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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/21582-h.zip b/21582-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..966448f --- /dev/null +++ b/21582-h.zip diff --git a/21582-h/21582-h.htm b/21582-h/21582-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d827758 --- /dev/null +++ b/21582-h/21582-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,694 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Mightiest Man, by Patrick Fahy. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em;} + h1 {text-align: center; + clear: both;} + body {margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%;} + .intro {width: 19em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + padding: 0.5em; + border: dotted; + font-weight: bold; + font-family: sans-serif; + margin-bottom: 5em;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .initial:first-letter {font-size: 200%; + font-weight: bold; + float: left; + line-height: 100%;} + .initial {margin-top: 5em;} + .tn {text-align: center; + margin-left: 5%; + margin-right: 10%; + padding: 0.5em; + background-color: #eeeeee; + border: solid 2px; + margin-bottom: 5em;} + .end {text-align: right; + font-weight: bold;} + .second {clear: both;} + .byline {font-size: 70%; + font-family: sans-serif;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mightiest Man, by Patrick Fahy + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Mightiest Man + +Author: Patrick Fahy + +Release Date: May 23, 2007 [EBook #21582] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIGHTIEST MAN *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Tamise Totterdell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p class="tn">This e-text was produced from “Worlds of If” November 1961. +Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. +copyright on this publication was renewed.</p> + +<p class="intro">He had betrayed mankind, but he was not afraid of the +consequences—ever!</p> + +<h1>THE<br /> +MIGHTIEST<br /> +MAN<br /> +<br /> +<span class="byline">By PATRICK FAHY</span></h1> + +<p class="initial"><span class="smcap">They</span> caught up with him in Belgrade.</p> + +<p class="second">The aliens had gone by then, only a few shining metal huts in the +Siberian tundra giving mute evidence that they had been anything other +than a nightmare.</p> + +<p>It had seemed exactly like that. A nightmare in which all of Earth stood +helpless, unable to resist or flee, while the obscene shapes slithered +and flopped over all her green fields and fair cities. And the awakening +had not brought the reassurance that it had all been a bad dream. That +if it had happened in reality, the people of Earth would have been +capable of dealing with the terrible menace. It had been real. And they +had been no more capable of resisting the giant intelligences than a +child of killing the ogre in his favorite fairy story.</p> + +<p>It was an ironic parallel, because that was what finally saved Earth for +its own people. A fairy story.</p> + +<p>The old fable of the lion and the mouse. When the lion had exhausted his +atomic armor and proud science against the invincible and immortal +invaders of Earth—for they could not be killed by any means—the mouse +attacked and vanquished them.</p> + +<p>The mouse, the lowest form of life: the fungoids, the air of Earth +swarming with millions of their spores, attacked the monstrous bodies, +grew and entwined within the gray convolutions that were their brain +centers. And as the tiny thread-roots probed and tightened, the aliens +screamed soundlessly. The intelligences toppled and fell, and at last +that few among them who retained sanity gathered their lunatic brethren +and fled as they had come.</p> + +<p>If he had known the effect the fungoids would have on them, he would +have told them that too. He had told them everything else, when he had +been snatched from a busy city street, a random specimen of humanity to +be probed and investigated.</p> + +<p>They had chosen well. For the payment they offered him he was willing to +barter the whole human race. As far as it lay in his power he did just +that.</p> + +<p>He was not an educated man, though he was intelligent. It was child’s +play to them to strip his mind bare; but they had to know the +intangibles too, the determined will of humanity to survive, the +probabilities of the pattern of human behavior in a situation which +humanity had never before faced. He told them all he could, gladly and +willingly. He would have descended to any treachery for the vast +glittering reward they tempted him with.</p> + +<p>It wasn’t easy for the Yugoslavs to guard him and, anyway, their hearts +weren’t in the task. His treachery, the ultimate treason, the betrayal +of the whole human race, was commonly known.</p> + +<p>Inevitably the mob got him and killed three policemen in the process. +When they had sated their anger a little and the traitor had lost most +of his clothes and the thumb of his right hand, they dragged him to the +junction where the Danube meets the Sava and held him under the gray +waters with long poles, as if he was some poisonous reptile.</p> + +<p>He lay supinely on the bed of the river and smiled evilly while a +hundred thousand people writhed in neural agony.</p> + +<p class="initial"><span class="smcap">Twenty-four</span> hours later the neural plague had spread to Zagreb and into +Albania as far as Tirana. When it crossed to Leghorn in Italy the +Balkans held twenty million lunatics and the Danube was an artificial +lake a hundred miles wide.</p> + +<p class="second">They had used a “clean” bomb. So they were able to bring a loudspeaker +van to its edge and boom at him to come out. He allowed them to do that +for some inscrutable reason; perhaps to demonstrate that his powers were +selective. Then it seemed he got tired of the farce, and cruel fingers +twined themselves into the nerve centers of the President of Italy and +the Prime Minister of the government of United Europe. He made them +dance a horribly twisted <span lang="fr" xml:lang="fr"><i>pas de deux</i></span> on the banks of the Danube for +his perverted amusement.</p> + +<p>Then he released them, and released the millions of gibbering, twitching +idiots that inhabited Southern Europe, and he came out of the river bed +in which he had lain for forty-eight hours.</p> + +<p>He walked alone through the deserted streets of Belgrade until he came +to the United Nations building. There he told a very brave lieutenant +that he was willing to stand trial any place in the world they wished.</p> + +<p>For three days nobody came to arrest him. He sat alone with the +lieutenant in the peopleless city of Belgrade and waited for his +captors. They came then, timidly reassured by his non-violence. While he +talked to them pleasantly the citizens of London and Paris suddenly +began to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of their +cities. In the same moment the Chief Justice of the Court of the +Nations, at a cocktail party in Washington, writhed in the exquisite +pain of total muscle cramp, his august features twisted into a mask of +abject fear.</p> + +<p>The trial itself was a legal farce. The prisoner promptly pleaded guilty +to the charge of betraying mankind to an alien race, but he didn’t allow +them to question him. When one lawyer persisted in face of his pleasant +refusals, he died suddenly in a cramped ball of screaming agony.</p> + +<p>The gray-faced Chief Justice inquired whether he wished to be sentenced +and he answered yes, but not to death. They couldn’t kill him, he +explained. That was part of the reward the aliens had given him. The +other part was that <em>he</em> could kill or immobilize anybody in the +world—or everybody—from any distance. He sat back and smiled at the +stricken courtroom. Then he lost his composure and his mouth twitched. +He laughed uproariously and slapped his knees in ecstasy.</p> + +<p>It was plain that he was fond of a joke.</p> + +<p>An anonymous lawyer stood up and waited patiently for his merriment to +subside.</p> + +<p>If this was true, he asked, why had not the aliens used this power? Why +had they not simply killed off the inhabitants and taken over the vacant +planet? The traitor gazed kindly at him; and a court stenographer who +had cautiously picked up a pencil returned agonizingly to her foetal +position and, that way, died.</p> + +<p>The traitor looked at his fingers and shrugged. The thumb that had been +snapped off in the mob’s frenzy was more than half grown again.</p> + +<p>“They needed slaves,” he said simply.</p> + +<p>“And at the end, while some of them were still sane?”</p> + +<p>The traitor raised his eyebrows, giving him his full courteous +attention. The lawyer sat down abruptly, his question unfinished. The +creature who had betrayed his own race smiled at him and permitted him +to live.</p> + +<p>He even completed his question for him, and answered it. “Why did they +not kill then? They had something else on their minds—fungoids!” He +laughed uproariously at his macabre joke. “And in their minds too!”</p> + +<p>The lawyer’s blue eyes gazed at him steadily and he stopped laughing. In +the bated hush of the courtroom he said softly, “What a pity I’m not an +alien too. You could have the fungoids destroy me!”</p> + +<p>He laughed again helplessly, the tears running down his cheeks.</p> + +<p class="initial"><span class="smcap">The</span> Chief Justice adjourned the Court then and the prisoner sauntered to +his comfortable quarters in front of his frightened guards.</p> + +<p class="second">That night, in his own living room, the Chief Justice danced an agonized +fandango in front of his horror-stricken wife and the anonymous lawyer +sat in his apartment, staring at the blank wall. He was glad the aliens +had not made the traitor telepathic too.</p> + +<p>He had found the chink in his armor.</p> + +<p>The neural paralysis, the murders by remote control, were acts of a +conscious will. He had himself admitted that if his mind was destroyed +his powers would be destroyed with it. The aliens had not sought revenge +because their minds were totally occupied with saving themselves. The +stricken ones had simply lost the power.</p> + +<p>The knowledge was useless to him. There was no way they could attack his +mind without his knowing it.</p> + +<p>Possibly they could steal away his consciousness by drugging or +bludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the split +moment of realization he would kill every human being on Earth. There +would be nobody left to operate on his brain, to make him a mindless, +powerless idiot for the rest of time. For any period of time, he +corrected himself. His brain would heal again.</p> + +<p>It was useless to think about it. There was nothing they could use +against his invincibility. The only hope was to attack him unawares ... +and if that hope was a fraction less than a certainty it could only mean +final and absolute catastrophe.</p> + +<p>The lawyer looked at his watch. It was four in the morning.</p> + +<p>He went into the kitchenette and then shrugged himself into his coat. He +walked through the silent streets, past the city hospital where the +Chief Justice lay in agony while the motor impulses from his nerve +centers wrenched and twisted his body. He entered the foyer of the +luxury hotel where the race betrayer was held prisoner and took the +elevator to the sixth floor.</p> + +<p>Two sleepy guards jerked erect outside the unlocked door. He put his +finger to his lips, enjoining them to silence. Then he entered the room +and stood for a moment over the man who was invincible and immortal—and +human. Human, and subject to the involuntary unconsciousness which +nature demands from all men. He slept.</p> + +<p>The eyelids fluttered. The lawyer took the steel meat skewer from his +pocket. He thrust it through a half-opened eye and rotated it, +methodically reducing the soft brain to formless mush.</p> + +<p>After that the trial proceeded normally.</p> + +<p>The prisoner stared vacantly in front of him and all his movements had +to be directed. But he was alive and his thumb was full grown again.</p> + +<p>It was the lawyer that noticed this and pointed out the implications. +The thumb had grown to full size in less than six weeks. They must +regard that as their maximum period of immunity.</p> + +<p>They ruminated over it for another four days. The question was a tricky +one, for malignant immortality was beyond human solution. It was not +just a matter of dealing out punishment. The problem now was the +protection of the race from sudden annihilation. An insolvable problem, +but one that must be solved. They could only do their best.</p> + +<p>He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a special feature.</p> + +<p>It was decided he should be guillotined once a month as long as he +lived.</p> + +<p class="end">END</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mightiest Man, by Patrick Fahy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIGHTIEST MAN *** + +***** This file should be named 21582-h.htm or 21582-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/5/8/21582/ + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Tamise Totterdell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Mightiest Man + +Author: Patrick Fahy + +Release Date: May 23, 2007 [EBook #21582] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIGHTIEST MAN *** + + + + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Tamise Totterdell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + This e-text was produced from "Worlds of If" November 1961. + Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. + copyright on this publication was renewed. + + +He had betrayed mankind, but he was not afraid of the +consequences--ever! + + +THE +MIGHTIEST +MAN + + +By PATRICK FAHY + + +They caught up with him in Belgrade. + +The aliens had gone by then, only a few shining metal huts in the +Siberian tundra giving mute evidence that they had been anything other +than a nightmare. + +It had seemed exactly like that. A nightmare in which all of Earth stood +helpless, unable to resist or flee, while the obscene shapes slithered +and flopped over all her green fields and fair cities. And the awakening +had not brought the reassurance that it had all been a bad dream. That +if it had happened in reality, the people of Earth would have been +capable of dealing with the terrible menace. It had been real. And they +had been no more capable of resisting the giant intelligences than a +child of killing the ogre in his favorite fairy story. + +It was an ironic parallel, because that was what finally saved Earth for +its own people. A fairy story. + +The old fable of the lion and the mouse. When the lion had exhausted his +atomic armor and proud science against the invincible and immortal +invaders of Earth--for they could not be killed by any means--the mouse +attacked and vanquished them. + +The mouse, the lowest form of life: the fungoids, the air of Earth +swarming with millions of their spores, attacked the monstrous bodies, +grew and entwined within the gray convolutions that were their brain +centers. And as the tiny thread-roots probed and tightened, the aliens +screamed soundlessly. The intelligences toppled and fell, and at last +that few among them who retained sanity gathered their lunatic brethren +and fled as they had come. + +If he had known the effect the fungoids would have on them, he would +have told them that too. He had told them everything else, when he had +been snatched from a busy city street, a random specimen of humanity to +be probed and investigated. + +They had chosen well. For the payment they offered him he was willing to +barter the whole human race. As far as it lay in his power he did just +that. + +He was not an educated man, though he was intelligent. It was child's +play to them to strip his mind bare; but they had to know the +intangibles too, the determined will of humanity to survive, the +probabilities of the pattern of human behavior in a situation which +humanity had never before faced. He told them all he could, gladly and +willingly. He would have descended to any treachery for the vast +glittering reward they tempted him with. + +It wasn't easy for the Yugoslavs to guard him and, anyway, their hearts +weren't in the task. His treachery, the ultimate treason, the betrayal +of the whole human race, was commonly known. + +Inevitably the mob got him and killed three policemen in the process. +When they had sated their anger a little and the traitor had lost most +of his clothes and the thumb of his right hand, they dragged him to the +junction where the Danube meets the Sava and held him under the gray +waters with long poles, as if he was some poisonous reptile. + +He lay supinely on the bed of the river and smiled evilly while a +hundred thousand people writhed in neural agony. + + * * * * * + +Twenty-four hours later the neural plague had spread to Zagreb and into +Albania as far as Tirana. When it crossed to Leghorn in Italy the +Balkans held twenty million lunatics and the Danube was an artificial +lake a hundred miles wide. + +They had used a "clean" bomb. So they were able to bring a loudspeaker +van to its edge and boom at him to come out. He allowed them to do that +for some inscrutable reason; perhaps to demonstrate that his powers were +selective. Then it seemed he got tired of the farce, and cruel fingers +twined themselves into the nerve centers of the President of Italy and +the Prime Minister of the government of United Europe. He made them +dance a horribly twisted _pas de deux_ on the banks of the Danube for +his perverted amusement. + +Then he released them, and released the millions of gibbering, twitching +idiots that inhabited Southern Europe, and he came out of the river bed +in which he had lain for forty-eight hours. + +He walked alone through the deserted streets of Belgrade until he came +to the United Nations building. There he told a very brave lieutenant +that he was willing to stand trial any place in the world they wished. + +For three days nobody came to arrest him. He sat alone with the +lieutenant in the peopleless city of Belgrade and waited for his +captors. They came then, timidly reassured by his non-violence. While he +talked to them pleasantly the citizens of London and Paris suddenly +began to dance jerky and grotesque jigs on the pavements of their +cities. In the same moment the Chief Justice of the Court of the +Nations, at a cocktail party in Washington, writhed in the exquisite +pain of total muscle cramp, his august features twisted into a mask of +abject fear. + +The trial itself was a legal farce. The prisoner promptly pleaded guilty +to the charge of betraying mankind to an alien race, but he didn't allow +them to question him. When one lawyer persisted in face of his pleasant +refusals, he died suddenly in a cramped ball of screaming agony. + +The gray-faced Chief Justice inquired whether he wished to be sentenced +and he answered yes, but not to death. They couldn't kill him, he +explained. That was part of the reward the aliens had given him. The +other part was that _he_ could kill or immobilize anybody in the +world--or everybody--from any distance. He sat back and smiled at the +stricken courtroom. Then he lost his composure and his mouth twitched. +He laughed uproariously and slapped his knees in ecstasy. + +It was plain that he was fond of a joke. + +An anonymous lawyer stood up and waited patiently for his merriment to +subside. + +If this was true, he asked, why had not the aliens used this power? Why +had they not simply killed off the inhabitants and taken over the vacant +planet? The traitor gazed kindly at him; and a court stenographer who +had cautiously picked up a pencil returned agonizingly to her foetal +position and, that way, died. + +The traitor looked at his fingers and shrugged. The thumb that had been +snapped off in the mob's frenzy was more than half grown again. + +"They needed slaves," he said simply. + +"And at the end, while some of them were still sane?" + +The traitor raised his eyebrows, giving him his full courteous +attention. The lawyer sat down abruptly, his question unfinished. The +creature who had betrayed his own race smiled at him and permitted him +to live. + +He even completed his question for him, and answered it. "Why did they +not kill then? They had something else on their minds--fungoids!" He +laughed uproariously at his macabre joke. "And in their minds too!" + +The lawyer's blue eyes gazed at him steadily and he stopped laughing. In +the bated hush of the courtroom he said softly, "What a pity I'm not an +alien too. You could have the fungoids destroy me!" + +He laughed again helplessly, the tears running down his cheeks. + + * * * * * + +The Chief Justice adjourned the Court then and the prisoner sauntered to +his comfortable quarters in front of his frightened guards. + +That night, in his own living room, the Chief Justice danced an agonized +fandango in front of his horror-stricken wife and the anonymous lawyer +sat in his apartment, staring at the blank wall. He was glad the aliens +had not made the traitor telepathic too. + +He had found the chink in his armor. + +The neural paralysis, the murders by remote control, were acts of a +conscious will. He had himself admitted that if his mind was destroyed +his powers would be destroyed with it. The aliens had not sought revenge +because their minds were totally occupied with saving themselves. The +stricken ones had simply lost the power. + +The knowledge was useless to him. There was no way they could attack his +mind without his knowing it. + +Possibly they could steal away his consciousness by drugging or +bludgeoning, but it would be racial suicide to attempt it. In the split +moment of realization he would kill every human being on Earth. There +would be nobody left to operate on his brain, to make him a mindless, +powerless idiot for the rest of time. For any period of time, he +corrected himself. His brain would heal again. + +It was useless to think about it. There was nothing they could use +against his invincibility. The only hope was to attack him unawares ... +and if that hope was a fraction less than a certainty it could only mean +final and absolute catastrophe. + +The lawyer looked at his watch. It was four in the morning. + +He went into the kitchenette and then shrugged himself into his coat. He +walked through the silent streets, past the city hospital where the +Chief Justice lay in agony while the motor impulses from his nerve +centers wrenched and twisted his body. He entered the foyer of the +luxury hotel where the race betrayer was held prisoner and took the +elevator to the sixth floor. + +Two sleepy guards jerked erect outside the unlocked door. He put his +finger to his lips, enjoining them to silence. Then he entered the room +and stood for a moment over the man who was invincible and immortal--and +human. Human, and subject to the involuntary unconsciousness which +nature demands from all men. He slept. + +The eyelids fluttered. The lawyer took the steel meat skewer from his +pocket. He thrust it through a half-opened eye and rotated it, +methodically reducing the soft brain to formless mush. + +After that the trial proceeded normally. + +The prisoner stared vacantly in front of him and all his movements had +to be directed. But he was alive and his thumb was full grown again. + +It was the lawyer that noticed this and pointed out the implications. +The thumb had grown to full size in less than six weeks. They must +regard that as their maximum period of immunity. + +They ruminated over it for another four days. The question was a tricky +one, for malignant immortality was beyond human solution. It was not +just a matter of dealing out punishment. The problem now was the +protection of the race from sudden annihilation. An insolvable problem, +but one that must be solved. They could only do their best. + +He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with a special feature. + +It was decided he should be guillotined once a month as long as he +lived. + + +END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Mightiest Man, by Patrick Fahy + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIGHTIEST MAN *** + +***** This file should be named 21582.txt or 21582.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/1/5/8/21582/ + +Produced by Robert Cicconetti, Tamise Totterdell and the +Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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