Short Science Fiction

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?”

Morrison, vice president for Canada, spoke pedantically, “It would be a tragedy to lose President Wadsworth. Last month his I.Q. was 340, nearly twenty points above any other member of the Mutant College.”

Hoshawk barely caught himself in time to repress a snort. A boy of sixteen, no matter what his I.Q., was just a kid. You couldn’t expect him to exhibit initiative or even to take things seriously. That was why Hoshawk had almost broken with the Hemispheric Congress thirty years before—almost two of President Jeffrey’s lifetimes, Hoshawk reflected wryly.

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.

Hoshawk was annoyed, but there was nothing he could do about it. The Hemispheric Congress had set up the Mutant College two hundred years ago, and every child with I.Q. above 200 and physique to match, became a member, for the sole purpose of selecting a President whose primary duty would be to fight a war, if it should come in his term, on one of the giant keyboards. This had been a concession to left-wing agitation that, if there was to be another war, it should be fought by the leaders and not by the ranks.

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—”