With A Strange Device by Eric Frank Russell

Author:Eric Frank Russell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2015-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

As the train snaked through the countryside Reardon started on him again. ‘Now see here, Bransome, I’m going to be frank with you. For heaven’s sake be on the level with me. I’m going to tell you why I’ve a special interest in you. In return, I want you to tell what you’re hiding, what has got you on the run.’

‘I’m not on the run.’

‘Not now perhaps. Not since I’ve caught up with you. But originally you were.’

‘I was not. It’s merely your delusion.’ ‘Let’s quit banging our skulls together. We’ll get nothing out of it except a pain in the nut. I want to remind you of something you seem to have forgotten, namely, the fact that there’s a war on. It’s not a shooting war but it’s a war all the same. Why else would you and many others be working full time on the development of newer and better weapons?’

‘Well?’

‘In case the cold war becomes hot. In the interim a non-shooting war is fought by non-shooting methods. Each side tries to steal the other’s best brains, or buy them, or sabotage them or destroy them outright. We have lost men and plans and ideas. So have they. We’ve bought over some of their brains. They’ve acquired some of ours. See what! mean?’

‘Of course. It’s old stuff.’

‘But still workable within limits,’ said Reardon. His lean face and sharp eyes looked snoopier than ever. ‘The weapons in a non-shooting war are those of theft, bribery, blackmail, seduction, murder, anything and everything that is effective for its purpose. They can and do cause casualties on both sides. The logical method of fighting a non-shooting war is to employ every available means of increasing the enemy’s losses while, at the same time, preventing or reducing one’s own. The latter is fully as important as the former - and the latter is my special job. It’s the responsibility of my department to beat off attacks on our brainpower.’

‘You’re telling me nothing that’s new and wonderful,’ Bransome complained. ‘And so far as I’m concerned, it’s a hell of a note when a fellow can’t take time off without being suspected of planning to sell what he’s got in his head.’

‘You’re over-simplifying the situation,’ asserted Reardon. ‘Basically, there are two ways of weakening the enemy. You can acquire his brains for your own use. Or, if that proves impossible, you can deprive him of the use of them. It’s a dog-in-the-manger policy: if I can’t employ that genius, neither can you, see’? So let’s say that inherently you’re too loyal to sell what you’ve got in your head. What then?’

‘Well, what then?’ ‘The enemy removes your head so that if he can’t have it neither can anyone else.’

‘Bunkum! I’m not worth the bother of decapitating.’

‘That’s like saying a soldier isn’t worth the bother of sending to the battlefront. As one, single, solitary individual maybe he isn’t. But as a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand individuals he becomes a formidable force that can make all the difference between defeat and victory.

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