition to our New Order has collapsed in North America. Final resistance in Russia and Asia has ended. At last, the world is under a single unified command! Loyal General and Dear Friend, you must come to me at once. All the generals are coming here to help me celebrate our total victory over all those who opposed us. We will be voting on our next procedures and course of action. I very much want for you to be here for that. Also I tell you in strictest confidence, there has been a surprising new development. I cannot even talk about it over the telegram. I want to discuss it with you. This is of greatest importance! Come immediately! I need you!
When the messenger left, Vargas turned to Lupe. “What could be so important that he can’t even entrust it to a telegram? Why can’t he give me a hint?”
“I don’t know,” Lupe said. “But it worries me that he wants you to come to him.”
“Woman, what are you talking about? It is a compliment!”
“Maybe it is, but maybe he simply wants you in where he can keep an eye on you. You command one of the last of the independent armies. If he has control of you, he has everything.”