Short Fiction by Poul Anderson (free ebook novel .txt) π
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Poul Andersonβs prolific writing career began in 1947, while still an undergraduate physics student at the University of Minnesota, and continued throughout his life. His works were primarily science fiction and fantasy, but he also produced mysteries and historical fiction.
Among his many honors, Anderson was a recipient of three Nebula awards, seven Hugo awards, three Prometheus awards, and an SFWA Grand Master award. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2000.
This collection consists of short stories and novellas published in Worlds of If, Galaxy SF, Fantastic Universe, and other periodicals. Presented in order of publication, they include Innocent at Large, a 1958 story coauthored with his wife and noted author Karen Anderson.
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- Author: Poul Anderson
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Around it the water was indigo blue in the evening light, streaked with arabesques of foam, and he could hear waves rumble against the sheer walls. Overhead the sky was tall with a few clouds in the west turning aureate. The hovering gulls seemed cast in gold. A haziness in the darkened east betokened the southern California coastline. He breathed deeply, letting nerves and muscles and viscera relax, shutting off his mind and turning for a while into an organism that merely lived and was glad to live.
Dalgettyβs view in all directions was cut off by the other stations, the rising streamlined hulks which were Pacific Colony. A few airy flex-strung bridges had been completed to link them, but there was still an extensive boat traffic. To the south he could see a blackness on the water that was a sea ranch. His trained memory told him, in answer to a fleeting question, that according to the latest figures eighteen-point-three percent of the worldβs food supply was now being derived from modified strains of seaweed. The percentage would increase rapidly, he knew.
Elsewhere were mineral-extracting plants, fishery bases, experimental and pure-research stations. Below the floating city, digging into the continental shelf, was the underwater settlementβ βoil wells to supplement the industrial synthesizing process, mining, exploration in tanks to find new resources, a slow growth outward as men learned how to go deeper into cold and darkness and pressure. It was expensive but an overcrowded world had little choice.
Venus was already visible, low and pure on the dusking horizon. Dalgetty breathed the wet pungent sea-air into his lungs and thought with some pity of the men out thereβ βand on the Moon, on Mars, between worlds. They were doing a huge and heartbreaking jobβ βbut he wondered if it were bigger and more meaningful than this work here in Earthβs oceans.
Or a few pages of scribbled equations, tossed into a desk drawer at the Institute. Enough. Dalgetty brought his mind to heel like a harshly trained dog. He was also here to work.
The forces he must encounter seemed monstrous. He was one man, alone against he knew not what kind of organization. He had to rescue one other man beforeβ βwell, before history was changed and spun off on the wrong course, the long downward path. He had his knowledge and abilities but they wouldnβt stop a bullet. Nor did they include education for this kind of warfare. War that was not war, politics that were not politics but a handful of scrawled equations and a bookful of slowly gathered data and a brainful of dreams.
Bancroft had Tigheβ βsomewhere. The Institute could not ask the government for help, even if to a large degree the Institute was the government. It could, perhaps, send Dalgetty a few men but it had no goon squads. And time was like a hound on his heels.
The sensitive man turned, suddenly aware of someone else. This was a middle-aged fellow, gaunt and gray-haired, with an intellectual cast of feature. He leaned on the rail and said quietly, βNice evening, isnβt it?β
βYes,β said Dalgetty. βVery nice.β
βIt gives me a feeling of real accomplishment, this place,β said the stranger.
βHow so?β asked Dalgetty, not unwilling to make conversation.
The man looked out over the sea and spoke softly as if to himself. βIβm fifty years old. I was born during World War Three and grew up with the famines and the mass insanities that followed. I saw fighting myself in Asia. I worried about a senselessly expanding population pressing on senselessly diminished resources. I saw an America that seemed equally divided between decadence and madness.
βAnd yet I can stand now and watch a world where weβve got a functioning United Nations, where population increase is leveling off and democratic government spreading to country after country, where weβre conquering the seas and even going out to other planets. Things have changed since I was a boy but on the whole itβs been for the better.β
βAh,β said Dalgetty, βa kindred spirit. Though Iβm afraid itβs not quite that simple.β
The man arched his brows. βSo you vote conservative?β
βThe Labor Party is conservative,β said Dalgetty. βAs proof of which itβs in coalition with the Republicans and the Neofederalists as well as some splinter groups. No, I donβt care if it stays in, or if the Conservatives prosper or the Liberals take over. The question isβ βwho shall control the group in power?β
βIts membership, I suppose,β said the man.
βBut just who is its membership? You know as well as I do that the great failing of the American people has always been their lack of interest in politics.β
βWhat? Why, they vote, donβt they? What was the last percentage?β
βEight-eight-point-three-seven. Sure they voteβ βonce the ticket has been presented to them. But how many of them have anything to do with nominating the candidates or writing the platforms? How many will actually take time out to work at itβ βor even to write their Congressmen? βWard heelerβ is still a term of contempt.
βAll too often in our history the vote has been simply a matter of choosing between two well-oiled machines. A sufficiently clever and determined group can take over a party, keep the name and the slogans and in a few years do a complete behind-the-scenes volte-face.β Dalgettyβs words came fast, this was one facet of a task to which he had given his life.
βTwo machines,β said the stranger, βor four or five as weβve got now, are at least better than one.β
βNot if the same crowd controls all of them,β Dalgetty said grimly.
βButβ ββ
βββIf you canβt lick βem, join βem.β Better yet, join all sides. Then you canβt lose.β
βI donβt think thatβs happened yet,β said the man.
βNo it hasnβt,β said Dalgetty, βnot in the United States, though in some other countriesβ βnever mind. Itβs still in process of happening, thatβs all. The lines today are drawn not
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